"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... with the charming gifts that are made to bridal couples. Gold shimmered and glistened; silks and satins, cashmere shawls, necklaces, jewels, afforded as much delight to those who gave as to those who received; enjoyment that was almost childlike shone on every face, and the mere value of the magnificent presents was lost sight of by the spectators,—who often busy themselves in estimating it out ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the Saint to baptize his jailor. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... you. You couldn't, even with my permission, betray to any one a hint of my miserable secret, and you couldn't, for your life's happiness, pay the particular price that I asked." She leaned toward him in the intense, almost childlike, effort at full expression. "Oh, we are of different races, with a different point of honour; but I understand, I see, that you are good ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... smiling and bonnie, and never see nothink of it again but its bones—for she had fallen into a lime pit, had Beller, and it was nothing but her skeleton as they brought 'ome. There was building going on around there, and she was playing near the pit—childlike—just as it might be Miss Peggy..." Soon and on. The horrors accumulated with every moment. The housemaid had heard tell of a beautiful little girl, the heiress to a big estate, who had been carried off by strolling gipsies, and never been seen again by her sorrowing ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... some yards: with her face Turn'd upward to the sky she lay, Her head on a wet heap of hay, And fell asleep: and while she slept, And did not dream, the minutes crept Round to the twelve again; but she, Being waked at last, sigh'd quietly, And strangely childlike came, and said: I will not. Straightway Godmar's head, As though it hung on strong wires, turn'd Most sharply round, and his ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... kindly sympathy begotten of that knowledge. For To Know—to Understand—means to give to each its rights! And, in this matter, have we to concede so much to our higher animals? The simplest form of thought contents them; the childlike adapting itself to animal uses; and, from such "small beginnings" has not our own primeval soul—the best that is within us—risen to higher glory, to become a moulder and organizer of thought—even of creative ideas? Therefore, from ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... (they were very meagre) and come to live in Paris, where she was staying at a hotel garni. She was always looking for an apartment, and visiting, inquiringly, those of other people. She was very pretty, very childlike, and she made very extraordinary remarks. Bellegarde had made her acquaintance, and the source of his interest in her was, according to his own declaration, a curiosity as to what would become of her. "She is poor, she is pretty, and she is silly," ...
— The American • Henry James
... saw the performances behind the scenes, and had even acted a part as page, shepherd, etc., and had spoken a few words. My zeal was so great on such occasions, that I stood there fully apparelled when the actors arrived to dress. By these means their attention was turned to me; my childlike manners and my enthusiasm amused them; they talked kindly with me, and I looked up to them as to earthly divinities. Everything which I had formerly heard about my musical voice, and my recitation of poetry, became intelligible ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... never merrier; they have their grog at night, and tell the raciest stories; they hear of the death of people about their own age, or even younger, not as if it was a grisly warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at having outlived someone else; and when a draught might puff them out like a fluttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass, their old hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beautiful girl in this city, named Lucila. She had at that time scarcely reached the period which separates childhood from ripe maidenhood, and as I—a boy only just capable of bearing arms—offered my homage with a childlike, friendly feeling, it was also received by my young mistress in a similar childlike manner. I marched at length to Italy, and as you yourself know, for we have been companions since then, I was in many a hot fight and in many an enchantingly alluring region in that luxurious land. Amid ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies or in the dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to him than this. But these he told only to Patrasche, whispering, childlike, his fancies in the dog's ear when they went together at their work through the fogs of the daybreak, or lay together at their rest among the rustling rushes ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... we learn from him later life, would have Christian children brought up in the happy assurance that God is a loving Father, Christ a faithful Saviour, and that it is their privilege and duty to approach their Father with frank and childlike confidence, and, if aroused to a consciousness of sin or wrong, to entreat at once His forgiveness. Such however, he tells us, was not what he was taught. On the contrary, he was instructed, and trained up from ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... song through the even; Features lit up by a reflex of heaven; Eyes like the skies of poor Erin, our mother, Where shadow and sunshine are chasing each other; Smiles coming seldom, but childlike and simple, Planting in each rosy cheek a sweet dimple;— thanks to the Saviour, that even thy seeming Is left to the exile to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... whole Norse way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us. A rude childlike way of recognising the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a giant of a man this child would grow to!