"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— 235 That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover— Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... toward the headwaters. The roar of the rapids they approached now came up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... that of the master who went into a far country and expected on his home coming to find everything as he left it. But returning he found his servants giving a party. Confusion was rampant. There was fiddling and dancing and the babble of many tongues, so that the voice of the master could not be heard. Though he shouted and beat upon the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Lincoln and his Aide, Halleck, went to Acquia Creek to visit Hooker, to have a peep into his plans, and, of course to babble about them. I hope Hooker will most politely keep his ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... my dear: there's some signifies no more than the babble of the lake down there on the pebbles, and there's others that has a meaning; there's dreams that is but vanity, and there's dreams that is good, and dreams that is bad. Lady Mardykes—heavens be her bed this day! that's his grandmother I mean—was very sharp ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... reader might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Through the babble of many voices in many keys, talk mingling with laughter more or less melodiously subdued, he made his way up the great staircase. As he neared the landing, there sounded the shrill squeak of a violin and a 'cello's deep harmonic growl. His hostess, small, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... door closed quietly. Don Loris' retainers stared at each other. The locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris' retainers began to babble protestingly. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... young grass was irregular, untouched as yet by the mower—as we like it best who love our Madison! A week-old moon hung in the sky—ample light for the first hay-ride of the season that is moving toward Water Babble to the strains of guitar and banjo and boy and girl voices. It's unaccountable that there should be so much music in a sophomore—or maybe that's a fraternity affair—Sigma Chi or Delta Tau or Deke. Or mayhap ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service should thus discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon a rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell from a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... less mysterious part in the romance: that is certain. Jasper, waking, makes experiments on the talk of the old woman, the Lascar and Chinaman in their sleep. He pronounces it "unintelligible," which satisfies him that his own babble, when under opium, must be unintelligible also. He is, presumably, acquainted with the languages of the eastern coast of India, and with Chinese, otherwise, how could he hope to understand the sleepers? He is being watched by the ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... very clear warning of danger. I stepped forward quickly and looked down at the prostrate figure, and the warning gathered emphasis. The sick man's ghastly face was yet more ghastly; his eyes were more sunken, his skin more livid; "his nose was as sharp as a pen," and if he did not "babble of green fields" it was because he seemed to be beyond even that. If it had been a case of disease, I should have said at once that he was dying. He had all the appearance of a man in articulo mortis. Even as it was, feeling ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... House of the Golden Bed and had lain down to sleep when on the breeze from up the valley there came a strangely familiar sound to my upper ear. I sat up, listening. In the dark silence, with no wind to rustle the breadfruit and cocoanut-trees, and only the brook faintly murmuring below, I heard a low babble of voices. No word was distinguishable, not even the language, yet curiously the sound had ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... delight. Nay, and this wit, so little recognised, is the necessary organ of that philosophy which we so much admire. That style is therefore the most perfect, not, as fools say, which is the most natural, for the most natural is the disjointed babble of the chronicler; but which attains the highest degree of elegant and pregnant implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what Germans call Rueckversicherung, or a covering insurance. Having pledged themselves never to leave the Fatherland in the lurch—and the pledge was repeated on many occasions—they were free to babble to French, English and Italian Socialists about the blessings of internationalism, general strikes, and eternal peace. But there is no single instance on record to show that German Socialists considered any other benefits of internationalism, except ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... picture once was shown, In which one man, alone, Upon the ground had thrown A lion fully grown. Much gloried at the sight the rabble. A lion thus rebuked their babble:— 'That you have got the victory there, There is no contradiction. But, gentles, possibly you are The dupes of easy fiction: Had we the art of making pictures, Perhaps our ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind! Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... confer, confabulate, consult; babble, prattle, prate, chatter, gabble, gibber, blather; expatiate, descant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... ravine, bristling with half-burned saplings, and but partially illumined by the moon. The babble of the brook flowing through its hidden ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... suddenly and looked around her. A rosy glow through the trees proclaimed the dawn. The forest was wonderfully still, and there seemed no reason whatever for the sudden awakening. Then a stream of meaningless babble came through the canvas wall of the tent. She sat up instantly, and listened. Plainly, the patient was delirious, and the sound of his delirious babble must have broken through her sleep. Three minutes later she was inside the tent, her brow ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... to such childish tittle-tattle as that she lit her fires with bank-notes, that the number of her guests was so great and so distinguished that, for lack of seats, the marshals of France had to sit upon the floor; gossip and babble that were to cost her dearer than she thought, though she laughed it all away with a shrug of her pretty shoulders at the time. It was concerning one of her six-o'clock suppers that a slander was started which was to be a serious menace to her in ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... seen in London; martial music, marching regiments, with gorgeous generals on horseback, with shining swords; church processions; wedding pageants crowding in and out of superb churches; newspapers, shop-signs, and chatter, all in French, even down to the babble of the small children. And the background of this parade was always the pleasant, light-hued buildings, the majority of them large and of a certain uniformity of aspect, as if they had been made in co-operation, and to look pretty, instead of independently and incongruously, as in England. These ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... way to the door, and Roddy, frowning gravely, sank back into his chair, the long silence was broken by a babble of whispered questions and rapid answers. Even to those who understood no English the pantomime had been sufficiently enlightening. Unobtrusively the secret agents of Alvarez rose from the tables and stole into the night. A half-hour later it ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... beach, knelt down upon the thin sward, and repeated a prayer. Meantime the population gathered; behind them canoe after canoe touched the shore; before them there was a swift, tumultuous hurrying from the villages; presently they were surrounded by a compact, eager, barbaric multitude. The babble of its wonder turned to silence as the priest rose, extended his fat hands, and commenced ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... age. It is the mother of that forced and vague style which seems to have two, nay, many meanings, as well as of that prolix and ponderous style, le stile empese; and of that no less useless bombastic style, and finally of that mode of concealing the most awful poverty of thought under a babble of inexhaustible chatter that resembles a clacking mill and is just as stupefying: one may read for hours together without getting hold of a single clearly defined and definite idea. The Halleschen, afterwards called ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his foe, and cried: "Enough: you owed me one blow, though I died; But be you man or beast or devil abhorred, I yield no further; with my mortal sword I do defy you; and if mortal man May hope against" ... But the Green Knight began A low melodious laugh, like running brooks Whose pebbly babble fills the shadowy nooks Of green-aisled woodlands, when the winds are still. "My friend, we bear each other no ill will. When first I swung my axe, you showed some fear; I owed you that much for your ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... echo died away, a new sound took its place. From afar off came the babble of tiny voices drawing nearer. Anything so gay and charming was never dreamed of before,—half a laugh, half a song, the tones blended into an enchanting peal, like bells on a frolic. Above the old tower the sounds clustered and increased,—then ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... newly-discovered amalgamation process to a knot of merchants, who, with bent brows and eager eyes, were already forming a Company for its adoption. Here floated the latest anecdote of Bolivar; and there a murmur of some new movement of Cochrane's. And then the perpetual babble about 'rising states,' and 'new loans,' and 'enlightened views,' and 'juncture of the two oceans,' and 'liberal principles,' and 'steamboats to Mexico,' and the earnest look which every one had in the room. How ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... she drawled. "I'll gossip about them some time when not so tired. I'll indicate them by numerals. Why should I babble their names in connection with what they called so sacred? I wonder how many like sacred affairs had occurred before. If I tell you the story of the wooing of Number One, Two, Three, and so on, that will answer just ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... frozen seconds, and then all at once Chris became aware as he stood rigid with horror by the boat that the sailors of the Mirabelle had rushed out from the coolness of the shore to stand stiff and appalled beside him. A babble of voices broke out, and one by one the boats were hastily launched, heading back to the ship, leaving Chris shaking and unnerved on the sand. Over the water as brawny backs bent to the oars ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... not fit men to trust with a heap of gold like this, Bucky, and it's you that knows the truth of what I say. They would have the whole thing cut open in a week once they got into some port with their pockets full of sovereigns and their skins full of rum, and their mouths full of babble in the public houses of their wealth and how smart ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... feeling that prompted it may be understood by all who love him and who stand every other music, so long as it is real music. Immediately after listening to "Tristan and Isolda" all other operas seem away from the point, to be concerned with the secondary issues of life, to babble without fervour or directness of unessential matters. This does not mean that "Tristan" is greater than "Don Giovanni" or the "Matthew" Passion—for it is not—but that it speaks to each of us in ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time to teach them the true ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... no more, Give this ignorant babble o'er, Nor with little female pride Things above your sense deride. Why this foolish under-rating Of my first attempts at Latin? Know you not each thing we prize Does from small beginnings rise? 'Twas the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars, Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars; As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks, Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks; As each if oft'nest eloquent of what He hates or covets, but possesses not; As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste; Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste; Ladies of logic; devotees of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... do I babble of bitter chills— And icy trees—and snowy fallows? Why do I shudder as twilight spills A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows The moor with her wicked flame? Why do the gibbering croons of the hag In her hut by the wood Go muttering, muttering in my blood— Till the hoot ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... Babble babili. Babe infaneto. Baboon paviano. Baby infaneto. Bachelor frauxlo. Back (of body) dorso. Back (reverse side) posta flanko. Back (behind) poste. Backbite kalumnii. Backbone spino. Backslider ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... "Enough of this babble," cried the Orsini, rudely. "Tell me, old lord; just as I entered, I saw an old friend (one of your former mercenaries) quit the palace—may I crave ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... far gone to pour forth the babble of good plump grandmothers; she adored the child in secret with the bashfulness of a young girl, without knowing how to fondle him. Sometimes she took him on her knees, and gazed at him for a long time with her pale eyes. When the little one, frightened by her mute white visage, began to ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of light as was the governor's mansion house that night I never saw, and I heard the music of violins, and hautboys, and viola da gambas coming from within, and a silvery babble of women's tongues, with a deeper undertone of men's, and the tread of dancing feet, and the stamping of horses outside, with the whoas of the negro boys in attendance, and through the broad gleam of the moonlight ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no customers ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "A great deal of trouble just for a little empty babble. Often not one word worth remembering, and a general sense of having been full of ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ten guineas per night—five hundred for the season—is the price exacted for a first-rate opera-box; and as the exclusives usually arrive at the close of the opera, or, if earlier, keep up a perpetual babble during its performance, they clearly come for the dancing.—"On voit l'opera, et l'on ecoute le ballet," used to be said of the Academie de Musique. But it might be asserted now, with fully as much truth, of the Queen's Theatre, where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... than mind imaginers can say of their 'prime mover.' They tell us mind moves matter; but none save the third sighted among them ever saw mind, and if they never saw mind, they never could have seen matter pushed about by it. They babble about mind, but nowhere does mind exist save in their mind; that is to say, nowhere but nowhere. Ask these broad-day dreamers where mind is minus body? and very cutely they answer, body is the mind, and mind is ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... for Monsieur Ude to sit, And prate about the mundane spit, And babble of Cook's track— He'd roast the leather off his toes, Ere he would trudge thro' polar snows, To plant ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... eight o'clock train from Winchester. To-morrow evening I shall be sitting on a form in a big bare class-room, listening to the babble of a lot of girls pretending to learn ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... ballads, love-songs, ditties, and dirges, such as are still chanted by the peasants of Greece and Italy. Thus in Syracuse and the other towns of the coast, Theocritus would have always before his eyes the spectacle of refined and luxurious manners, and always in his ears the babble of the Dorian women, while he had only to pass the gates, and wander through the fens of Lysimeleia, by the brackish mere, or ride into the hills, to find himself in the golden world of pastoral. Thinking of his early years, and of the education that nature ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... women—were surging, bustling, and pacing up and down. Gaslights glared from butchers' stalls, illuminating the lumps of flesh to splotches of orange and vermilion, like the wild colouring of Turner's later pictures, whilst the purl and babble of tongues of every pitch and mood was to this human wild-wood what the ripple of a brook is ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... were like a God's, Have we not made ourself the sacrifice? You are bold indeed: we are not talked to thus: Yet will we say for children, would they grew Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well: But children die; and let me tell you, girl, Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die; They with the sun and moon renew their light For ever, blessing those that look on them. Children—that men may pluck them from our hearts, Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves— O—children—there ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... unaccustomed to anything stronger than the "crystal spring," was sitting upright in the bed, perfectly delirious. His hair had been rubbed up, and stood out like so many needles of iron gray. He did not (like Falstaff) "babble of green fields," but of the "watery Neptune." "I soon found out where I was," he cried out to me, laughing; and then he went wandering on, his words taking flight into regions where no one could follow. Charles Lamb has commemorated this immersion of his old friend, in his (Elia) ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... The babble continued. It all bore upon Maisie. Sometimes Dick lectured at length on his craft, then he cursed himself for his folly in being enslaved. He pleaded to Maisie for a kiss—only one kiss—before she went away, and called to her to come back from Vitry-sur-Marne, if she would; but ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... money to buy that one. Maybe he could buy a medium-sized one, but not that. All of them kept a repellent manner for any passing boy who might be selfishly moved to join them. The spendthrift let them babble, preserving a rather grim silence. The whale of a melon was indeed a noble growth, and its price was thirty-five cents. The announcement of this caused a solemn hush to fall upon the sycophants; a hush broken by the cool, masterful ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... loneliness as long as he could, though he found it hard not to talk when he had so much to say. And feeling, at last, that he was in danger of choking over the babble that surged up from within him, Daddy Longlegs decided that he would go and call on Rusty Wren, who lived in the cherry tree ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... The babble continued, but diminished gradually in volume. Through the trees, as I waited, I caught a glimpse of the sea. I wished I was out on the Cob, where beyond these voices there was peace. My head was beginning to ache, and I felt faint for want ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... a little further this "babble of green fields" and of bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting, the great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents and composes one. Nature, in her actual aspect, does not furnish ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was. "Stands well; has plenty of room for his oats behind the girth. Not so much in the way of shoulders," and so on. And so her eyes asked: "Is this man trustworthy in money matters; is he likely to try to play the lover; is he likely to let his women be troublesome? Is he, above all, likely to babble about ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... one he could kill for her that day —a little joke at the expense of the abbots. With the exception of the potentates among the high clergy with whom Madame Imperia managed to accommodate her little tempers, she ruled everyone with a high hand in virtue of her pretty babble and enchanting ways, which enthralled the most virtuous and the most unimpressionable. Thus she lived beloved and respected, quite as much as the real ladies and princesses, and was called Madame, concerning ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Catholic pulpits as heretics and children of the devil. They were still forbidden to honour the memory of Hus. They were still forbidden to print books without the consent of the Archbishop. But the King snapped them short. He told the estates to end their babble, and again closed ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rather shocked Mrs. Grier; but though the guest scarcely listened, the little sharp babble of talk was kept up, until they went ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... something notable. Augustus, when he realized that his fate was sealed, and his night's lodging settled, wisely made the best of things, and listened, with a languorous air of complete comprehension, to the incoherent babble concerning pigs and heroes, moles and bonfires, which served Harold for a self-sung lullaby. Yet it may be doubted whether Augustus was one of those rare fellows who ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... is a year old, now (the season fit) into the Field, and let him range, [obediently.] If he wantonly babble or causelesly open, correct him by biting soundly the Roots of his Ears, or Lashing. Assoon as you find he approaches the Haunt of the Partridge, known by his Whining, and willing, but not daring, to open, speak and bid him, Take heed: If notwithstanding ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... in actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general instructions ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... There was a babble of voices outside and a rattle and creak of gates. Malcolm crept to the one window which the office held (he guessed it was here that Cherry had written his "statement"), and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... was grimly interested. So this was the way men talked while waiting to hear a fellow-creature sentenced to death! It was worth knowing. And this was what the newspaper men would call a low buzz—an expectant hush—this animated babble! Yet the air was charged with emotion, suppressed perhaps, but none the less distinguishable in every voice. Within earshot a perspiring young pressman was informing his friends that to come there comfortably you should ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... answered the boy, and turning within Arden's clasp, began to babble of London streets and the Triple Tun. The claw-like hands had dragged themselves from Nevil's hold, and the spirit could be no longer caught by the voice of authority, but wandered where ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... friend was in the melancholy condition of those in whom the principle of animal life has unfortunately survived that of mental intelligence. He gazed a moment at me, but then seemed insensible of my presence, and went on—he, once the most courteous and well-bred—to babble unintelligible but violent reproaches against his niece and servant, because he himself had dropped a teacup in attempting to place it on a table at his elbow. His eyes caught a momentary fire ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Athos, with his usual careless generosity, giving him his own, "and be a good lad. Remember, if you talk, if you babble, if you get drunk, you risk your master's head, who has so much confidence in your fidelity, and who answers for you. But remember, also, that if by your fault any evil happens to d'Artagnan, I will find you, wherever you may be, for the purpose ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Germain bent over her. She was sleeping. She had fallen back, overcome, stricken down, as it were, by slumber, as children are who sleep before they cease to babble. ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... them all enemies. She had sat tense and averted, seeing the general greenery, feeling that the cool flowing air might be great happiness, conscious of each form and each voice, of the insincerity of the exclamations and the babble of conversation that struggled above the noise of their going, half seeing Pastor Lahmann opposite to her, a little insincerely smiling man in an alpaca suit and a soft felt hat. She got down the steps ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... that, in his old days at least, he loved strong soups, hot spicy meats;—finding, I suppose, a kind of stimulant in them, as others do in wine; a sudden renewal of strength, which might be very tempting to him. There has been a great deal of unwise babble on this subject, which I find no reason to believe, except as just said: In the fall of this year, as usual, perhaps rather later than usual,—not till November 8th (for what reason so delaying, Marwitz told us already),—he withdrew ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... have leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour, mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... John, "I guessed by thy insolent babble thou wert no true lover of the longbow, and I see thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merry ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the princes, his brothers. At the Montespan chateau, I admit, he would have learned to ride an unbroken horse, as well as to shoot hares, partridges, and big game; he would also have learned to talk loud, to use bad language, to babble about his pedigree, while ignorant of its history or its crest; in fine, he would have learned to despise his mother, and probably to hate her. Educated under my eyes, almost on the King's lap, he soon learned the customs of the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... if the British climate had been the latest discovery of science. As the doors swung to and fro, the stridency of whistles, the throbbing of motor-cars, and the hoarse cries of inhabitants of box seats mingled strangely with the delicate babble of the interior. Then, lo! as by magic, the foyer was empty save for the denizens of the hotel who could produce evidence of identity. It had been proved to demonstration, for the sixth time that week, that in the metropolis ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... dying hard, and is still vigorous; its glories were in full swing on the dull, gray morning when Moses Ansell took his way through the Ghetto. It was near eleven o'clock, and the throng was thickening momently. The vendors cried their wares in stentorian tones, and the babble of the buyers was like the confused roar of a stormy sea. The dead walls and hoardings were placarded with bills from which the life of the inhabitants could be constructed. Many were in Yiddish, the most hopelessly corrupt and hybrid jargon ever evolved. Even ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to observe it? for Keawe cleared the dish. Kokua saw and heard him, like some strange thing in a dream; there were times when she forgot or doubted, and put her hands to her brow; to know herself doomed and hear her husband babble, seemed ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parlance, will remain the sensation of this year. The clatter of the presses has been worthy of the tonnage, of the preliminary paeans of triumph round that vanished hull, of the reckless statements, and elaborate descriptions of its ornate splendour. A great babble of news (and what sort of news too, good heavens!) and eager comment has arisen around this catastrophe, though it seems to me that a less strident note would have been more becoming in the presence of so many victims left struggling on the sea, of lives miserably ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... him he could almost hear the rustle of the dry undergrowth, parched by the past fortnight of exceptionally hot weather; but, above all, rose the eternal babble of the rapids. High in air, a vulture wheeled its untiring spirals. At sight of it he frowned. It reminded him of the Pauillac, now wrecked far beyond the horizon, where the Horde had trapped him. He shuddered, for ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... highly amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... by some superior power; And, though not mortal, yet a cold shuddering dew Dips me all o'er, as when the wrath of Jove Speaks thunder and the chains of Erebus To some of Saturn's crew. I must dissemble, And try her yet more strongly.—Come, no more! This is mere moral babble, and direct Against the canon laws of our foundation. I must not suffer this; yet 't is but the lees And settlings of a melancholy blood. But this will cure all straight; one sip of this Will bathe ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... youth with Kitty who had clambered roughly into the picture. Blue Bonnet hated him fiercely for a few seconds. Then the rest came up with a babble of voices and exclamations and she resigned herself, with a sigh, to the fact that the gift of silence, being golden, is given to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... as it ran down the hill. And the song of the brook came up into Diamond's ears, and grew and grew and changed with every turn. It seemed to Diamond to be singing the story of its life to him. And so it was. It began with a musical tinkle which changed to a babble and then to a gentle rushing. Sometimes its song would almost cease, and then break out again, tinkle, babble, and rush, all at once. At the bottom of the hill they came to a small river, into which the brook flowed with a muffled but merry sound. Along the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... the tea amid their babble. The Honourable George was shown up a bit later, having done to himself quite all I thought he might in the matter of dress. In spite of serious discrepancies in his attire, however, I saw that Mrs. Effie meant to lionize ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... travail of maturing destiny went on—a work not of revolutions with their passionate levity of action and their shifting impulses—but of peace. What it needed was not the conflicting aspirations of a people, but a will strong and one: it wanted not the babble of many voices, but a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the discovery of the dead and the wounded hound. Then followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and the hunted ones were making ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... grew into a whisper, from a whisper into a babble of suppressed talk, and finally somebody laughed. Bones stood up, for this was his ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they have no power to hold. In these times had Echo's first fathers liv'd, No woman, but a man, she had been feign'd (Though women yet will want no news to prate); For men (mean men), the scum and dross of all, Will talk and babble of they know not what, Upbraid, deprave, and taunt they care not whom. Surmises pass for sound approved truths; Familiarity and conference, That were the sinews of societies, Are now for underminings only us'd; And novel wits, that love none but ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... And I am sorry, poor hunted rabbit. Never fear, my girl—Chloris has yet to turn distress from her door. How do I know these things? Why, that is easily answered, since all night long in sleep your tongue went over this and that—such a babble as was never heard. The tongue by day may lie, but the tongue by night speaks truth. My women who waited on you did piece its fragments, and came with the whole and told me. Now I have this to say: Stay in this house, and you shall be safer than in your father's. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... great babble of voices, some shrieks, and more confusion, and the guests ran pell-mell down the great stairs and out the castle door. To Peter's dismay, Aunt Jane was not among them. So into the castle he rushed again, calling at the top of his voice, ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... brethren ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... begun. Stars do not take part in the first item of an orchestral concert. There is a convention that they shall be preluded; and Musa was preluded by the overture to Die Meistersinger. In the soft second section of the overture, a most noticeable babble came from a stage-box. "Oh! It's the Foas," muttered Miss Ingate. "What a lot of people are fussing around them!" "Hsh!" frowned Audrey, outraged by the interruption. Madame Foa took about fifty bars in which to settle herself, and Monsieur Foa chattered to people behind him as ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the woodland The peasants talking. Either a woman, A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine, Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets— Large odorous violets—and answers slowly A child's swift babble; or else at noon The labourers come. They rest in the shadow, Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry. Soft speech Provencal under the olives! Like a queen's raiment from days long perished, Breathing aromas of old unremembered Perfumes, and ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fellow has become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, or of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... miles into the heart of the wilderness, another deep glen, shut in by the same sloping heather-covered hills, suddenly opens to the right. There are no cliffs, no overhanging trees, not even a bush, but all along the stream, "with its soft, dark babble," lie heaps and half-circles of stone nearly buried in the turf, and almost hidden by the tall ferns and foxgloves. And this is what we went out for to see! These are the ruins of the Doones' huts. There could not be anything ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... smiling placidly and obviously living over again his youthful days when he also was a sailor lad relating the same kind of stories in the same old way. The girls asked all sorts of questions, and the merry babble was kept up until Mrs Burnside reminded her husband that it was long past the usual time for prayers, and that they had better postpone the narrative until the morrow. A chapter suitable for the occasion was given out, and they read verse and verse about until they reached the end of the lesson. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... eagerly to Lady Cecily's table. Lensley was glad to sit with her: Boltt was glad to be certain of his supper. Lensley enjoyed listening to Cecily's babble because he could always be certain of getting something out of her speech that would just fit into his next novel: Boltt liked his contiguity to members of the governing class. They completely ignored Henry after they ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... of the world that respected him so much; the whole world to him—for to us the limits of the universe are strictly defined by those we know. There is nothing for us outside the babble of praise and blame on familiar lips, and beyond our last acquaintance there lies only a vast chaos; a chaos of laughter and tears which concerns us not; laughter and tears unpleasant, wicked, morbid, contemptible—because heard imperfectly by ears rebellious to strange sounds. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of the pillar of flame came to their ears. There were other sounds as well; the babble of alien voices and ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... imitatively to the voices of other people. It seems to be one form of the random activity that goes with euphoria. The child derives satisfaction not so much from the muscular activity of vocalization as from the sounds that he produces, so that deaf children, who begin to babble much like other children, lag behind them as the months go by, from not deriving this auditory satisfaction from the vocal activity. Though whistling, blowing a horn, shaking a rattle and beating a drum are not native responses, it is clear that the child naturally ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... a long tongue. Besides, he'll see the Westerleys and my other friends in Paradiso, and babble to them." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the wearied, the sweet companion in hours of sorrow or of feasting. To those who come skilled in its language, it can discourse sweetly of all things, and drive away all thoughts that annoy and cares that vex the soul. To those who touch it, not knowing how to draw forth its speech, it will babble strange nonsense, and rave with uncertain moanings. But thy knowledge is born with thee, and so my lyre is thine. Wherefore now let us feed the herds together, and with our care they shall thrive and multiply. There is no ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... hydrant, syringe; garden hose, lawn spray; bhisti^, mussuk^. V. flow, run; meander; gush, pour, spout, roll, jet, well, issue; drop, drip, dribble, plash, spirtle^, trill, trickle, distill, percolate; stream, overflow, inundate, deluge, flow over, splash, swash; guggle^, murmur, babble, bubble, purl, gurgle, sputter, spurt, spray, regurgitate; ooze, flow out &c (egress) 295. rain hard, rain in torrents, rain cats and dogs, rain pitchforks; pour with rain, drizzle, spit, set in; mizzle^. flow into, fall into, open into, drain into; discharge itself, disembogue^. [Cause ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation!—[Tears the letter.] Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie: You would be fingering them, to ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... what do you say?" asked Rand, when he had finished reading the challenge. "After the prowess exhibited by their messenger, do you think we dare accept?" Whereupon there arose a babble of voices in which all sorts of opinions ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... she demanded. He did not reply, but shuffled his feet and cracked his knuckles harder than ever. The music of a waltz floated in to them over the babble of the kitchen, and he turned his head that way as if to listen. As he did so she crept past him, her eyes sparkling with fun from the depths of the bonnet. When he turned back to look at her, she ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in the great silence that the occasional babble of a delirious person emphasizes in an otherwise empty house, began to think of things that must be done. Fortunately there was a telephone in the room. He would not have to leave his patient alone. He called up ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... young chap said sunthin' here, but it was entirely unbeknown to me; though I thought I heard the murmur of his voice makin' a sort of a tinklin' accompinment to my thoughts, sunthin' like the babble of a brook a runnin' along under forest boughs, when the wind with its mighty melody is sweepin' through 'em. Great emotions was sweepin' along with power, and couldn't be stayed. And I went right on, not ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Guicciardini—the toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... House of Commons, grew "jocular upon the cruelties and sufferings almost unparalleled in the world's history," and expressed his belief that the outrages committed by the Turkish troops had been exaggerated, and sneered at the rumor as "coffee-house babble;" while as to the torture of the impalement, which had caused universal anger and disgust, that an Oriental people have their way of executing malefactors, and generally terminated their connection with culprits in ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Company have laid their iron hand on Hythe, and its old-world stillness is already on Bank Holidays and other bleak periods of the passing year broken by the babble of the excursionist. In its characteristically quiet way Hythe has long been known as what is called a watering-place. When I first knew it, it had a Parade, on which were built eight or ten houses, whither in the season came quiet families, with children ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... A babble of talk began and ran the round of the passengers, breaking out among a group of younger people into a ripple of laughter. For a quarter of an hour this went on, then, to the amazement of all on board, the captain, after ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... and children, all kindled into brisk and mirthful expression, by the incidents in the street below. In the balconies that projected along the palace fronts stood groups of ladies, some beautiful, all richly dressed, scattering forth their laughter, shrill, yet sweet, and the musical babble of their voices, to thicken into an airy tumult over the heads ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon—and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... now?" cried Dorothy, as the copper man continued to babble these unmeaning words, which no one could understand at all because they ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was driving stopped, and Nana slid down from the straw, right into Lucia's waiting arms. She was so glad to see her, that she could only babble foolishly. All during her long journey, and her stay in strange villages, she had thought of nothing but Lucia in the hands of the enemy, and she was nearly crazy with relief and joy ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... desired, and in the days that followed, wandering through the lone mountain-land, the sharp sting of life grew blunted and the wandering merged half into a dream. Smoke would become abruptly conscious, to find himself staring at the never-ending hated snow-peaks, his senseless babble still ringing in his ears. And the next he would know, after seeming centuries, was that again he was roused to the sound of his own maunderings. Labiskwee, too, was light-headed most of the time. In the main their ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... cloudless, and as I made the long ascent of the Arkansas Divide, the mountains, gashed by deep canyons, came sweeping down to the valley on my right, and on my left the Foot Hills were crowned with colored fantastic rocks like castles. Everything was buried under a glittering shroud of snow. The babble of the streams was bound by fetters of ice. No branches creaked in the still air. No birds sang. No one passed or met me. There were no cabins near or far. The only sound was the crunch of the snow under Birdie's feet. We came to a river over which some ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... very graciously upon me, and then recommenced the gesticulation and babble of the two. At length she appeared satisfied with the understanding at which they arrived. I was growing uneasy at their prolonged volubility, when Monsieur Pilot pirouetted up ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... The silver babble of the creek, The willow-whisper—the day's end, With murmur of the village street, A ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... their tea, Adele tried over and over again to lead the conversation into a pleasant channel, but all to no purpose. The inmates of the "Prenoms" had to be taught to converse properly before they could do so. Mrs. Soher began to babble in her ordinary way. Her daughter supported her foolish statements. Adele made no remark. Her aunt noticed this, and after a most scornful remark about Mrs. B.'s character, she said to her niece: "Don't you ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... Goodwinii (F. M. Report on the Plants of Babble's Expedition, page 17) propinquam tesqua Australiae centralis ornantem, elegi ut botanicis recordarem gloriam nunquam obliviscendam intrepidi et ingeniosi sed infelicissimi Gulielmi Wills, qui primo terram Australiae continentalem a litore ad litus peragravit, sua morte praecocissima ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... thing happiness? Sit down here: Tell me thine happiest hour. Lady Clarence. I will, if that May make your Grace forget yourself a little. There runs a shallow brook across our field For twenty miles, where the black crow flies five, And doth so bound and babble all the way As if itself were happy. It was May-time, And I was walking with the man I loved. I loved him, but I thought I was not loved. And both were silent, letting the wild brook Speak for us—till he stoop'd and gather'd ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... a plan," exclaimed Nevill. "I don't think De Mora can have got home yet from the palace. I saw him having supper. Suppose I dart back, flutter gracefully round him, babble 'tile talk' a bit—he's a tile expert after my own heart—then casually ask what Arabs he's got staying with him. If Maieddine's in his house it can't be a secret—incidentally I may find out where the fellow comes from and ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... idiot, cease thy loathsome cant! Day-labourer, slave of toil and want! I hate thy babble vain and hollow. Thou art a worm, no child of day: Thy god is Profit—thou wouldst weigh By pounds the Belvidere Apollo. Gain—gain alone to thee is sweet. The marble is a god! ... what of it Thou count'st a pie-dish far above it— A dish wherein to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various |
