"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Teare the patryng coue in the darkeman cace Docked the dell for a coper meke; His watch shall feng a prounces nob-chete, Cyarum, by Salmon, and thou shall pek my jere In thy gan, for my watch it is nace gere For the bene bouse my watch hath a coyn. And thus they babble tyll their thryft is thin I wote not ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... 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 and nurses. For a ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... dropping lightly to the shoulders. Later I saw these comely maidens crouching on the ground in the market-place, and selling their wares, with much glitter of eyes, teeth, and earrings, and a continual babble of bargaining. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... life had I seen Miss Ruth so full of vivacity or girlish charm. Her laughter was like the music of bells; the jest, the kindly word was for every man; and yet sometimes I, at her side, could look deep into those grey-blue eyes to read a truer story there. And in the babble of the talk she would whisper some treasured word to me, or touch my hand with her own, or say, "Jasper, it must be well, it must be well with us!" Of that which lay above in the darkening East, no man spoke ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... memories. It spoke of home and holy influences, of mother love and father's blessing and children's hope and faith. It filled his heart with reverence and his eyes with tears. The babble and chat for an instant were silenced, and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... dream the grey buildings drew nearer, The babble rose louder and the organ's whine clearer, The hurdle came closer, he rushed through its top Like a comet in ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... 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 ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... dreary journey home to Richmond. His hat was on, and the gas turned off. The blind of the window overlooking the alley was not drawn down; and with the light from beneath, which shone over the ceiling of the room, came, in place of the usual babble, only the reduced clatter and quick speech which were the result ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... of excitement in the air as 'Scruff' Mackenzie, a bulky bundle under his arm, threw open the flap of Thling-Tinneh's tent. Children were running about in the open, dragging dry wood to the scene of the potlach, a babble of women's voices was growing in intensity, the young men were consulting in sullen groups, while from the Shaman's lodge rose the eerie sounds ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... in spite of all the calling, no reply would come, and the person would then know that his friend was dead. Think of what this would mean, of the calling which goes on every day from room to room of a house, and then think of that calling extending from pole to pole,—not a noisy babble, but a call audible to him who wants to hear, and absolutely silent to all others. It would be almost like dreamland and ghostland,—not the ghostland cultivated by a heated imagination, but a real communication from a distance, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... asunder,—reckless what else he sheer with it. Simple seemest thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving in that tone of thine, livelier polemical Rabaut. With ineffable serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar, but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a science he has exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible, with their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... him, but he found delays And causes why he should his cabin keep, At length perforce he comes, but naught he says, Or talks like those that babble in their sleep. His shamefacedness to Godfrey plain bewrays His flight, so does his sighs and sadness deep: Whereat amazed, "What chance is this ?" quoth he. "These witchcrafts strange ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to make the playing of his part any the easier. It filled him in fact with a continual fear of giving himself away by doing something he had done before. It was really a most irrational fear; but there it was. Under the circumstances his sustained babble and blink ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... put the following episode down to the months of strain culminating in an intense irritation wrought by the babble of Ali 'Assan's meaningless chatter, and the vileness ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... "Du Kleiner! And she was down on her knees, and somehow her figure had melted into delicious mother-curves, with Bennie's head just fitting into that most gracious one between her shoulder and breast. She cooed to him in a babble of French and German and English, calling him her lee-tel Oscar. Bennie seemed miraculously to understand. Perhaps he was becoming accustomed to having strange ladies ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... sands, numbers scarcely a hundred and a half. The men are fishers, for there is no other occupation to be followed on the sterile rock. Every day also the level sweep of sands is wandered over by the women and children, who seek for cockles in the little pools; the babble of whose voices echoes far through the quiet air, and whose shadows fall long and unbroken on the brown wilderness. Now and then the black-robed figure of a priest, or of one of the brothers dwelling in the monument on the top of the rock, may be seen slowly pacing along the ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... the matter 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