—It was a truth, and is none. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... her father's knee, and he was stroking her hair. As Casanova drew near, Teresina greeted him, not with the look of lascivious understanding which he had involuntarily expected, but with a frank smile of childlike confidence, as if what had passed between them only a few hours before had been nothing more than some trivial pastime. Olivo's face lighted up in friendly fashion, and Amalia nodded a cordial greeting. It was plain to Casanova that they ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... out backwards, bowing, with Claire curtseying, having been listened to in utter dumbfoundedness by Patiomkin and Naryshkin, in childlike awe by Yarinka, and with quite inexpressible feelings by Catherine. When he is out of sight she rises with clinched fists and raises her arms and her closed eyes to Heaven. Patiomkin: rousing himself from his stupor of amazement, springs to her like a tiger, and throws himself ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... as his acquaintance with them was profound. His affection for the natives was such as, perhaps, to blind him to their faults, and like the earliest victims of the Indian Mutiny he entertained to the very last an almost childlike confidence in the loyalty of the whole people. Only a few days before his death he expressed his conviction that disaffection had died out in Nasik, and that he could go anywhere, and at any hour without the slightest risk of danger. That he was very generally respected and ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... silent man, who, with careless tread, walked up and down the room, utterly regardless of her presence, and apparently absorbed in bitter reflections. Once only had she ventured to speak, and then, in childlike simplicity, she had asked ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big if in the life of every man and woman at some straining period ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... them. Life with all its bustling movement seemed indeed distant, and it was a joy to dismiss all its conditions and proprieties from their minds and to walk with bare feet upon the soft ground, the sand, the clay, and the grass; it filled their hearts with a simple, childlike, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... stopping short in his walk, "you—I—!" That frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words. But there was no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips. A look of fear leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her cheeks; then she stood, white, trembling ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... in what you say, Hitty. If I had time I would go into the matter with you, but this is my busy day." Nancy sat up in bed, and began sipping her hot water obediently. She looked very childlike in her straight cut, embroidered night-gown, with a long chestnut pig-tail over either shoulder. "I feel as if I were going to be married, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... the girls, meanwhile, was pretty evenly divided between the moving show upon the quay and the quite as active contingent in Nanni's gondola. Indeed there were about as many babies in the one as in the other, for it is a pretty and childlike fancy of the Venetians to dress up their children as saints and angels, and lead them, with a becoming reverence, not all untouched by vanity, in the wake of the holy men. Here were small Franciscans in their brown cowls, tiny ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... of her writings is the frankness with which she takes the reader into her personal confidence. She is never formal, never a martyr to artificial restraint, never wrapped in a mantle of reserve; but, with an almost childlike simplicity, presents a transparent revelation of her inmost thoughts and feelings, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... me, I sat down to sketch in a little terraced garden, shaded by fig-trees and vines. My sketch was nearly finished, and I was thinking how I should overtake you, when a bright-eyed young maiden came up, and, with the childlike wonder of a race of people living far out of the track of sketching tourists, asked ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... fingers into her bodice, and pulling out a bouquet of violets she threw them with childlike contempt into the face of my friend. Alexander gave her the price of the jewels, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of the pretty, delicate little thing standing there night after night as though divided by the bar from prowling beasts. And yet she was known over the whole wide, wild country as "Hudson's Queen." Her crystal, childlike look must be one of those extraordinary survivals, a piteous sort of accident. Cosme called himself a sentimentalist. Spurred by this reaction against his more romantic tendencies, he leaned forward. He too was going ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... she prepared her child for his bed, smoothing back the shining hair from the pure white brow, where the blue veins were clearly traced, and Ambrose knelt at her knee and repeated his little prayer, adding, with childlike simplicity, after ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... boarder who came to the Reist farmhouse was unlike any of the members of the family, she soon won her way into their affections. Her sweet tenderness, her apparent childlike innocence, appealed to the simple, unsuspicious country folk. Shaping her actions in accordance with the old Irish saying, "It's better to have the dogs of the street for you than against you," Isabel made friends with Millie and went ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... The blessedness of such reception, so far as the receiver is concerned, is not merely that he thereby comes into happy relations with Christ's foremost servants, but that he gets Christ Himself into his heart. If with true appreciation of the beauty of such a childlike disposition, I open my heart or my hand to its possessor, I do thereby enlarge my capacity for my own possession of Christ, who dwells in His child, and who comes with him where He is welcomed. There is no surer way of securing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... figure, childlike and pathetic in its look of fatigue and of sorrow, had said nothing as yet, but her eyes, large, brown, and full of tears, looked up from the fire and sought those of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, who had drawn near to the hearth and to her; then, as they met ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... was as childlike as his face, and because—if stupid and slothful by nature—he was also of so submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he looked, and had in his own lubberly way taken the measure ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... universal scientific ability, such as never, perhaps, was lavished by any other man upon any other department of study. His conspicuous and beautiful love of truth, his unflinching candour, his transparent fearlessness and honesty of purpose, his childlike simplicity, his modesty of demeanour, his charming manner, his affectionate disposition, his kindliness to friends, his courtesy to opponents, his gentleness to harsh and often bitter assailants, kindled in ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... not our purpose to recount the whole history of this good man's enterprise. Let it suffice to say that the natives of Ratinga turned round, childlike—and they were little more than grown up children— swallowed all he had to say and did all he bid them do—or nearly all, for of course there were a few self-willed characters among them who objected at first to the wholesale changes that Waroonga introduced in their manners and customs. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... figure of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror and wild curiosity. 'This is SHE,' thought Olenin. 'But there will be many others like her' came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door. Old Granny Ulitka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her back turned to him, ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... will be seen that Jenny, though seventeen years of age, was the same open-hearted, childlike creature as ever. She loved Billy Bender, and she didn't care who knew it. She loved, too, to seek out and befriend the poor, with which Boston, like all other large cities, abounded. Almost daily her mother lectured her upon her bad taste in the choice of her associates, but Jenny ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... siren, studying ways of bewitchment, of endearment. She became a bewildering revelation to him, amazing him, delighting him. After he had begun to conclude that he knew her she became not one woman, but a score of women: demure, elfin, pensive, childlike, sedate, aloof, laughing—but always with her delight in him unconcealed: the mask she wore always slipping from its place to reveal her eagerness to draw closer ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... what was there." So, one night, she met him quite accidentally on the sea-sands, struck up a little conversation, and begged him in such a pretty way to bring her a spotted shell from the South Sea like the one on his mother's mantel-piece, and looked so simple and childlike in saying it, that our young man very imprudently committed himself by remarking, that, "When people had rich friends to bring them all the world from foreign parts, he never dreamed of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to that," I said to myself; but this time she was not looking even at the brim of my cap. Her eyes, luminous with childlike happiness, searched and photographed each new feature of river-life that skimmed ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all," said Mr. Wilmot. "His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret—I think it is the same with them all—not only Ethel and Richard, who have ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... curiosity was almost childlike in its transparency, but Norgate found himself unable to gratify it. In any case, after his denial of any knowledge of the German language, he could scarcely lay claim to even the most indirect connection ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unnecessary, but as a reason for praying. For prayer is an expression of the filial spirit towards our Father, and the more simply and naturally we approach GOD as children, making our petitions before Him with childlike hearts, the more truly will our prayers be in accordance with that spirit of sonship which is the mind of Christ. At the same time, the knowledge that our Father is wiser as well as greater than we will forbid us to clamour for what ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... reading the words of the Lord: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me"; and with her heart full of them, she lifted her eyes and saw Gibbie. For one moment, with the quick flashing response of the childlike imagination of the Celt, she fancied she saw the Lord himself. Another woman might have made a more serious mistake, and seen there only a child. Often had Janet pondered, as she sat alone on the great mountain, while Robert was with the sheep, or she lay awake by his side at night, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a chair, tossed the offending book on a table, and taking a cup of tea from the hand of her cousin, began to sip it with an air of languid indifference, which sat strangely on her youthful, almost childlike figure. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... party started off from Hampton in high fettle and with a childlike trust in the honesty ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... that the very men or women who would scorn to play a child's game in a childlike spirit, will show the best known form of childish fretfulness and sheer naughtiness in their way of taking a game which is considered to be more on a level with the adult mind, and so rasp their nerves and the nerves of their opponents that ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... at that moment, her eyes had not their monkey-like and ferocious expression, but they were pleading and tender, with all of their sweetest childlike candor. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... negro dropped his wheelbarrow, and lifted a supplicating face and a pair of gnarled hands to the morning sky. His lips moved. One saw that he prayed, trustingly, with a childlike simplicity. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the pale hyacinth, a child of fourteen, was quiet and thoughtful; her great deep blue eyes had a musing look, but the childlike smile still played around her lips: I was not able to blow it away, nor did I wish to ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... but a camel needs no little care, particularly at feeding time, when he is apt to turn spiteful if precedence be given to an animal he does not like. They are marvellously touchy and fastidious creatures—quite childlike in ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... the primitive joys of wonder and childlike delight in simple things. His ideal is the real, not the merely impossible. Unlike most would-be saviours of the race, he seeks not to merge a new humanity into a brand new glittering civilization. He would have us awaken once more to the ancient mysteries and eternal ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... with all the lean, bony energy which has done so much hard work in the world. He was broad-shouldered, long-armed, long-legged, deep-chested, and straight, with sinewy hands and singularly well-shaped fingers. His healthy skin had that mottled look produced by countless freckles upon an almost childlike complexion. The large, grave mouth generally concealed the long teeth objected to by Sora Nanna, and the lips, though even and narrow, were strong rather than thin, and their rare smile was both genial and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... old church in the Marais; or was it after wandering in the dripping Jardin des Plantes, peering at the white skeletons of animals of the already closed museum, and returning home in floods by many and devious trams and 'buses? Ah, no one could enjoy things, and make others enjoy them by sheer childlike lovingness, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... he was still attracted by her, nor did she seem to invite advances from others. He must go away—and he would have to take her with him. It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike ignorance with this Amazonian quality. He had made his arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years, and they departed together. The young fair-haired lawyer came to the stage-coach ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... drink, which, however had not made him idiotic, but which had maddened him into wild and extravagant excitement. Beside him was Blaisette Simon, dressed in a quaint muslin gown which accentuated her childlike and piquante beauty. Her father, easy-going Mess' Simon, looked on smilingly at the orgie around him, and seemed not in the least disturbed when Dominic drew his arms round Blaisette and kissed her repeatedly. She gave an affected little scream ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... all things, and with the moral basis of its action largely undermined, Acton gave the spectacle of a career which was as moving as it was rare. He stood for a spirit of unwavering and even childlike faith united to a passion for scientific inquiry, and a scorn of consequences, which at times made him almost an iconoclast. His whole life was dedicated to one high end, the aim of preaching the need of principles based on the widest induction and the most penetrating thought, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... sound, And Man may her voice, in this being, obey; And though ever he slip on the stony ground, Yet, ever again to the godlike way, To the science of Good though the Wise may be blind, Yet the practice is plain to the childlike mind. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... with this I would mention, that the Lord very graciously gave me, from the very commencement of my divine life, a measure of simplicity and of childlike disposition in spiritual things, so that whilst I was exceedingly ignorant of the Scriptures, and was still from time to time overcome even by outward sins, yet I was enabled to carry most minute matters to the Lord in prayer. And I have found ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... world of fact. When hardship came, when taxation fell upon them with a great blow, when the war took a turn that necessitated imagination for its understanding and faith for its pursuit, these people with childlike simplicity immediately became panic-stricken. Like the similar class in the North, they had measureless faith in talk. Hence for them, as for Horace Greeley and many another, sprang up the notion that if only ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Hampton Court. I should at this moment be glad to share the youthful spirit of the sunken garden which I passed on my way to the famous vine, and in which with certain shapes of sculpture and blossom, I admired the cockerels snipped out of arbor-vitae in the taste of a world more childlike than ours, and at the same time so much older. The Dutch taste of it all, once removed from a French taste, or twice from the Italian, and mostly naturalized to the English air by the good William and Mary (who were ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... The childlike, holy, reverent voice ceased, and Eric rose. One long brotherly kiss he printed on Russell's forehead, and, full of sorrowful forebodings, bade ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... postponed. They who attempted to read the prophecy with accuracy were of opinion that the prophet had intimated that had the nation, even in this its crisis, consented to take him, the prophet, as its sole physician and to obey his prescription with childlike docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the face of the materialist influences that have come into their life with the introduction of Western methods of thought and of business? The most careless traveler has it thrust upon him that here is a people artistic to the tips of their fingers, and with childlike power of idealization, although they have been forced to engage in the fierce warfare of modern business competition. What is it that has kept them unspotted from the world of business? What secret source of spiritual force have ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... not speak at all, but stood motionless, staring in bewildered, pitiable, childlike fashion, and the color ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... fell into a tremendous giggle at this joke, for although our hero's Eskimo was not very perfect, he possessed all an Irishman's capacity for making his meaning understood, more or less; and truly it was a sight to behold the varied expressions of face—the childlike surprise, admiration, curiosity, and something approaching to awe—with which those unsophisticated natives received the explanation of the different ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... "And I shall always be proud of you for it." Her father stared steadfastly at her, and he only lifted his eyebrows, for change of expression, when she went over to where Burnamy stood, and put her hand in his with a certain childlike impetuosity. "And as for the rest," she declared, "everything I have is his; just as everything of his would be mine if I had nothing. Or if he wishes to take me without anything, then he can have me so, and I sha'n't be afraid but we can get along somehow." She added, "I have managed without ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... attempt, but they all retained a certain something, a certain remaining dignity of having struggled against the inevitable, and had acquired insight into some of the deeper things in life, though having lost some of the childlike simplicity which is a characteristic of ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... however, he appeared to be much depressed. His dark, sunken eyes gazed wistfully at Mr. Lanhearne, and he asked to be alone with him for a little while. "I am going to die," he said, with a face full of vague, melancholy fear. The look was so childlike, so like that of an infant soul afraid of some perilous path, that Mr. Lanhearne could not avoid weeping, though ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... miss. But the writing is not provincial. There is Scotch character everywhere: the keenness, intensity, reverence, shaggy humor, sly fun, and just a touch of the intolerance. The somewhat literal regard for Scripture, the awe, and the unquestioning, childlike way of being religious, with the independence of Kirk and Sessions and National Establishments, all belong to the best intelligence of Edinburgh. But the literary felicity, the scholarship, the various reading, the cultivated appreciation of books, men, and systems, while they make us admire—as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... set the stones back in the wall Lest the divided house should fall, And peace from men depart, Hope and the childlike heart. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... reflect the childlike superstitions and lively imagination of his country. He loves the fairies, the dreams of eternal youth, the symbolizing of things of the spirit by lovely things of earth. His plays are poetical, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... refuge; and her ear inclined To comfort; and her thoughts resigned To counsel; her wild hair let brush From off her weeping brows; and shook With many little sobs that took Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs, Long sighs, they sank; and to the 'hush!' Of Joan's gentle chide, she sought Childlike to check them as she ought, Looking up at her infantwise. And Willie, gazing on them both, Shivered with bliss through blood and brain, To see the darling of his troth Like a maternal angel strain The sinful and the sinless child At once on either breast, and there In peace and promise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delightful facility of children, who, after an agony of tears, are soon found laughing or asleep. But the chagrin and vexation of grown-up people are grown-up too; and, however childish in their origin, are not to be laughed or danced or slept away in childlike simple-heartedness. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed, Cities and men he smote from overhead. His deaths delivered, he returned to play Childlike, with childish ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... disobedient to his commands, 'neither regarding,' said he, 'that she is my child, nor fearing me as if I were her father. And I may say to thee, this pride of hers has drawn my love from her. I had thought my age should have been cherished by her childlike duty. I now am resolved to take a wife, and turn her out to whosoever will take her in. Let her beauty be her wedding dower, for me and my ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the little one of whom the doctor had said "that she fretted if he did not come to see her once in a while." And with Doc she was a different being. Her voice softened, her eyes became childlike, and thin tinkles of laughter broke from her as she clung to him, and received certain presents of medicines and picture-books which he had brought for her in a corner ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... I can remember about this delightful, naively cordial man, with the childlike eyes and the childlike laugh, and in the picture my mind preserves of him the memory of his grandeur melts into the charm of his good nature ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... one, then another locality; and being a good fellow who usually won the hearts of his creditors, it was not until after his death that a multitude of small claims came buzzing about his daughter's ears; and it was these as much as anything which had made her accept with childlike insouciance the arrangement of the friends who packed her away to her relatives with ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... also. I doubt if any girl was ever raised as Miss Emily was. She—well, she knew nothing. At fifty she was as childlike and innocent as she was at ten. She had practically never heard of vice. The ugly things, for ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Protestant and Catholic, and in various original treatises by thinkers eminent in the history of the church. A marked influence was exercised upon me by reading sundry lives of the mediaeval saints: even the quaintest of these showed me how, in spite of childlike credulity, most noble lives had been led, well worthy to be pondered ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... laughed, as she laughed at everything, not because she was amused, but because she was happy; this childlike gayety of heart was great ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... With childlike obedience the detective swallowed the draught, which soon took possession of his senses, and he ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... obvious, —in a love of the sea and of the beauty of clouds, in the adventure of death and the yet more amazing adventure of living, in a vital love of colour, whether of the Orient or the drug-shop, in childlike love of melody, and the cool cleansing of rain, in strange faces and old memories. This, in the past, has been poetry, and this will be poetry again. The singer who, out of a full heart, can offer to the world his vision of its ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... last he woke, and his knee he bent In grateful, childlike prayer, And he prayed till an answer of peace was sent, And Faith and Hope as a rainbow bent O'er the clouds ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... transformed to a tractable, humane, and loving disciple. We have seen the wild and bloodthirsty Koord subdued and made as a little child. We have seen the cannibal King Thokambo, of Fiji, turned from his cruelty to a simple, childlike faith, and made to prefer the good of his people to the glory of a powerless sceptre. Whole races, like the Northmen, have been tamed from savagery and made peaceable and earnest followers of Christ. In our own time it has ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... a few words to one of those who stood about him, and this person silently bowed and quitted the hail; then he turned once more to the Maid, standing before him still with a happy and almost childlike ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... little drawing-room, he noticed that she looked pale and careworn, and her limpid, childlike eyes were veiled pathetically with deep, blue shadows. As he looked at her, however, a warm tint dyed her cheeks and her head drooped, while the little smile still lingered about ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... unblent, unreconciled, they war. So in the twofold issue of the strife Mingle the victor's shout, the captives' moan. For all the conquered whom the sword has spared Cling weeping—some unto a brother slain, Some childlike to a nursing father's form, And wail the loved and lost, the while their neck Bows down already 'neath the captive's chain. And lo! the victors, now the fight is done, Goaded by restless hunger, far and wide Range all disordered thro' the town, to ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... be premised that Deadwood had recently chosen a sheriff. He did not look much like a sheriff, for he was small and weak and bald, and most childlike as to expression of countenance. But when I tell you that his name was Alfred, you will know that it was all right. To him the community looked for initiative. It expected him to organise a posse, which would, of course, consist ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... from him she felt as far distant as though he were in another country. She became in this way, as time went on, more silent, graver, and more what her cousins called "old-fashioned"; and though at heart she was far more childlike than they, she went about her work with serious application like one of twice her years. Mrs Greenways did not disapprove of this, and though she lost no occasion of impressing upon Lilac her smallness and uselessness, she ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... speed possible, till they came to the village that startled them. The childlike care-freedom was gone. Light-heartedness was quenched. Apprehension took its place; low tones, no laughter—a look of helpless suffering like the large-eyed wonder in the face of a ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... its foliage, as though with an awning, keeps out the rays of the sun. The boughs produce a coolness, the moist ground flowers of Tyrian hue. {There} the spring is perpetual. In this grove, while Proserpina is amusing herself, and is plucking either violets or white lilies, and while, with childlike eagerness, she is filling her baskets and her bosom, and is striving to outdo {her companions} of the same age in gathering, almost at the same instant she is beheld, beloved, and seized by Pluto;[47] in such great haste is love. The Goddess, affrighted, with lamenting lips calls both her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... old Dick! You have gone a leetle too far. If God can forgive you and me all them things we've done, which he knows about, and other folks don't, you can, or or'to forgive sister Ethie, let her sin be what it may. Ethie was young, Dick, and childlike, and so pretty, too, and I 'most know you aggravated her some, if you talked to her as you feel now; and then, too, Dick, and mother, and all of you, I don't care who says it, or thinks it, it's a big lie! Ethie never went off with a man—never! I know she didn't. She ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... weary. However, a good sleep under the roof of those whom I loved was all the tonic I needed to prepare me for a fair start in the new career, and grandma's assurance, "This be your home so long as you be good," filled me with such gladness that, childlike, I promised to be good always and to do everything that ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... the integrity from foreign invasion of the rights of Chinkie's Flat nodded "Good evening" to Ah San, and walked back across the road to the "Digger's Best," and the Chinamen, with silent, childlike patience, resumed their loads and trotted along after their leader. They disappeared over the hill, and ere darkness descended the glare of their camp fires was casting steady gleams of light upon the dark waters of the still pool beneath ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... element; she had, as a child, mixed so little with children, she had so often yearned for playmates, she was still so childlike. Besides, she was so fond of Cecilia, she had looked forward with innocent delight to the day; and a week before had taken the carriage to the neighbouring town to return with a carefully concealed basket of toys,—dolls, sashes, and picture-books. But somehow or other, she did not feel so ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... character from real life. Miss Cooper writes that when their "family was living on the cliffs of Sorrento a young peasant girl became one of the household,—half nurse, half playfellow to the children. She bore the sweet name of Gelsomina. Simple, innocent, and childlike, yet faithful to duty, Gelsomina was soon in high favor with great and small, and, in charge of the young flock, made one of every family party about the bay." At such times "she was always in gay costume,—light-blue silk jacket with gold lace; a flowing skirt; her dark ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of youth and loveliness such as is rarely seen even in a beauty-abounding land. A form of medium height which would, in later years, develop much of stately grace; a complexion of lily-like fairness; and eyes as deep and brown, as tender and childlike, as if their owner were gazing, ever and always, as infants gaze who see only great, grand wonders, and never ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need and danger, they are by nature peculiarly exposed to treasons and deceptions which astonish but do not ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... swine, and the man who bores out the big foolish giant's eye, and the cap of darkness, and the shoes of swiftness, that were worn later by Jack the Giant-Killer. These fairy tales are the oldest stories in the world, and as they were first made by men who were childlike for their own amusement, so they amuse children still, and also grown-up people who have not forgotten how they once ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... can be persuaded to leave us alone," Lilian replied, hurriedly, using simple words which made her seem childlike, though at the same moment she was nerving herself to heroic effort. "See him, and do what you can, Denzil. I did my utmost, dear. Oh, this cruel chance that brought ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... part of Hawthorne is not attempted in our music (the 2nd movement of the series) which is but an "extended fragment" trying to suggest some of his wilder, fantastical adventures into the half-childlike, half-fairylike phantasmal realms. It may have something to do with the children's excitement on that "frosty Berkshire morning, and the frost imagery on the enchanted hall window" or something to do with "Feathertop," the "Scarecrow," and ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... revealed to us, her tender and lively disposition, her impulsiveness and childlike love of fun and delight in everything on earth. We see in such a passage what her merit really is, the reason of our liking or "partiality" for her. Her pleasure in everything makes everything interesting, and in displaying her feeling without art or disguise she succeeds in giving ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... glorious grace Even of that one face Potent to displace All the towers of Troy Surely shone more clear Once with childlike cheer Than this child's face here Now ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... With childlike incredulity we cry, It cannot be that great career is run, It cannot be but in the eastern sky Again will blaze that mighty world-watch'd sun! Ah! fond deceit, the east is dark and dun, Death's black, impervious cloud is on the skies; Toll the deep bell, and fire the evening gun, Let honest sorrow ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... vulgarize her. Fine surroundings demoralize her. Lodged on the sixth story, rich in the possession of a cuckoo-clock, a canary, half a dozen pots of mignonette, and some bits of cheap furniture in imitation mahogany, she has every virtue and every fault that is charming in woman—childlike gaiety; coquetry; thoughtless generosity; the readiest laugh, the readiest tear, and the warmest heart in the world. Transplant her to the Chaussee d'Antin, instil the taste for diamonds, truffles, and Veuve Clicquot, and you poison her whole ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... thoughts and energies. For a century the people lived self-concentrated, introspective, their minds filled only with thoughts of themselves. If foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in curiously childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew up a nation of provincials (there is no other word for it), with a provincialism which was somewhat modified, but still provincial, in the cities of the Atlantic coast, and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... hide-bound souls, who, in order to get them into their own intellectual pockets, melted down the ingots of the kingdom, and re-cast them in moulds of wretched legalism, borrowed of the Romans who crucified their master. Grand, childlike, heavenly things they must explain, forsooth, after vulgar worldly notions of law and right! But they meant well, seeking to justify the ways of God to men, therefore the curse of the apostle does not fall, I think, upon them. They sought a way out of their difficulties, and thought they had found ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... in rising to her seat without awakening her keeper, she made a gesture of childlike joy which revealed the touching naivete of her nature. But the half-formed smile on her burning lips was quickly suppressed; a thought came to darken that pure brow, and her long blue eyes resumed their sad expression. She gave a sigh and again laid her hands, not without ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... had come in her night blouse, and Liuba, who had long been sleeping under cover of the conversation, curled up into a ball in the large plush armchair. The fresh, freckled face of Liuba had taken on a meek, almost childlike, expression, while the lips, just as they had smiled in sleep, had preserved the light imprint of a radiant, peaceful and tender smile. It was blue and biting in the cabinet from the dense tobacco ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... vain," said the Knight to himself, on hearing this extraordinary proposition. "He doth, ever in his childlike simplicity, say something to confound me. His untutored mind is yet incapable of receiving the mysteries of our holy religion, but, in lieu thereof, perpetually runs after the practical and immediate advantages of powder and guns. Direct the conversation as I may, this target doth ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... inner sanctuary, the glorious realities of faith, hope, and love, which possessed her soul, diffused their mysterious influence over her countenance. Thick braids of soft, brown hair, were braided over her round, childlike forehead: and her dress of some dark, rich color, was in admirable harmony with her peculiar style. Her proportions were small and symmetrical, and it was wonderful to see the serious look of dignity with which she sat in that old crimson chair, knitting away on a comfort, as fast as her little ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... a card what father had, stuck ag'in' the wall." She began to recite, her eyes fixed upon him with childlike gravity. "'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.... Yea, though I walk through the valley of shadows, thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Sally's shoulders! Only to drive that tired look from her eyes, and that patient, divine smile from her lips! I watched her with jealous longing while I lay there, helpless as a fallen tree, and I saw that she grew daily thinner, that the soft redness never left her small, childlike hands, that three fine, nervous wrinkles had appeared between her arched eyebrows. Something was killing her, while I, the man who had sworn before God to cherish her, was but an additional burden on her fragile shoulders. And yet how ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... already, are you? but I will tell you; as you've asked for it, you shall hear it. I won't recall the agony of the past for nothing. I will have the relief of telling it. Oh, how happy I was!"—sinking her voice into a plaintive, childlike manner. "It went like a shot through me when one day he came to me and told me he was ordered to Ireland, and must leave me behind; at Bristol we ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell |
