"Babbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infirmity approaches death the intellectual faculties are dimmed, his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back the memories of childhood. And the great bard gave in the corrupt and besotted Falstaff—who prattled of babbling brooks and green fields—an instance of the retracing steps taken by the memory at the last gasp. It has been said that the bible was sanctified by our mothers. Every superstition in the world, from the beginning of all time, has had such a sanctification. The ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of them bedizened with the cheap finery of the stores, some of them wearing only bright-hued blankets, but with wonderful head-dresses of eagle feathers, and all of them looking gravely on with a curiosity as silent as that of the habitans was noisy and babbling. The presence of so many Indians and on such friendly terms struck me as strange, for in Kentucky there were no such friendly relations between Indians and whites, and the presence of so many of them would have betokened ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Bull that bought me,' said Mowgli, who was trying to get at the shoulder, 'must I stay babbling to an old ape all noon? Here, Akela, this ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... I can," said Jeff; and in a minute or two they stood before the matronizing hostess, after a passage through the babbling and laughing groups that looked as impossible after they had made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... anything to keep his world in ignorance of what had befallen him. Even a man's independence is injured by excesses. As the tissues waste, the esteem of men is fawned for instead of being honestly earned, criticism is deprecated, importance is attached to the babbling of blockheads, and even to the opinion of fools. What should have been self-respect in Major Colquhoun had degenerated into a devouring vanity, which rendered him thin-skinned to the slightest aspersion. He had married Evadne in order to win the credit of having secured an exceptionally young ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Doris wiped the tears from her eyes. How strange the little room must look without Miss Henrietta sitting at the window babbling of childish things! "And she is all alone with Barby. How sad it must be. I should not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... pantomime became so numerous, that every dramatic subject was easily furnished with the necessary personages of comedy. That loquacious pedant the Dottore was taken from the lawyers and the physicians, babbling false Latin in the dialect of learned Bologna. Scapin was a livery servant who spoke the dialect of Bergamo, a province proverbially abounding with rank intriguing knaves, who, like the slaves in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... scorching sun that beat down from the pale blue of the cloudless sky upon a sea hardly less blue in its greater depths. Only the hope that they would soon reach Timor seemed to rouse them from a state of babbling delirium or fitful slumber. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... preferring to die almost alone to the risk of what their ravings might betray; but I have heard, also, that there are secrets—secrets shared, too, by many confederates—to which neither fever or intoxication ever gave a clew. The hot blood grew chill for an instant, and the babbling tongue was tied when the dreamer came near the frontier ground, where the oath reared itself distinct and threatening as ever, while all else ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a sudden hubbub of voices called us from the house, to find the whole white colony already gathered on the spot as by concerted signal. The Sans Souci was overrun with rabble, the stair and verandah thronged. From all these throats an inarticulate babbling cry went up incessantly; it sounded like the bleating of young lambs, but angrier. In the road his royal highness (whom I had seen so lately in the part of butler) stood crying upon Tom; on the top step, tossed in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stopped her. 'I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I was ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... It is none other than the voice of God telling you that the night cometh fast. Oh, Donald, was it not your mother who first taught you the way to that holy spring, even as she taught your boyish feet the path to yonder babbling burn which even now is lilting to the night? Donald man, be a little child again, and ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Alice stepped bewildered homewards, to steal down into her place, and listen, and listen, till the sound of carriages rolled towards the gate, listen till the low hush of the marriage service broke into the wild happy laughter of the organ, and the babbling sound of sweet girls stole through the church porch; then to lie back and to think that Alice and Edward had been married after all—that your little useless life had been so much use, at least: just to dream of that awhile, and then softly ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... in an astonished voice, "Why, what makes you think so?" and she listened with a tortured attention to the statement vouchsafed in an excited chorus by a great many shrill little voices that the Fingals' old cook had taken a little too much whiskey for once and had fallen to babbling at the grocery-store before a highly entertained audience of neighbors, about the endless peregrinations of the Fingal family in search of a locality where the blood of the children would not be suspected—"an' theah motheh, fo' all heh good looks, second ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... press it, By making the least, to make the most of it! As you may suppose, She had plenty of beaux Bowing around her beautiful toes, Praising her feet, and eyes, and nose In rapturous verse and elegant prose! She had lots of lovers, old and young: There was lofty Long, and babbling Lung, Opulent Tin, and eloquent Tung, Musical Sing, and, the rest among, Great Hang-Yu ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Momus-like at my own foibles; I need not trouble you with the application; you can make out the resemblance for yourselves. But if you find me babbling, you know now what has loosed my tongue; and if there is shrewdness in any of my words, then to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... son of Horkinas (38), said, "Morning sleep, midday wine, childish babbling, and attending the houses of assembly of the ignorant waste a ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... The Greek butler went to greet the guests. Coburn and Janice heard voices. The General was in uproarious good humor. He came in babbling completely ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... beasts were straining at their pickets and sniffing the morning wind, which brought down the thick fumes of the great bombardment and the indescribable babbling cries of a beaten army. Before we reached them that maddened horde had swept down on them, men panting and gasping in their flight, many of them bloody from wounds, many tottering in the first stages of collapse and death. I saw the horses ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was uplifted to be borne into the church, another united yell burst from the assembled multitude, in which the deep shout of warriors and the shrill wail of females joined their notes with the tremulous voice of age and the babbling cry of childhood. The coronach was again, and for the last time, shrieked as the body was carried into the interior of the church, where only the nearest relatives of the deceased and the most distinguished of the leaders of the clan were permitted to enter. The last yell of woe was so terribly ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... to Nemours in Louis Stevenson's Rob Roy. We generally congregate down in the garden by the big tree after dinner. Mama swings in the hammock, looking as pretty as possible, and we all form a group around her on the grass, Louis and Bob Stevenson babbling about boats, while Simpson, seated near by, fans himself with a ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... lay in a dull, death-like stupor, only groaning if disturbed, but by and by there was a babbling murmur of words, and soon the sound of his brother's loud voice at the door, demanding from the saddle how it went to-day with Peregrine, caused a shriek of terror and such a fit of trembling that Mrs. Woodford had to go out and make a personal request that Oliver would never again speak ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the fault of my tongue, which takes charge on these occasions, and seems to be under the impression that, when it is talking to a foreigner, any foreign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better turn to, now?" said the Captain with a heartless jeer. "Shut us up ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... maiden witnesses the fierce ribaldry of the courtesan; it flutters the curls of a sleeping infant, and bears on its wings the whispered exchange of chastity for bread. And man goes on, devouring his three poor meals a day, and babbling the meaningless nothings he has learned by rote. Oh, land of enlightenment! Oh, age of Christianity! Oh, zenith ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... month of that negative bliss which comes from retrospection, solitude, and the pleasure of following the men about the harvest-field. Sitting quietly under some shadowing tree, with my line cast into the still pool of a little babbling trout-brook, where it was held in some hollow of nature's hand, I had leisure to forget the past and to make good resolutions for the future. Belle Marigold was forever lost to me. She was Mrs. Hencoop; and Fred had knocked me down because I had been so unfortunate as to lose my presence ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... he previously felt on the musical instruments. The last step in this series of exercises to awaken a recognition of vibratory sensations is to lead him to feel in his own chest and head the vibrations set up by his own voice in shouting and laughing, crying or babbling. ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... and dreamed dreams, was, in this community, the torch that held a smouldering spark of the divine fire, and when, in a cataleptic state, his faint intelligence fluttered back into some dim depths of personality, and he moaned and muttered, using awful names with babbling freedom, Brother Nathan and the rest listened with pathetic eagerness for a "thus saith the Lord," which should enflame the gray embers of Shakerism and give light to the whole world! When Nathan talked of these things he would add, with a sigh, that ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... rich and idle citizens, and whole families of mercantile men who came to bathe or rest themselves, there enjoying the luxury both of the shade and of the sea. The mingled murmur of the voices both of men, women and children, enchanted with sunlight and with repose, united with the babbling of the waves which seemed to fall on the shore light and elastic as sheets of steel. Many boats either by sails or oars, were wafted around the extremity of Cape Notre-Dame de la Garde, with its heavy grove of shadowy pines; as they crossed the gulf, they touched the very margin of the water, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... great applause, and still hold possession of the stage. Like his Satires, they were intended to expose fashionable vice and folly. They are twenty-five in number. The names of several will give some notion of their general character—The Babbling Barber; Always Busy and Doing Nothing; The Treacherous Step-father; ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... should first of all be in an Italian-speaking country; then it should have a smooth, grassy, perfectly level floor of say neither much more nor less than a hundred and fifty yards in breadth and half-a-mile in length. A small river should go babbling through it with occasional smooth parts, so as to take the reflections of the surrounding mountains. It should have three or four fine larches or pines scattered about it here and there, but not more. It should be completely land- locked, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... orb of morn! Welcome, infant day! O'er the wood-top'd mountain borne, Mark its coming ray! Now o'er babbling brooks it beams; Sips from each flower its dew; Now with glorious gladdening gleams Wakes the world anew. Zephyrs first, o'er flowers that slumber'd, Quit their couch, and play; Breathe o'er flowers in sighs unnumber'd, Breathe the scent of day. Fancy now her ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... dears— But, alas, there is but one!" cried she. "I saw them passing it round, and then They said it was fit for only men! What woman would know How to make the thing go? There was not a man so foolish to dream That any woman could sew up a seam!" Oh, then there was babbling and scrabbling, my dears! "At least they might let us do that!" cried they. "Let them shout and fight And kill bears all night; We'll leave them their spears and hatchets of stone If they'll give us this thing for our very own. It will be like a joy above all ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the awed and hushed excitement that was growing with each passing moment, there cut the voice of McElroy, babbling from the blanket. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... him babbling apologies and went to bed, but I had an uncomfortable feeling that Bella had been a witness to our conversation, for the door into Aunt Selina's room closed ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... French, old-fashioned as a Breton song, always seemed to me surprising and wonderfully smart. I could not get over the foolish impression that it was extraordinary. There is something magical about the sound of a baby voice babbling a tongue that is strange to you; it sets you thinking about the primary difficulties in the way of human intercourse and wondering just how it was that people began to talk to ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... within his reach, and as apathetically killing the black bugs that scuttled out from the moist earth beneath. He desisted from this unexciting pastime as they drew near, and eyed them with the sullenness that comes of long isolation when the person's nature forbids that other extreme of babbling garrulity, for no man can live long months alone and remain perfectly normal. Nature, that stern mistress, always exacts a penalty from us foolish mortals who would ignore the instincts she has wisely implanted within us ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the cares and troubles ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... contained in one, will I require your solution. And as for traps, it is always the solver of riddles who lays his own trap, by looking all round the question and never straight at it. Put on your thinking-cap, I beg, while I go on babbling.) ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... a turn you give me, sitting here in your keepin'-room. I never knew you to do sech a thing before as sit up all night." But the Dean had fallen on his knees before her, and was babbling out prayers for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... began to make houses, sell things in shops, tear about in big boxes on wheels, and send great, clattering, shrieking, puffing monsters rushing through the country, dropping smoke and cinders like anything. There was such a clatter and a chatter, such gabbling and babbling, such hammering and banging and laughing and crying, and hurry and scurry and rush that it was enough to drive one crazy. There was such a fuss, the Piccaninnies simply couldn't stand it, and they fled to the Bush. Well, wouldn't you, with ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... were," Simon rebuked the body. "Tidy sums you spent in pubs. Booze got you the sack after twenty years in the same shop. Disgraced was I to have such a brother as you, Shacob. Where was your religion, man? But he has to be buried, little sisters, or babbling there'll be. Cheap funeral will suit in Fulham cematary. Reasonable your share is more than mine, because the Big Man has trusted ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... Claims, and the All-Mind, and to the fact that the pain in a neglected tooth was only a manifestation of cowardly unbelief. The doctor scented mischief in the glib phrases. He held his peace heroically, though, albeit now and then he longed to shake his babbling patient as the terrier shakes ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... weeping. And what her lips, babbling incoherent thanksgiving, did not tell him, the clinging of her arms, as she ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... strange aspect; shadows were gliding along the footpaths, which were growing deserted and silent, while gloomy fear seemed, like fine rain, to be slowly, persistently falling with the dusk over the mournful-looking houses. The babbling confidence of the daytime was fatally terminating in groundless panic, in growing alarm as the night drew nearer; the inhabitants were so weary and so satiated with their triumph that they had no strength left but ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... these ears, The glare of torture-chambers in these eyes That see no faces anywhere but blind Blind faces, each a bruise of white that smiles In idiot agony, washed with sweat and blood, The face of some strange thing that once was man, And now can only turn from side to side Babbling like a child, with mouth agape, And crying for help where there is none to hear Save those black vizards in the furnace-glow, Moving like devils at their hellish trade...." He paused; his memory sickened, his ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... already in a half doze; still I heard the brook babbling under the beeches and the humming of forest flies overhead. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... insulse[obs3], obtuse, blunt, stolid, doltish; asinine; inapt &c. 699; prosaic &c. 843; hebetudinous[obs3]. childish, child-like; infantine[obs3], infantile, babyish, babish[obs3]; puerile, anile; simple &c. (credulous) 486; old-womanish. fatuous, idiotic, imbecile, driveling; blatant, babbling; vacant; sottish; bewildered &c.475. blockish[obs3], unteachable Boeotian, Boeotic; bovine; ungifted, undiscerning[obs3], unenlightened, unwise, unphilosophical[obs3]; apish; simious[obs3]. foolish, silly, senseless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... again over fallen fragments of the home which he himself had built, he went to the inner, secret storehouse. Even he could scarcely find the door, for saplings of trees had grown up about it; yet he found it at last. Within the holy well the water was yet babbling and shining in the moonlight over the silver sands; and here, too, there was store of mouldering grain, for the house had been abundantly rich when the great plague fell upon the people while he was far away. ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... oak of lordly look, The willow shadowing the babbling brook, The hedges blooming with the sweets of May, With double pleasure mark'd the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... it is to be a child of God and to be born again; and when I say believingly, I mean for the soul to believe, and that from good experience, that the work of grace is wrought in him. This is the right calling of God, Father; and not as many do, to say in a babbling way the Lord's prayer by heart. No, here is the life of prayer, when in or with the Spirit, a man being made sensible of sin and how to come to the Lord for mercy, he comes, I say, in the strength of the Spirit, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... scarf; Or when the cowled and dusky-sandalled Eve, In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid The silent ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... "I'm not going to get myself into trouble by babbling. But, if you promise to be nice to me all the way ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the engagement might be over and the victory won. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, I was unacquainted with the windings of the park, and wandered at random through its verdant labyrinths, the sun pouring down upon my devoted head until I heard the silvery murmur of a neighboring stream, babbling over its pebbly bed. Attracted by the freshness of the spot, I approached and in the midst of a confusion of iris, mint and bindweed, I saw a blonde head quenching its thirst at the stream. I could only see a mass of yellow hair wound in heavy golden coils around this ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... require no little philosophy to tolerate existence there. "I am charmed to have had the experience of visiting the Baths," we once heard an invalid say, "for I know now that I am capable of enduring anything and everything." But this, let us hasten to assure the reader, is an exaggeration—the mere babbling of ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... up of Browning's knaves cannot be better expressed than by Chesterton. 'They are real somewhere. We are talking to a garrulous and peevish sneak; we are watching the play of his paltry features, his evasive eyes and babbling lips. And suddenly the face begins to change and harden, the eyes glare like the eyes of a mask, the whole face of clay becomes a common mouthpiece, and the voice that comes forth is the voice of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... pensively at the white town rambling down towards the shining river. Had God indeed revealed Himself on Mount Sinai? But this fresh doubt was banished by the renewed suspicion which, after having disturbed his dreams in nebulous distortions, sprang up in daylight clearness. It was his babbling about Dom Diego that had ruined the genial old physician. After days of gathering uneasiness, being unable to gain any satisfaction from the friar, he sought the secretary of the Inquisition in his bureau at a monastery of the Dominicans. The secretary rubbed his hands at the sight ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... prancing in comparative freedom, secured by traces to an outrigger. Away they started at furious speed, and before long were ascending the side of the magnificent Liguania mountains; now proceeding along a romantic valley, with a babbling stream on one side; now passing over a height; now along a level, or but slightly sloping spot for half a mile or so, but gradually getting higher and higher above the plain. Sometimes, when exposed to the sun's rays, they ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... your wits together and do not stand there babbling like a three-year child. Do you say that some one ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rest of the vote goes on to your Number 2. If 2 isn't in need of all of it, the rest goes on to 3. And so on. That is the profound mathematical mystery, that is the riddle beyond the wit of Westminster, which overpowers these fine intelligences and sets them babbling of "senior wranglers." Each time there is a debate on this question in the House, member after member hostile to the proposal will play the ignorant fool and pretend to be confused himself, and will ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... up in the room, and I found I had never before cherished a proper appreciation of one. Even a summer girl, with all the romantic accessories of "shady nook, babbling brook," and so on, can form no conception of the soul-satisfying comfort derived from abandoning oneself to the luxurious embrace of a hammock, after a few hours' ride on a mule. One friend who had survived the experience I was just beginning, had warned me not to think ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... mountain-stream, on the rocks and boulders of which the male so loves to warble; sometimes on a mossy bank; sometimes in some rocky crevice hidden amongst drooping maiden-hair; sometimes on some stream-encircled slab, exposed to view from all sides, and not unfrequently curtained in by the babbling waters of some little waterfall behind which it has been constructed. The nest is always admirably adapted to surrounding conditions. Safety is always sought either in inaccessibility or concealment. Built on a rock in the midst of a roaring torrent, not the smallest attempt ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... forest trees were found clustering closer, and from underneath their shade a little waterfall trickling out, like a little daughter of the hermitage playing at the feet of hoary sages wrapt in meditation, babbling its way over the black moss-covered rocks, there the jhampan bearers would put down their burden, and take a rest. Why, oh why, had we to leave such spots behind, cried my thirsting heart, why could we not stay ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... bluff just before us and we shall have a first-rate view of things. Skip across this little temporary bridge over this babbling brook and now—climb! Whew! that takes your breath, doesn't it? But it is worth the trouble. Now you see we are standing on an embankment perhaps thirty feet high. We are in the midst, too, of a lot of tents. It ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... say so," Tamino returned, stoutly, this being one of the temptations he was to meet: but Papageno was frightened enough. "Stop thy babbling, Papageno," Tamino cautioned. "Or thou ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... women barter their bodies for a title, a carriage, a place at the head of some rich man's table. Bohemia sufficed her. Her terrible widowhood, too, was rendered less terrible to her by the care of her little one. Babbling lips, pattering feet, made heaven in her attic. Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing. Herminia was far removed indeed from that blatant and decadent sect of "advanced women" who talk as ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... side of the bed stood Mrs. Ginniss; at the other, Dr. Wentworth: but Teddy saw only the little waxen face upon the pillow between them,—the little face so strange and lovely now; for all the fever flush had passed away, the babbling lips were folded white and still, the glittering eyes were closed, and the long dark lashes lay motionless upon the cheek,—the little face so strange and terrible ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... a gesture of disdain at the babbling crowd, he marched determinedly away, his rifle held in the hollow of his arm. At this heroic moment a new clamour arose, half admiration, half dismay. Old Peter hobbled after the major, continually ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... thought babbling over the good old days of the ducking-stool, poured himself carefully a highball that was brown. Silence reigned. The light fell upon the head and shoulders of Crane and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... under any form might go far to silence objectors and reconcile the better class of the disaffected.[717] This view was particularly urged by Cranmer, always gentle, hoping, and illogical.[718] But, in fact, secresy was impossible. If More's discretion could have been relied upon, Fisher's babbling tongue would have trumpeted his victory to all the winds. Nor would the government consent to pass censure on its own conduct by evading the question whether the act was or was not just. If it was not just, it ought not to be: maintained at all; if it was just, there must ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... done your part, and God bless you for it. You must not stay here. Your ladyship's very presence, and your agitation, would set the servants talking, and some idiot-fiend among them babbling—there is nothing so terrible ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... garden grounds; his lake; his woods; The breezy air; the overhanging heaven, He loathed: he loathed them all. When spring aroused The amorous songsters of the copse and field To seasonable joy, their music mocked His sadness with its echoes, babbling tales Of what had been: and he, in bitterness, Resolved to quit a place where every turn Stood like a foe, whose settled leering eye In silence gloared with hope to mark his fall; He left our country. Far, in Eastern climes, His nation serving well, he fought and ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... are to come safely off we must be rid of him. The gumming up of the horses' manes and the braiding of their tails have already made the innkeeper look strangely at us. Had he not set it down as the trick of some malicious groom, it had been worse for us. And I do fear the old man's babbling tongue. I will sound him to see how much will content him, and perchance from thy pouch and mine the sum may ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... "Peace, babbling fool!" cried Harvey. "Lift the corner stone, and you will find that which will make you ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... notice may awaken the sympathy of the reader towards the laudable objects of the Society, under whose guidance the Voice of Humanity is published. It is a difficult matter to point out "the uneducated," and writers of all grades are eternally babbling of our high state of civilization and refinement, yet, we repeat, the necessity of this association is an anomaly which amounts to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight as anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the one that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dread mood Of sated lust, and dull decrepitude. No law, no art, no faith, no hope, no God. When round the freezing founts of life in peevish ring, Crouched on the bare-worn sod, Babbling about the unreturning spring, And whining for dead creeds, which cannot save, The toothless nations ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... coolness, instead of plunging deeper by his confusion like a stumbling horse. He is firm, but gentle; and practices that most excellent maxim, 'suaviter in modo, fortiter in re'. The other is the 'volto sciolto a pensieri stretti'. People unused to the world have babbling countenances; and are unskillful enough to show what they have sense enough not to tell. In the course of the world, a man must very often put on an easy, frank countenance, upon very disagreeable occasions; he must seem pleased when he ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the thunderbolt. He visits a piece of sea-board: and from the inclination and soil of the beach, from the weeds and shell-fish, from the configuration of the coast and the depth of soundings outside, he must deduce what magnitude of waves is to be looked for. He visits a river, its summer water babbling on shallows; and he must not only read, in a thousand indications, the measure of winter freshets, but be able to predict the violence of occasional great floods. Nay, and more: he must not only consider that which is, but that which may be. Thus I find my grandfather writing, in a report ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purses, two feet in length, and suspended from the slender branches all around the tree, some of them very near the ground. The entrance is on the side near the bottom of the nest. The bird is a great favourite with the Brazilians of Para— it is a noisy, stirring, babbling creature, passing constantly to and fro, chattering to its comrades, and is very ready at imitating other birds, especially the domestic poultry of the vicinity. There was at one time a weekly newspaper published at Para, called "The Japim"; the name ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel. Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook. Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we dimly view them through a mist ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... was in us never found very full vent at Belfontaine, and that, I think, was due very largely to the quiet and kindly, but somewhat rigid, Quakerism of my grandfather. We felt and knew without babbling into words. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... his two arms; she was half hysterical in that moment of her release, and was babbling an incoherent string of words; a description of her capture—her fear—her gratitude—all in an inextricably confused rush of ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... that love is taught By his divinest teacher; He silent adoration seeks, But shuns the prosy preacher. Now read me right, ye gentle anes, Nor deem my lesson hollow; The deepest river silent rins, The babbling brook is shallow. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... door of the stairway, seemed to be hearing things the others could not catch, but which frightened them so that they fled from the general's chamber in disorder. Ivan Petrovitch was close on them, his eyes almost sticking from his head, his mouth babbling: ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... release From doubts and fears that shake my bosom now. And, O defender of our house! attend My secret utterance. No friendly ear Is that which hearkens for my voice. My thought Must not be blazoned with her standing by, Lest through her envious and wide-babbling tongue She fill the city full of wild surmise. List, then, as I shall speak: and grant the dreams Whose two-fold apparition I to-night Have seen, if good their bodement, be fulfilled: If hostile, turn their influence on my foes. And yield not them their wish that would by guile Thrust ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... men moan under the influence of some anaesthetic, without possessing the power to break through the narrow partition that separates them from death on the one side and from consciousness on the other. At last a sigh struggled to his seemingly paralysed lips, then another. Finally the babbling became articulate. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... you smell is—that," said the cow lady, pointing her horns toward some green plants growing near a little babbling brook of water. The plants had dark red stems that were square instead ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... they among the wild flowers, making friendship with the dragon-fly, With the ant in her circling citadel, with the spider at her silk-loom, Talking to the babbling brook, speaking kindly to the uncouth terrapin, And frog, who to them seem'd dancing joyously in watery halls. Like the chirping of the wood-robin murmured their tuneful voices, Or rang out in merry laughter, gladdening ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... privations must thy votaries suffer in a sordid world; and how many human passions must they subdue, before they can penetrate thy mazy walks, or approach the hidden sanctuaries of thy temple of Truth! Little thinks the babbling politician, the pedantic linguist, or the equivocating metaphysician, of the watchful hours which thy worshippers must pass,—of the never-ending patience which they must exert,—of the concurring circumstances which must favour their enthusiasm! Whether ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Our babbling, anile friend, in the very looseness of her prating has let out the truth. Or rather—a common custom with her—she has talked in her sleep. Her very weakness has, however, given a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... a stone pack-horse track, leading past a hedge snow-white with may, and down into a little wood, from the depths of which one could hear a brook babbling. Then up across the sunny field beyond, and yet up over another field to where the brow of the hill is crowned by old ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... few yards from the mound, ran a babbling brook, which divided our farm from the next. Those of my readers whose ears are open to the music of Nature, must have observed how different are the songs sung by different brooks. Some are a mere tinkling, others are sweet as silver bells, with a tone besides which no bell ever had. Some sing ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... of Siloam, whose babbling waters sparkled into beauty as we held our lamps above them, we entered Franklin Hall. Here the roof, although high enough in some places, is uncomfortably low in others; whereupon Bob bade us give heed to the caution of Franklin, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... exhausted woman alive and your chief enemy drunk and a prisoner—do all that without sleep for thirty-six hours, Sir Gregory; then, if you can drop off to sleep like that, instead of having your head packed in ice and babbling pink spiders and blue monkeys, you may call your constitution cast-iron. All exhaustion is nervous, Sir Gregory, and the man who can stand the biggest dose of it ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... over the rail, and instructed her of the black pigtail to wait for him in a sampan, and he yelled down to one of the dozens of struggling and babbling coolies, whose sampans swarmed like a horde of cockroaches at the ladder's ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... been babbling of his visions and his dreams. Yes, the Lady Angelica. 'Very charming,' my uncle granted, 'but very poor; less of the angel and more of the heiress was desirable,' he said,—'less heaven and more land. A decayed family was only a little worse than an obscure one,—a poor knight not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... from that mouth as water from a spring, so natural, so light, so well modulated, so clear, that there was a physical pleasure in listening to it. It was a joy for the ear to hear the flexible words flow with the grace of a babbling brook, and it was a joy for the eyes to see those pretty lips, a trifle too red, open ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... said: 'You are cured, Pierre Duval, but you are not yet fit to fight. You are low in your mind. You need cheering up. You are to have a month's furlough and repose. You shall go home to your farm. How is it that you call it?' I suppose I had been babbling about it in my sleep and one of the nurses had told him. He was always that way, that little Doctor Roselly, taking an interest in the men, talking with them and acting friendly. I said the farm was called 'L'Alouette'—rather a foolish name. 'Not, at all,' he answered; 'it is a fine ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... change scenery and eye alike; but seldom has an alteration—in themselves and all about them—as great as that which blessed this little company, been wrought in so short a time. From the stifling wynds and evil-smelling lanes of Paris, they had passed to the green uplands, the breezy woods and babbling streams of the upper Orleannais; from sights and sounds the most appalling, to the solitude of the sandy heath, haunt of the great bustard, or the sunshine of the hillside, vibrating with the songs of larks; from an atmosphere of terror and gloom to the freedom of God's earth and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... when the winds were strong For fifty more! But in the olden time These fires were counted as the harbingers Of life-essential storms, since out of smoke And heat there came across the midnight ways Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds And runnels babbling of a ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... place in my soul was made manifest shortly afterward. For one evening when once again the wind blew mightily down the chimney, and the rain beat hard upon the roof as I was being put to bed, the mechanical babbling of my lips was suddenly transformed into a real, anxious prayer, and therewith the spiritual navel-string, which up to that time had bound me exclusively to my parents, was broken. Indeed things soon went so far that I began to complain ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... I am never lonely. I love these vast red canyon walls towering above me. And the silence is so sweet. Think of the hellish din that filled my ears. Even now—sometimes, the brook here changes its babbling murmur to the roar of war. I never understood anything of the meaning of nature until I lived under these looming stone walls and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... surroundings. Salt Lake City, nestling in its wealth of trees and flowers, was a second "Diamond of the Desert." In its welcome shade, the dusty traveller, like the solitary Sir Kenneth, reposed his jaded limbs and dreamed of the babbling brooks and waving woodlands he had left ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... pistol butt.] Take that, thou babbling fool! this is no fitting time to preach. Ho! Jepherson. Bring up ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... following them cautiously like a snake, had bewitched all the springs and streams in the forest. The pleasant trickling of a brook over the pebbles was heard by the children as they reached it, and the boy was just stooping to drink, when the sister heard in the babbling of ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... "Tell that to others! Ho, ho!" replied he. When he had resumed his seat, M. le Duc d'Orleans said something, I don't know what, M. de Troyes still standing, I also. In passing La Vrilliere, I asked him to go to the door every time anything was wanted, for fear of the babbling of M. de Troyes; adding, that distant as I was from the door, going there looked too peculiar. La Vrilliere did as I begged him all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of her boy's little babbling of happiness in the morning, and found him blooming on her bed, brought there by his father, that she might see him and how well he was, even before she was awake. It was thus not till the first minute of delight was over ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... which he had left, and in the vast multitude on the plains of Tara, there was stir and revelry, and babbling speculation as to the contest of to-morrow—the contest which was to decide whether the chief bard of Erin was to hold his own against all comers, or yield the palm. For rumor said that a great Skald had come from the northern lands to compete ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... piece Of glass he blackened above his candle-flame To watch that orange ember in the sky Wane into smouldering ash. He whispered there, "So it is true. By searching in the heavens, Men can foretell the future." In the street Below him, throngs were babbling of the plague That might or might not follow. He resolved To make himself the master of that deep art And know what might be known. He bought the books Of Stadius, with his tables of the stars. Night after night, among the gabled roofs, Climbing and creeping through a world ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the village and becomes a cosmopolitan recluse—lonely toiler among his books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at home amid ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... to walk away, just as the babbling ripple of laughter began to flow downstairs, and a whole mass of little girls intertwined together was descending. 'I always hop,' said a voice new to him, 'except on the great staircase, and mother doesn't like it there. But this is such a jolly ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... petites—God bless them! was he not used to stand at his window at home and glow to see them playing in the street? And as he watched the urchins in the wood of Dunderave, far from the scenes he knew, children babbling in an uncouth language whose smallest word he could not comprehend, he felt an elevation of his spirit that he indulged by sitting on the grass above them, looking at their play and listening to their laughter as if it were ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... comes on, Cordelia's old nurse appears. A scandal is averted. Whereupon Kent marries Cordelia, and they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... left the house early in the morning. It was night when I returned; and Thor was gone. The house was dark, and at first there was no sound. But presently I heard the voice of a child, murmuring and babbling baby words. I passed through the outer hall and the conservatory, and came to where we now are. The lamp was burning as ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... streams of clear water. Rock River was the largest of these, running south. Next west was Sugar River, then the Picatonica. Through the mining region the country was rolling and abundantly watered with babbling brooks and health-giving springs. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Mrs. Arnold the miniature portrait which Margaret had given me the day of our little ride and talk in London and then an orderly came with a message and that gave me an excuse to put an end to this untimely babbling for which I had no heart. The message was from Solomon. He had got word that the British war-ship had come back up the river and was two miles above Stony Point with a ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... fifteen seconds he died and was born again; with each stride all that was loyal and brave in his nature leaped into flame, all that was base sank, for he himself was racing with his horse, and the sweat poured down his brow. And his lips babbled broken sounds that no one heard, for all around were babbling too. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... let us go forth, my sweet, And be alone amid the babbling street; Yea, so alone that scarce the hush of night May add one joy unto our ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... dish of fish to feed three or four friends who have given them very little entertainment in return, whereas my new friend has afforded me interest for days and weeks afterwards. But I must not go on babbling in this way. Call your good dog. Come along, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... crow, Thy plumage suffer'd,—snowy white to black. With silvery brightness once his feathers shone; Unspotted doves outvying; nor to those Preserving birds the capital whose voice So watchful sav'd;—nor to the stream-fond swans, Inferior seem'd his covering: but his tongue, His babbling tongue his ruin wrought; and chang'd His hue from splendid white to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... into a run. Just above the bridge a crude dam of logs had been built to back up a supply of water, and it was running over from the little pond behind in a happy, babbling waterfall. Then it turned to the south around the base of a patch of high ground. On this bit of high country, overlooking the stream on one side and the upper canyon on the other, stood ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... you came back!" the native was babbling telepathically in an excess of joy. "When the new humans came and took the old humans prisoners, me said it was your work. Me knew you would come. Me tell other Guddu to wait for ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... act of Government with sanction of National Assembly, appointed one of our Four supreme Generals. Rochambeau and Mailly, men and Marshals of note in these days, though to us of small moment, are two of his colleagues; tough old babbling Luckner, also of small moment for us, will probably be the third. Marquis de Bouille is a determined Loyalist; not indeed disinclined to moderate reform, but resolute against immoderate. A man long suspect to Patriotism; who has ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the irrelevant Parisian key Elfrida found herself reasonably fluent and fairly at ease. The illumined jargon of the atelier staid with her naturally; she never forgot a word or a phrase, and in two months she was babbling ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... morning with the words in his ears to make him face the day with hope and cheerfulness. It had sounded in his ears at night as he sat on the wide stoop watching the moon and listening to the night-birds, or vaguely heard his mother babbling things ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