... little blue shoes lying on the carpet, indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared, came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet breathed in ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... command at the beginning of no articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have heard without understanding their ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... The babble of high-toned voices, the quick patter of speech, the sense of hurry, the hyperbolical intimacy and enthusiasm were bewildering to a man who was naturally shy and at that moment mentally tired. Eric commended his soul to his humour and circumambulated the room, two steps at a time, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... proved that Phidias' statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? 'When you have made Athene up there on the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... many mingled voices are swallowed up and stilled, And all the air by seeming with an awful sound is filled, The cry of the Niblung trumpet, as men reach the unwalled space: So whiles in a mighty city, and a many-peopled place, When the rain falls down 'mid the babble, nor ceaseth rattle of wheels, And with din of wedding joy-bells the minster steeple reels, Lo, God sends down his thunder, and all else is hushed as then, And it is as the world's beginning, and ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... in upon our confrontation of human destinies. Hardy is the last of that great line. If we long for sweetness—as we do long for it, and with how poignant a pain!—we must seek it out, like men who rush dusty and irritable from the babble and fever of the town. The rhythm of the earth never enters into their gait; they are like spies among the birds and flowers, like collectors of antique furniture in the haunts of peace. The Georgians snatch ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... stories which he said had been spread abroad about him. I smiled, saying, I admitted it was not true that his veins had been opened. This observation completed the irritation of the monk, who began to babble in a sort of fury. I diverted myself with it at first in silence; then I said to him, that the King, shortly after arriving in Spain; had had the curiosity to open the coffin of Don Carlos, and that I knew from ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... and water, as a well-established preventive against cold. Dyer, 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 ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... "Have hope, O friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard; Much honour shall be thine"; and called the Captain of the Guard, Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith, And he was honoured of the King — the which is salt to Death; And he was son of Daoud Shah, the Reiver of the Plains, And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins; And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could bind, The King would ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... knees, and took my place opposite to him on the other side of the fire; and thus we kept our strange vigil, while slowly above us broke the grim, cold dawn of early spring-time, which even the birds do not brighten with their babble. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... all talking, to their partners, across the table, even to Aunt Ellen. The exhilarating sound of voices rose to a hum, then a concerted babble broken by laughter. It grew animated, it grew sparkling, it grew brilliant. Chrystie, with parted lips and glistening eyes, became as artlessly amusing as she was in the bosom of her family. She was delightful, her frank enjoyment a charming spectacle. Lorry, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... masts, while, on the other, was a sweep of shops, bookstalls, sailors' restaurants and drinking-houses, fruit-sellers, candy-women, and all manner of open-air dealers and pedlers; little children playing, and jumping the rope, and such a babble and bustle as I never saw or heard before; the sun lying along the whole sweep, very hot, and evidently very grateful to those who basked in it. Whenever I passed into the shade, immediately from too warm I became too cold. The sunshine was like hot air; the shade, like the touch of ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thence—the groans of sufferers beneath the hands of the physicians, who were often driven to use what seemed cruel measures to cause the tumours to break—the only chance of recovery for the patient—the shriek of some maddened or delirious patient, or the unintelligible murmur and babble from a multitude of sick. Moreover, they inhaled the pungent fumes of the burning drugs and vinegar which alone made it possible to breathe the atmosphere tainted by so much pestilential sickness. The boys held their own bottles of vinegar to their noses as they stole towards the house, ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... babble coming from everywhere. The timber of the sound was very strange. It held no suggestion of how far away from me the voices might be. There were so many of them I could only think they were scattered about the ship; ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... grass, and on the eglantine swinging in the hedge the dew lies white and brilliant. Out of the happy distance comes a shrill and silvery sound of whetting scythes; and from the near brook-side rings the laughter of merry maids in circle to make cowslipballs and babble of their bachelors. As you walk you are conscious of 'the grace that morning meadows wear,' and mayhap you meet Amaryllis going home to the farm with an apronful of flowers. Rounded is she and buxom, cool-cheeked and vigorous and trim, smelling of rosemary and thyme, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the way I came through. One morning I was just getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... amanuensis," said Thorny, dropping book and pencil one day, after a brief interval of silence, broken only by the whisper of the young leaves overhead and the soft babble of the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... principles of the majority of his contemporaries, you must discredit in his eyes the one authoritative voice of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen; he will never be a man. It is ours, on the other hand, to disregard this babble and chattering of other men better and worse than we are, and to walk straight before us by what light we have. They may be right; but so, before heaven, are we. They may know; but we know also, and by ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guess who. Ever since you discovered that first attempt, ever since we became certain there was a plot going on to clear out every one in succession to the Chobham estates—and that was jolly plain, though the fools of police did babble about no evidence, as if pistol bullets come from nowhere ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... men in the world. The one has his emblem in the chaff, rootless, with no hold, swept out of the threshing-floor by every gust of wind. That the picture of many whose principles lie at the mercy of the babble of tongues round about them, whose rectitude goes at a puff of temptation, like the smoke out of a chimney when the wind blows; who have no will for what is good, but live as it happens. The other type of man has his emblem in the tree, rooted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... country, in some quiet, shady place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the woods more than I—I was born within sound of the sea—down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I can still mix with the throng, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel a, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown of Art with greatest honour wore, How have I seen thy ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... good vestments, in sacrifices, in clouds charged with rain, in full-blown lotuses, and in those stars that bespangle the autumnal firmament. I reside in elephants, in the cow pen, in good seats, and in lakes adorned with full-blown lotuses. I live also in such rivers as babble sweetly in their course, melodious with the music of cranes, having banks adorned with rows of diverse trees, and restored to by Brahmanas and ascetics and others crowned with success. I always reside in those rivers also that have deep and large volumes of rolling waters rendered turbid ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... letter of New York gossip published in the New York Star, called "Bab's Babble." Edward had read it, and saw the possibility of syndicating this item as a woman's letter from New York. He instinctively realized that women all over the country would read it. He sought out the author, made ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... doings of the day from the four corners of the world, the tales of love and death, of fire and flood, of strife and pestilence, and under eight thousand miles of shivering sea, whispers the babble ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... was rising in thick columns, part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires, and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground, kept up an incessant babble—at intervals varying their talk with savage whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of Peace— Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... than to the disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man's narrow-minded view of woman's dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the public gaze-command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley, the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a genius!" observed Staniford at his first opportunity with Dunham. "I knew there must be something the matter. Of course she's going out to school her voice; and she hasn't strained it in idle babble about her own affairs! I must say that Lu—Miss Blood's power of holding her tongue commands my homage. Was it her little coup to wait till we got into that hopeless hobble before she ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... now in London's gabble Memory's magic tricks the senses! Plain I hear the streamlet babble, Smell the tar on ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... human bleat. We narrow or widen or check or stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the tongue, the teeth, and thus articulate, or break into joints, the even current of sound. The sound varies with the degree and kind of interruption, as the "babble" of the brook with the shape and size of its impediments,—pebbles, or rocks, or dams. To whisper is to articulate without bleating, or vocalizing; to coo as babies do is to bleat or vocalize without articulating. Machines are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to say a word of what was nearest to all our hearts. But if we had been embarrassed on the journey, all our memory of it vanished for the moment in the deeper embarrassment of the reception which Brunow's babble had prepared for us. His prophecy of what would happen was fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. The platform of the terminus swarmed with people of every nationality known to London, and everybody there present seemed crazy with excitement. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... home in the chaise. It was her fear lest some one may be hurt, but she really has no excuse. She talked quite wild as she came to— I mean of you and Arthur Wynne—just mere babble. And, O Hugh! I am a drivelling old maid, and have taught you all manner of nonsense, and now I have got you into trouble. Don't let him kill you, Hugh. Cannot it be stopped? I told Darthea to hold her tongue, and I am so miserable, Hugh; and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... with their eyes for an opening. Lee and the others mastered their surprise at the interruption, and then began to babble until Burrell turned from the gambler and threw up his arm ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... from the neighborhood of the door had cut into the babble like a knife into butter; a rough, rasping voice, loud and compelling, which caused the conversation of the members of the ensemble to cease on the instant. Only Mr Saltzburg, now in a perfect frenzy of musicianly fervor, continued to ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... substratum of frost, and among these migratory robins and high-holders were feeding. The brook beyond was running full from the melting of the snow in the mountains, and its hoarse murmur was the bass in the musical babble and tinkle of smaller rills hastening toward it on either side. Thus in all directions the scene was lighted up with the glint and sparkle of water. The rays of the sun idealized even the muddy road, of which a glimpse ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... a low, gurgling sound, and made up his mind to babble a few words about the caverns; but his throat was dry, and his tongue ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... being unable to contain himself for pain. The author goes on to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child, and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk, and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her. I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams; it gnawed me like a vulture. A ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hand to restrain her toothless babble. Nur-el-Din had stirred and was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Then she caught sight of Desmond and scrambled rather unsteadily ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... the hills among And babble on in glee; For love brought back the soul of song Beneath the Chestnut Tree;— Brought back, while moonlit breezes blew The sweetest flower that ever grew, ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... Catholics had pretended that the phenomenal bread and wine were changed into the phenomenal flesh and blood, this objection would have been legitimate and irresistible; but as it is, it is mere sensual babble. The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by derivation only from an infallible decision of the Church. Fairly undermine ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... physicist, unable to share amusement, wrote: "It is sad to see a municipality giving credence to the babble of the vulgar in a protocol, and to see authentic testimonies to an ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... realize how a person who is thoughtful and, nevertheless, knows nothing or wishes to know nothing of God, can endure giving a despised and tedious life, a life which is fleeting as a stream, as a sleep, even as a blade of grass that soon withers; we spend our years as in a babble ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... be a kinship between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song is the "babble and tinkle of water running ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... extreme dreariness to me, poor little boy, of perching on those uncomfortable, old-fashioned, grown-up seats, too high for my little legs, too wide for my short thighs, so that I sat backless above and dangling below. What had I to do with those grown-up sermons? Men's talk is babble to a child, as much as children's to a man. The wind that blew past my ears meant as much, and sounded better. Or what were the prayers to me, or the singing? This perfunctory, formal early piety of mine had much influence, long afterward, by natural reaction. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the straw-built fire, And as it blazes high and higher, Lightly leap its lucky crest. A welcome heir with frolic face Shall his jovial sire embrace, And kiss him hard and pull him by the ears; While o'er the cradle the good grand-sire bent Will babble with the babe in equal merriment, And feel no more his weight ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... with considerable dexterity. He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients. This essential condition Lee, hypocrite and knave as he was, strictly fulfilled; and no inducement could, I think, have prevailed upon him to betray ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... and grapes piled in barrows and barrels scented the air, as it scents the memory still. The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-lantern impressions of a stranger—memories of dazzling, dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them, became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as snails. But far sweeter to me than the fragrance ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... "Babble on with this Norseman. I am tired," replied Jomar, and leaving the fire, he rolled himself in a bear-skin, lay down on the floor, and in ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... the eye could reach, a thin stream of white and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare legs, were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of soothing patience, of angry threatening, marked their slow progress ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... are greening overhead, And flowers adorn each mossy bed; The waters babble as they run— One thing is lacking, only one: If Mary were but here to-day, I would believe your charming ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... mechanically on the ripples, and had allowed his mind to be hushed into complete vacuity by the delicate babble of the water over the pebbles, when suddenly a flash of colour seemed to grow upon his consciousness, and he saw a man and woman walking together down the very path that led to the cave where he had been dreaming. He placed his hand to his forehead and tried to think. It seemed as though his heart ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... up-stream, not already sound asleep, sat up to listen. War-chief or medicine-man, he had a voice that dinned upon the ear of night and dominated all other sounds, from guttural grunt of assent to frantic yell of applause, as the roar of Niagara in the Cave of the Winds drowns the futile babble of the guides. Once in early boyhood Geordie had heard an Indian orator of whom his father and fellow-officers spoke ever in honor and esteem—a chief whose people wellnigh worshipped him—"Rolling-Thunder-in-the-Mountains," they called him ("Hin-Mato-Iya-Latkit," in their weird dialect). ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... Emperor's habit of speaking and writing of "my navy." It is said that the other states of Germany have borne taxation to build the fleet, and that it is no more the Emperor's than that of the King of Bavaria, or of Wuertemberg, or of Saxony. This is the petty, pin-pricking babble of boarding-school girls, or of those official supernumeraries who have turned sour in their retirement. Even the honest democrat is made indignant. If the German navy is not the work of William the Second, then its parentage is far to seek; ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... his shoulder to his own party. There was a babble of answer, two or three of the men raising their voices above ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... appliances is knowledge of electrical phenomena—not metaphysical talk about the electrical essence. And what will lead to the science and art of Human Engineering is knowledge of time-binding phenomena—not vain babble about an essence of time-binding power. There is no mystery about the word time-binding. Some descriptive term was necessary to indicate that human capacity which discriminates human beings from animals and marks man as man. For that use—the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... he was. The feeling of imprisonment was no greater than he had felt on the endless, cheerless streets. He laid himself on the bench that ran along a side wall, and, closing his eyes, listened to the babble of the clear stream and the thunder of the "drive" on its journey. How the logs hurried and jostled! crushing, whirling, ducking, with the merry lads leaping about them with shouts and laughter. Suddenly he ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... CHRYSANTHUS. All mere babble. They are but two shining orbs Placed in heaven, and there commanded To obey fixed laws of motion Which thy mind need not embarrass. How can these be called the gods— Gods adulterers and assassins! Gods who pride themselves for thefts, And a thousand forms of badness, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the moment that the bank doors were closed that Phebe turned into Whitefriars Road. She had taken a train from Upchurch, leaving her father to return home alone with the empty wagon. It was a strange sight which met her. The usually quiet street was thronged from end to end, and the babble of many voices made all sounds indistinct. Even on the outskirts of the crowd there were men, some pale and some red with anxiety, struggling with elbows and shoulders to make their way through to the bank, in the vain hope that it would not be too late. A ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... of moisture in the underwoods, rills had begun to babble; on the hazel rods leaves fluttered pathetically, the branches of the plane trees hung out like plumes, their drooping leaves ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... grand life of the soul here subsists, while throughout the peninsula foreign dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or academical inertia reduces man to the system of the antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the babble of sonnets. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... passively, but when he offered her his arm, merely shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air and water, each seemed in better health and had more of the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and scandal fills the air; It makes a sober person's head go round, At these assemblies, just to hear the sound Of so much gab, with not a word to say; And as a learned man remarked one day Most aptly, 'tis the Tower of Babylon, Where all, beyond all limit, babble on. And just to tell you how ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... 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
... allowed to die. This was, however, impossible; but Eos, pitying his unhappy condition, exerted her divine power, and changed him into a grasshopper, which is, as it were, all voice, and whose monotonous, ceaseless chirpings may not inaptly be compared to the meaningless babble of extreme ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... questions only with shrugged shoulders and lifted eyebrows; but when we made them realize that we were Americans they changed. All were ready enough to talk then; they crowded about us, gesticulating and interrupting one another. From the babble we gathered that the German skirmishers, coming in the strength of one company, had found an English cavalry squad in the town. The English had swapped a few volleys with them, then had fallen back toward the river in ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... her wings to cleave the air, swift-foot she treads the earth: 180 A monster dread and huge, on whom so many as there lie The feathers, under each there lurks, O strange! a watchful eye; And there wag tongues, and babble mouths, and hearkening ears upstand As many: all a-dusk by night she flies 'twixt sky and land Loud clattering, never shutting eye in rest of slumber sweet. By day she keepeth watch high-set on houses of the street, Or on the towers aloft she sits for mighty cities' fear! And lies ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... have shared Audrey's doubts as to whether poetry was a true and honest thing. It was not till Gordon won the Cup Steeplechase for Major Baker in 1868 that he became really popular, and probably there were many who felt that to steer Babbler to the winning- post was a finer achievement than 'to babble ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't help me—the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the conversation was too deep for him. After opening in the conventional 'judge-then-placed-the-black-cap-on-his-head' manner, his assailant had suddenly begun to babble lightly of sporting literature. He began to entertain doubts of the Headmaster's sanity. It would not have added greatly to his mystification if the Head had gone on to insist that he was the Emperor of Peru, and worked ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... I couldn't get much out of Marg. She used to babble everything. But what little she told me made up in—in shock for what it lacked ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... him, and born as it were in his breast at that instant. He had an impulse, never felt before, to go down on his knees where the child lay, to take it in his arms, to draw it to him, to fondle it, to call it his own, and to pour over it the inarticulate babble of pain and love that was bursting from his tongue. But some one was kneeling there already, and in his jealous longing he realised that his passionate sorrow could ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... broke. If he had any hope that the boastful promises of his friends would be fulfilled by a rescue, that hope died as he looked down on the set, grim faces, on the sinister ring of steel. His nerve then deserted him completely and he began to babble. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... events of a clashing world, repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... not, idly sighing, 'Destiny is mightiest,' Sesamum holds oil in plenty, but it yieldeth none unpressed. Ah! it is the Coward's babble, 'Fortune taketh, Fortune gave;' Fortune! rate her like a master, and she serves ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... nights or so in cramming themselves with Greek and Latin, and in filling their heads with the indiscriminate plunder of all the old rubbish which lies scattered in books. They always seem intoxicated with their own knowledge, and for all merit are rich in importunate babble. Unskilful in everything, void of common sense, and full of absurdity and impertinence, they decry ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... with Anton. Evans, P.O., was imparting confidences in heavy whispers. Pat' Keohane had grown intensely Irish and desirous of political argument, whilst Clissold sat with a constant expansive smile and punctuated the babble of conversation with an occasional 'Whoop' of delight or disjointed witticism. Other bright-eyed individuals merely reached the capacity to enjoy that which under ordinary circumstances might have passed without evoking ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass; and coffers ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... handwriting," exclaimed Evelyn, and then there ensued such a babble of wonder and delight and excited speculation as to its contents that Lucile was finally obliged to shout, "If you will only sit down, girls. I'll see what's inside, and please stop making such an unearthly noise—we'll have the reserves ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... great many of us who call ourselves Christians are not Christians in the sense of having Christ's will for our absolute law, and keeping our own will entirely in subordination thereto. As is the will, so is the man, and whoever does not bow himself absolutely, and hush all the babble of his own inclinations and tastes and decisions, in order that that great Voice may speak, has small chance of ever walking in the paths of righteousness, or finding that his ways ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was beginning to ramble and babble incoherently, her memories of her own and the experiences of others all confused in her mind. When she had about finished a story about how one of the slave women, "bust de skull" of the head of her marster,'" 'cause she was nussin a sick ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... to me about the club dances at home, and how they was going to have better music this year, and how the assembly hall had been done over in a perfectly dandy colour scheme by the committee she was on, and a lot of girlish babble that took up much ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... like an honest woman, show thyself to thy worshippers, who are worn with regretting thee all these thirteen years. Hush the noise of battle, be a true Lysimacha to us.(1) Put an end to this tittle-tattle, to this idle babble, that set us defying one another. Cause the Greeks once more to taste the pleasant beverage of friendship and temper all hearts with the gentle feeling of forgiveness. Make excellent commodities flow to our ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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
... nothing, and to his dying-day would have taken a farthing from a dunghil with his teeth; therefore as he grew up, he grew like a honey-comb. He dy'd worth the Lord knows what, all ready money. But to the matter; I have eaten a dog's tongue and dare speak truth: He had a foul mouth, was all babble; a very make-bate, not a man. His brother was a brave fellow, a friend to his friends, of an open hand, and kept a full table: He did not order his affairs so well at first as he might have done; but the first vintage made him up again; for he sold what wine he would; and what kept ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... "She's a thousand times nicer. She is so quiet when there are people around that it looks as though she were bashful, but she really isn't a bit. She just never says anything unless it's worth saying, and I wish you could see her look at me when I babble on." ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... a time when this youth went out into the world. He left his flocks and herds, with his lord's permission, and went down the long road to the south, past great cities where men lived in luxury and ease and other men toiled and sweated that this might be. He saw many strange faces, heard the babble of many tongues; and it seemed to him that each face was seeking for a thing which had no name, and each tongue was calling for what might not be found. And after a while the youth knew that he too was seeking what ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... and binds you for weary days and nights,—in which life hovers doubtfully, and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is astonishing how disease clips a man from the artificialities of the world! Lying lonely upon his bed, moaning, writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the universe of souls by only natural bonds. The factitious ties of wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... silence, against which her husband's babble of optimism played like heat-lightning on ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... meseemed I loved him well. So we fared for a while and were fain, till he set down my feet on the grass, And kissed me and stood up himself, and away through the wood did he pass. And then came back the she-wolf and with her I played and was fain. Lo the first thing I remember: wilt thou have me babble again?" ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... forth a babble of lamentations, wringing her hands, and rubbing her lips together. She was a woman passed of thirty, but thin still and fair like her brother in the face, for she was ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... frightened, even if it had seemed wholly real. He knelt before her, and his lips moved, but, as in a dream, silently. All the familiar music of the world went on—the bird-songs, the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the rumour of the village. They all went on—there was no pause, no hush, no change—nothing to startle her—only, somehow, they seemed all to draw together, to become a single sound. All the sounds ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... distracting babble one sonorous voice rose insistently. Laughter and applause broke in upon it occasionally. There was a din in that corner of the lobby that attracted many of the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... of 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 ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Jovannic could only babble protestingly. "She she" he began in a flustered indignation. Captain Hahn laughed again. He had the advantage of the single mind over the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... life in Detroit. Children played about, brown Indian babies, grave-faced even in their play, vivacious French little ones calling to each other in shrill patois, laughing and tumbling and climbing. Had she once been wild and merry like them? Then Pani would babble of the past and stroke the soft curls and call her "little one." What ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... particular coach began presently to emerge a fluttering, exclaiming stream of humanity—at first mostly feminine. They hovered there upon the cindery path and lifted their faces to watch for others yet to come, and the babble of their voices could be, heard ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... believe it," said Bevis; "you are babbling, Brook. My mamma says you babble—it is because you are so old. I am sure I was ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... vanity, and love of pleasure; his head without habits of activity or principles of judgment, a whirlpool where fantasies and hallucinations and 'fragments of science' were chaotically jumbled to and fro. But he could babble college-latin; and talk with a trenchant tone about the 'revolutions of Philosophy.' Such accomplishments procured him pardon from his parents: the precentorial spirit of his father was more than reconciled on discovering that Daniel could also preach and play upon the organ. The good old people ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... it was that my assertion and brag were true. With reticence and modesty present, I could never have dared tell Scotty my small-boat estimate of him. But it is ever the way of John Barleycorn to loosen the tongue and babble the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... moment it could not, however, be said with any truth that it was merry, but merely that its inhabitants made desperate endeavour not to appear crushed under their catastrophe. Surrounded as he was now with a babble of tongues and shrill mechanical repartee, Yeovil's mind went back to the book and its account of a theatre audience in the Turkish days of Bulgaria, with its light and laughing crowd of critics and spectators. Bulgaria! The ...
— When William Came • Saki
... these addresses adjure you, thinkers, scholars, and authors who are still worthy of this name! Your laments over the general shallowness, thoughtlessness, and superficiality, over self-conceit and inexhaustible babble, over the contempt for seriousness and profundity in all classes, may be true, even as they actually are. Yet what class is it, pray, that has educated all these classes, that has transformed everything ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... quivering heat of her breath. An indolent, dark-skinned race, turbaned and scantly clothed, move through the meadows, splash in the river, and rest beneath the palm-trees, which meet in graceful clusters here and there, as if striving to get beneath one another's shadow. Dirty villages swarm and babble ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... glad to get away from the babble of sound, and they went down the first set of steps and joined the procession that was picking its way over the ties toward ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... With a snarl the Colonel stood up. "You forget yourself. I am speaking. A truce to this fooling. Mademoiselle"—he turned again on the girl—"we have other things to do beside babble of love. Call it spying if you will, but we want information, and you can help us to get it—must help ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... incomprehensible to the man of realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The profoundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular explanations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude that have swarmed into the Temples,—being fully up to the level of their capacity. Catholicism was a vital truth in its earliest ages, but it became obsolete, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... said nothing. Nor have we, as a rule, far to go to discover these others. They are in us and of us; they wait for us to address them. They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence. Amid the noise and babble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real life; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfied sisters, they will often be far more simple, and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... many venomous and contemptuous words from him. Seryozhka sets to work with vexation, with anger. He is lazy. He has hardly described the circle when he is already itching to go up to the village to drink tea, lounge about, and babble. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... she said, in a low voice, whose quality fended him from her almost as much as the conditional look she gave him. The excited babble of the sick woman overhead, mixed with Mrs. Newton's nasal attempts to quiet her, broke in ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... out and joined the group. He stood near Ferguson, mingling his voice with the others. For a little time the talk flowed easily and much laughter rose. Then suddenly above the good natured babble came a harsh word. Instantly the other voices ceased, and the men of the group centered their glances upon the range boss, for the harsh word had come from him. He had been talking to a man named Tucson and it was to the latter that he had ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... profile. The youthful voices of the two others rang like bells. He did not scowl at Coke; he merely looked at him as if be gently disdained his mental calibre. In fact all the talk seemed to tire him; it was childish; as for him, he apparently found this babble almost insupportable. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... 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 different to the vacant gaze that we have been accustomed to! I was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... lived again at Bourne, and tried to bring forgetfulness by drink—and drink brought boastfulness; for that he had no more the spirit left to do great deeds, he must needs babble of the great deeds which he had done, and hurl insult and defiance at his Norman neighbours. And in the space of three years he had become as intolerable to those same neighbours as they were intolerable to him, and he was fain to keep up at Bourne the same watch and ward that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the ancients were wholly ignorant of anatomy, and therefore their works abound in mistakes." I kept silence, and paid no heed to what he was saying; nay, indeed, I had turned my back on him. But when the brute had brought his disagreeable babble to an end, the Duke exclaimed: "O Benvenuto, this is the exact opposite of what you were just now demonstrating with so many excellent arguments. Come and speak a word in defence of the statue." In reply to this appeal, so kindly made me by the Duke, I spoke ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... 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 ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... me a babble of exclamations and conjectures. Murmurs of interest rose even from our captive band. Then came Slinker's voice, loud ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... sou'westerly wind blew the big wet snowflakes under the protecting glass awning into the lobby itself. The favoured playgoers minced daintily through the slush to their waiting cars, then taxis came into the procession of waiting vehicles, there was a banging of cab doors, a babble of orders to the scurrying attendants, until something like order was evolved ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reasons as they write lyric poems. With Pepys, I fancy, the main motive was a simple happiness in chewing the cud of pleasure. The fact that so much of his pleasure had to be kept secret from the world made it all the more necessary for him to babble when alone. True, in the early days his confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... never went to bed at all. Late as it was, all the little restaurants and cafes around us were wide open, with customers drinking coffee and chatting merrily at the small tables outside. The sound of a guitar strumming softly in the distance mingled with the clatter of chinaware and the babble ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... that knows thy love, O Purest, There is a temple peaceful evermore. And all the babble of life's angry voices Dies hushed in stillness at its ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... A babble of voices told of pursuit,—shouts and gutturals that strung out from the camp all through the gorge and were beginning ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... duke's government would only cease with the termination of his public career was so general, that the moment he was installed in office, the whigs smiled on him; political conciliation became the slang of the day, and the fusion of parties the babble of clubs and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ask her if there were any 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 which ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... wanted no charm, nor did I fear mortal weapon or mortal foe, for in God was my trust, and He was able to hold me scathless, or to take me when He would. And then, John, a fancy seized me, a foolish fancy of romance perhaps, but still I mind not thy knowing, so thou 'lt not babble of it to others. I asked the old man could he put what I had just said into the same tongue with that heathen charm, and so shape it that I could have it carved upon my blade above the sun and moon and stars, which those Persian idolaters ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... 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 efforts were unreasoned, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... sojourn in Belait.[14] And to her incitements and his own inclination and desires was added that which made revenge and my brother's death the chiefest things in all the world to Ibrahim Mahmud, and it happened thus.... But do I weary the Sahib with my babble?" ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren |
