"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... utterances of "Tomato Jimmy," the boys at the back grew so boisterous that at one time it appeared inevitable that the meeting must break up in disorder. The chairman, the candidates, the ladies, the whole house rose, and one man towards the front made himself heard amid the babel to the effect that the ladies ought to walk out to show their resentment of the insults that had been offered their ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... "Woolpack" with jugs, and the company settled down to the spree. At intervals the men offered to shout for a few friends, and, borrowing a dead marine from the heap of empty bottles, shuffled off to the hotel to get it filled. The noise grew to an uproar—a babel of tongues, sudden explosions of laughter, and the shuffling ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... lamp, of course, but rather like him in having to do with genii or giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded the giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher above all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... ancient list of those who stood as the fathers of nomads, of musicians and workers in metal (Gen. iv. 1, l6b-26). This is followed by the primitive stories of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1-4), of Noah the first vineyard-keeper (ix. 20-27), and of the tower of Babel and the origin of different languages (xi. 1-9). In a series of more or less closely connected narratives the character and experiences of the patriarchs, the life of the Hebrews in Egypt and the wilderness, ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... has to tell his or her story, and for a long time there was a perfect babel of voices. Fred and Hans related how the steam yacht had been rescued from the clutches of the enemy, and how Frank Norton had taken command and prevented anything in the shape of a mutiny. The ladies and girls told of how they had been scared and how they ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... play of faces on such occasions in these responding crowds?—what go more to one's heart?)—the proud, steady, noiseless cleaving of the grand oceaner down the bay—we speeding by her side a few miles, and then turning, wheeling,—amid a babel of wild hurrahs, shouted partings, ear-splitting steam whistles, kissing of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... through me from His unknown grave, because I am deaf and cannot hear the distracting words of men—poor, paltry words at their best, which mean so many things at once that they mean just nothing at all. It's a Tower of Babel. Just stop your ears and listen with your heart and you will hear all that you can see when you shut your eyes or have lost them—and those are the only realities, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... your delight in the sun and the joy of the vintage itself, where the girls dance among the vines under the burden of the grapes, and the little children play with the dogs, and the goodman tastes the wine. Or again, in the fresco of the Tower of Babel: think if you can of all the mere horror of the confusion, and the terror of death, but in a moment you will forget it, remembering only that heroic Republic which amid her enemies built her splendid city, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... revelry was enacted in the little glade beside which Madam Rothsay and Edith Hester had been left helplessly bound by their captors. From the moment of the girl's brave effort to warn the camp, these two had listened with straining ears to the babel of sounds by which the whole course of the tragedy was made plain to them. They shuddered at the volleys, at the screams of the wounded, and at the triumphant yells of the victors. They almost forgot their own wretched position in their horror at the fate of their recent companions. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Deutschland?" he finally exclaimed. "Ah! It will be great and wonderful. But where it will end—who knows! Will it be like the Tower of Babel, great in conception, great in execution, but overreaching in its greatness? Will our destiny be like the snowball, accumulating as it rolls till it becomes immovable in its immensity? Then—stagnation! And yet the start of that snowball was but 50 ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... you could erect a system which should present to mankind all branches of knowledge save the one that is essential, you would only be building up a Tower of Babel, which, when you had completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. We believe that if you can take a human being in his youth, and if you can ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... were Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Austrians, Poles, people from the Balkan states, Swedes, Danes, Russians, and a few from India, China, and Japan. The clatter of their various tongues made a very Babel inside the ark, when they talked to one another in groups, but nearly all of them were able to speak English, which, after many years of experiment, had been adopted as the common language for transacting the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... graciously adorned, and their hearts were filled with the hope that their united endeavours to save her fallen sister would be blessed with success. But when they came in sight of the papal towers and gorgeous edifices of St Andrews, which then raised their proud heads, like Babel, so audaciously to the heavens, they ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... world's poverty and scorn; These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws. In street and alley what strange tongues are these, Accents of menace alien to our air, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... believe than I ever have in my life,—and that is saying a great deal,—that institutions such as this will be the means of refining and improving that social edifice which has been so often mentioned to-night, until,—unlike that Babel tower that would have taken heaven by storm,—it shall end in sweet accord and harmony amongst ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... colonization of Ireland, though distinctly asserted in our annals, has been met with the ready scepticism which men so freely use to cover ignorance or indifference. It has been taken for granted that the dispersion, after the confusion of tongues at Babel, was the first dispersion of the human race; but it has been overlooked that, on the lowest computation, a number of centuries equal, if not exceeding, those of the Christian era, elapsed between the Creation ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... from the office, Willem rushed down the stairway and into the window seat, where he sprang upon a chair and craned his neck to see the stretch of village street beyond. Nearer and louder came the music and the attendant vocal Babel. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... part and parcel of that horrible deep-red-plush nuisance, the Hotel-omnibus. He and it are inseparables, and make up a sort of Centaur between them. Once outside the Railway-station, I am besieged by a babel of these Porter-omnibuses—"Bear Hotel, Sor;" "Grand Hotel, Sor!"—This, from a very dilapidated specimen, which, on inspection, turns out to be "Grand Hotel Du Lac;" a pirate porter-omnibus in fact; at last I find The Grand Hotel vehicle, and functionary. The latter is of gigantic stature; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... managers to determine which one, or which ones, among the voices of discontent, represented truly this controlling body of voters. They thought they knew. Two cries, at least, that rang loud out of the Babel of the hour, should be heeded. One of these harked back to Niagara. In the anxious ears of the managers it dinned this charge: "the Administration prevented negotiations for peace by tying together two demands, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... perfect babel of bird-talk, the jaunty blond males all making pretty speeches to the gentle brown-haired females, who laughed merry little ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... a trumpet spoke across The Fields of Jetan. From The High Tower its cool voice floated across the city of Manator and above the babel of human discords rising from the crowded mass that filled the seats of the stadium below. It called the players for the first game, and simultaneously there fluttered to the peaks of a thousand staffs on tower and battlement ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... turned down the driveway and the door of the Howe homestead closed, a tragic babel of voices reached her ear, piping in shrill staccato the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... now of those manifold and weary grievances to which I had listened. The foul weather was passed, and the landlocked sea-birds would be out on the foam once more. The rhythm of "God Save the King" swelled through the babel, and I heard the old lines sung in a way that made you forget their bad rhymes and their bald sentiments. I trust that you will never hear them so sung, with tears upon rugged cheeks, and catchings of the breath from strong men. Dark days will have come ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his return from the pursuit he found that his orders had been disobeyed. Five prisoners had been dismissed, and were already out of his reach: two others were waiting while their captors debated on their fate. Then Hamilton, furious that any of "Babel's brats" should be let go, slew one of these with his own hand, to stay any such unreasonable spirit of mercy, "lest the Lord would not honour us to do much more ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what is too remote from its own mood, after one good stare, turned their eyes away, as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... well-nigh impassable track, was the most deafening and distracting accumulation of noises ever heard since the time of Babel. The water as it roared and rushed and dropped itself from boulder to boulder, the rattling and banging of empty wagons, the cracking of the drivers' whips, the shouting of the men, and the repetitions and reverberations of it all as the high walls caught them up and tossed them ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... time. The ticket-collector, running from carriage to carriage, was in too great a hurry to discover that the little bit of pasteboard which Joseph Wilmot exhibited was only a return-ticket to Wandsworth. There was a brief scramble, a banging of doors, and Babel-like confusion of tongues; and then the engine gave its farewell ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... first volume of Manchester, but could not read it; it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.(207) To be sure, it is very kind in an author to promise one the history of a country town, and give one a circumstantial account of the antediluvian world into the bargain. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and sat down beside it, ordering her coffee and rolls from the waiter who came to serve her. Looking round at the cosmopolitan company, and listening to the many languages, whose clash gave a Babel air to the restaurant, Jennie fell to musing on the strange experiences she had encountered since leaving London. It seemed to her she had been taking part in some ghastly nightmare, and she shuddered as she thought of the lawlessness, under cover of law, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... looked as if they had come out of the Ark. But it was the rabble that caught the eye—very wild, pinched, miserable rabble. I never in my life saw such swarms of beggars, and you walked down that street to the accompaniment of entreaties for alms in all the tongues of the Tower of Babel. Blenkiron and I behaved as if we were interested tourists. We would stop and laugh at one fellow and give a penny to a second, passing comments in ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... crowded building into the brilliant light of outdoors, and Gilbert had just helped his companion down the steep, rickety steps, when a new sound arose above the babel of the fair, and quenched for a moment even the scream of the bagpipes. It came from the highway, a hoarse "honk, honk," strange, and yet, to Gilbert, familiar. An astonished stillness fell over the group around the gate. The whole show, in fact, stood wide-eyed and agape ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... little at his ease by this cordial reception, Dick followed the servant upstairs to a pleasant sitting-room on the second floor. Mr. and Mrs. Rockwell were seated at a centre-table reading the evening papers, while Johnny and his sister Grace were constructing a Tower of Babel with some blocks upon the carpet ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... unfortunate enough to have none, wanting to open them as soon as possible with the new comers. What with these and pistol practice and rifle shooting from upper casements across the river, in order to expend spare ammunition, the European quarter was a very Babel all day long, and we were not sorry to escape the turmoil and get under weigh to new scenes ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... For one instant their eyes met, but that one glance seemed to draw them to each other, to penetrate to the very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... 'Captain Walker,' posing as a R.A.M.C. officer, was visiting our troops, and picking up stray crumbs of information; should such a person be encountered he was to be immediately arrested. I had just turned in, when amid the babel of conversation which came from downstairs, I caught the name 'Walker.' Slipping quietly down the ladder which served as a staircase, I listened for a moment or two at the door, and from what I heard, gathered that I had spotted my man; and suddenly appearing as an apparition in ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... creates no unity save the occasion and the place. Shakespeare's consciousness is universal because it is a fair field with no favors. But even so it is particular, because, though each may enter and depart in peace, when all enter together there is anarchy and a babel of voices. All Shakespeare is like all the world seen through the eyes of each of its inhabitants. Human experience in Shakespeare is human experience as everyone feels it, as comprehensive as the aggregate of innumerable lives. But human experience in philosophy ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to know what you mean by not letting me hear from you these three months. Do you not know that you are in my debt for a letter at least twenty lines long, which it took me three minutes to write? And three minutes and twenty lines, in this Babel, are equal to one hour and two sheets in Brookline. Do you not know that everybody is saying, "When have you heard from Mr. Ware?" Do you not know that ugly and choking weeds will spring up on the desolation you have made here if you do not scatter some flower-seeds upon it? Consider ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... exhibitors; and, what was more important, appropriations of money had been made to defray their expenses. No appropriations were made by Congress. Our exhibitors arrived friendless, some of them penniless, in the great commercial Babel of the world. They found the portion of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country unprepared for the specimens of art and industry which they had brought with them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring arcades and galleries ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... reached their destination. But there was just light enough, as they stepped out of the carriage, to show a large modern building, built of red brick, with many gables and bow-windows, and a generally restless effect. As they followed the butler through the outer hall, a babel of voices made itself heard, and when he threw open the door into the inner hall, they found themselves ushered ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... history of the holy patriarch Abraham which was the son of Terah. This Terah was the tenth from Noah in the generation of Shem. Japhet had seven sons and Ham four sons. Out of the generation of Ham Nimrod came, which was a wicked man and cursed in his works, and began to make the tower of Babel which was great and high. And at the making of this tower, God changed the languages, in such wise that no man understood other. For tofore the building of that tower was but one manner speech in all the world, and there were made seventy-two speeches. The tower ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... wise free providence; not by destiny or necessity, which even Porphyry and the wiser heathens had justly exploded, though the Apostate adopted that monstrous doctrine. He justifies against his cavils the history of the Tower of Babel: and in his fifth book, the Ten Commandments; showing in the same, that God is not subject to jealousy, anger, or other passions, though he has an infinite horror of sin. Julian objected that we also adore God the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and without patience to acquire it, confusion reigned in the missions as in a tower of Babel,' and he goes on to say 'an imperious tone of order was substituted for the paternal manner (of the Jesuits), and as a deaf man who cannot hear has to be taught by blows, that was the teaching they (the Indians) had to bear.' Shortly, he says, 'a wall of hatred and contempt began ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... not have birthday cakes any more. After the rather surprised lady of the house had ransacked the neighborhood for some fruit and ice cream to help the cake along and practically no vestige of the feast remained, the unsuspecting Captain came upon the scene. There was a rush and a scamper and a babel of voices shouted out, "Oh, Captain Donnelley, we're having such a good ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the sensitive nervous system, and many a man and woman breaks at last ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... and jar of the labouring train gave place to a babel of voices—shouting, expostulating, denunciating in every conceivable key. For the third-class passenger in the East is nothing if not vociferous, and the itch of travel has penetrated even ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... encore, Ivan rose, in the midst of a little babel of "Bis!" and, taking the virtuoso of the world by the arm, led him to the piano. Well repaid, it seemed, in that moment, for the disappointment he had lately had to endure. For every face about him was alive with friendliness and admiration ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... in the native names, and they even retain a tradition which looks like the story of Solomon and the harlots, there is not a name like Tom Earthquake or Sam Shake-the-ground in the whole country. They have a tradition which may refer to the building of the Tower of Babel, but it ends in the bold builders getting their crowns cracked by the fall of the scaffolding; and that they came out of a cave called "Loey" (Noe?) in company with the beasts, and all point to it in one direction, viz., the N.N.E. Loey, too, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... getting unpleasantly hot, and the horses caked with sweat and dust, a halt would be called in some shady tope, where the tents rose as if by magic, fires were rapidly lighted by the attendants, and, amidst quite a babel of tongues, breakfast was prepared, while parroquets of a vivid green shrieked at us from the trees, squirrels leaped and ran, and twice over we arrived at a grove to find it tenanted by a troop of chattering monkeys, which mouthed and scolded at us till our men drove them far into ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... of the possibility and desirableness of a universal language, scientifically constituted; a common form of speech for all the nations of mankind; for the remedy of the confusion and the great evil of Babel, is not wholly new. The celebrated Leibnitz entertained it. It was, we believe, glanced at among the schemes of Lord Monboddo. Bishop Wilkins devoted years of labor to the accomplishment of the task, and thought he had accomplished it. He published the results of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I forgot. Jasper, when you get home, read very carefully that passage about the Tower of Babel. Whatever the cause of that melancholy confusion, its reality is impressed upon us when we stand face to face with one whom I may perhaps be allowed to call, metaphorically, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... who had remained, silent and dull, in a constrained position during the whole of the day, felt a load taken off their spirits as soon as they set foot on dry land; and in a trice the silence that had hitherto reigned was broken by a very Babel of tongues, among which could be distinguished the guttural jargon of the Scindian, the bastard dialect of Mahratti, of the Hindoo from the Deccan, and the ungrammatical patois of Hindostani, which—although, when exclusively used, it marked out the Mussulman—was yet the lingua franca of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... over water and land. They entirely obscured the lower portions of the houses: only the upper stories and the roofs and gables were visible. Some of the buildings appeared to be as high as the Tower of Babel. The boy no doubt knew that they were built upon hills and mountains, but these he did not see—only the houses that seemed to float among the white, drifting clouds. In reality the buildings were dark and dingy, for the sun in the east was not ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the dancing floor with braided ribbons and post rosettes. Throngs now filled the open spaces, and more carriages continually came. The quarters of every officer by this time were packed, and a babel of chatter came from every balcony party. Now and again breathed the soft music from the distant military bands. It was a gay scene, one for youth and life, and ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Captives by Babel's limpid streams, We hung our harps on willows there; Wept over Zion; and our dreams, Waking or sleeping, ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... of the Cathedral tolled mournfully as the old year died. Would that its bitter memories could have perished with it! And then from steeple and steamship, locomotive and factory, a babel of sound burst forth as sirens and bells and whistles welcomed the birth of 1900. Yet, as the shrill greetings died away, one heard the tramp of infantry through the streets. The Capetown Highlanders—a ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... was then busy collecting the materials for his book entitled "The Woman Question in Europe," and every post brought in manuscripts and letters from all parts of the continent, written in almost every tongue known to Babel. So just what I came abroad to avoid, I found on the very threshold where I came to rest. We had good linguists at the chateau, and every document finally came forth in English dress, which, however, often needed much altering and polishing. This was my part ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... with the full force of the old skipper's quarter-deck voice, had the effect of completely upsetting the already tense nerves of the majority in the circle. Two or three of the women began to cry. Chairs were overturned. There was a babel of cries and confusion. The light keeper ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... herself, With all Babel for a dowry: With Helen, the flower and the bane of Greece— And bloody Medea next offer'd her fleece, That ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 'To keep His commandments' goes deeper than the mere external deeds. Were it not so, Paul's grand words would shrink to a very poor conception of religion, which would then have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the market-place and the streets. But with that due and necessary extension of the words which results from the very nature of the case, that obedience must be the obedience of a man, and not of his deeds only, and must include the submission of the will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... this was read there arose such a cry of joy as never was heard, no, not at the Tower of Babel on Saturday night. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sir?' observed the General, in a most impressive manner. 'Well! you come from an old country; from a country, sir, that has piled up golden calves as high as Babel, and worshipped 'em for ages. We are a new country, sir; man is in a more primeval state here, sir; we have not the excuse of having lapsed in the slow course of time into degenerate practices; we have no false gods; man, sir, here, is man ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... detected by the Spaniards, whose attention until that moment had been all on the other side. And now there arose on the night air such a sound of human baffled fury as may have resounded about Babel at the confusion of tongues. To heighten that confusion, and to scatter disorder among the Spanish soldiery, the Elizabeth emptied her larboard guns into the fort as she was swept past ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... richly coloured kitchen garden; beyond that was the low stone wall; beyond that the row of vans that looked like houses; and beyond and above that, straight and swift and dark, light as a flight of birds, and terrible as the Tower of Babel, Lincoln Cathedral seemed to ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... his Christian compatriot, whose ears, though not at all prophetic, by no means relished the intelligence. We all arrived at Colonna, remained some hours, and returned leisurely, saying a variety of brilliant things, in more languages than spoiled the building of Babel, upon the mistaken seer; Romaic, Arnaout, Turkish, Italian, and English were all exercised, in various conceits, upon the unfortunate Mussulman. While we were contemplating the beautiful prospect, Dervish was occupied about the columns. I thought he was ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... already established for the record of its proceedings. Useful information will be at a premium—unless there should happen to be a "glut;" while in the shape of translations and dialogue-books, every facility will be offered to foreigners. What a Babel it will be! How the English ear will be rasped by Slavonic and Teutonic gutturals, or distended by the breadth of Southern vowels. It will be a marvel if this incursion of barbarians do not very ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues to a crowd of men ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... so, at God's good pleasure, and in the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto them cloven ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... The town's third part was this, or little less, Fore which the duke his glorious ensigns spread, For so great compass had that forteress, That round it could not be environed With narrow siege — nor Babel's king I guess That whilom took it, such an army led — But all the ways he kept, by which his foe Might to or from the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... one poor English drudge, by the way, who seemed like a stranger in a far land—gifted in many tongues, and began to imbibe knowledge from their cradles. To their young imaginations the nursery wing of Hale Castle must have seemed remarkably like the Tower of Babel. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Sulpiz Boisseree, who is indefatigably employed in a magnificent series of copper-plates to exhibit the cathedral of Cologne as the model of those vast conceptions, the spirit of which, like that of Babel, strove up to heaven, and which were so out of proportion to earthly means that they were necessarily stopped fast in their execution. If we have been hitherto astonished that such buildings proceeded only so far, we ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... drove the arrow straight to its mark. As the gaily plumaged creature fluttered to earth its companions and the little monkeys set up a most terrific chorus of wails and screaming protests. The whole forest became suddenly a babel of hoarse screams and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... There was a delay, during which a Babel of tongues was let loose, and then Miss Lyberg's seven guests were heard noisily leaving the house. Two minutes later, there was a knock at our door and Miss Lyberg appeared, her eyes blazing, her face flushed and the expression of the hunted antelope defiantly asserting that it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... red sandstone, strong and broad enough to have supported a Tower of Babel, formed the portals of the outer gate of the palace. A pair of Terror-birds, whose plumage was a pearly grey, stood sleepily on guard. Our soldier, who could scarcely have reached to the backs of the birds, lifted up his cross-bow and tapped upon their long necks. Acting perfectly ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... fault which Naude finds in all his writings. Long dissertations entirely alien from the subject in hand are constantly interpolated. In the Practice of Arithmetic he turns aside to treat of the marvellous properties of certain numbers, of the motion of the planets, and of the Tower of Babel; and in the treatise on Dialectic he gives an estimate of the historians and letter-writers of the past. But here Cardan did not sin in ignorance; his poverty and not his will consented to these literary outrages. He was paid for his work by the sheet, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... the kerchief, like dogs let loose from the leash—every man but the astonished Colonel. For an instant the place was a pandemonium, a Babel. In a twinkling the kerchief was torn, amid cries of the wildest enthusiasm, into as many fragments as there were men round ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... upon the warm, soft air a babel of shouts and yells and loud hurrahs. The wee maiden turned a brightening face in the direction of the uproar, ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... wind shifted suddenly and blew a gale from South-West, with heavy rain: after beating against it until the following day, we bore up and ran under the lee of Great Island, intending to pass round Van Diemen's Land: at five o'clock, we passed close to the Babel Islands, on which were heaped incredible numbers of sea-birds of various descriptions, each species huddled together in flocks separate from the other. On another part of the island many seals were seen, by the growl of which, and the discordant screams ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... seers are good, But here they have no skill; And the unknown letters stood Untold and awful still. And Babel's[154-4] men of age Are wise and deep in lore; But now they were not sage, They saw—but knew ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... orderly ship was a babel of apparently hopeless confusion; the men running hastily to and fro about their various duties, the sharp commands of the officers, the shrill piping of the whistles, and the deep voices of the gun captains and the boatswain's mates, made the usually quiet deck a pandemonium. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... courage, Pollyanna ascended the chapel steps, pushed open the door and entered the vestibule. A soft babel of feminine chatter and laughter came from the main room. Hesitating only a brief moment Pollyanna pushed open one of ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... listening to the soft music of the little stream which sung a cheerful song as it rambled on over the roots and fallen branches that blocked its way. Soon a distant murmur arose, and we had not proceeded far before as many sounds as were heard at Babel made a strange concert about our ears. The lowing of the ox, the neighing of the horse, and the deep braying of another animal, mingled with a thousand human voices, came through the woods. But above and over all rose the stentorian ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... descends—poor heirs! Grimy and rough-cast still from Babel's brick-layers; Curse on the brutish jargon we inherit, Strong but to damn, not memorize ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Thomson, I fear it will be some time ere I tune my lyre again! "By Babel streams I have sat and wept" almost ever since I wrote you last. I have only known existence by the pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and have counted time by the repercussions of pain! Rheumatism, cold, and fever have formed to me a terrible combination. I close my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... those days must not be forgotten. The canopy of smoke overhanging the vast Modern Babel, and oftentimes obscuring even the light of the sun itself, did not dim the beauties of the Ancient City,—sea coal being but little used in comparison with wood, of which there was then abundance, as at this time in the capital of France. Thus the atmosphere was clearer and lighter, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... affections, the loud cry of desires and instincts that roar for their food like beasts of prey, the querulous complaints of disappointed hopes, the groans and sobs of black-robed sorrows, the loud hubbub and Babel, like the noise of a great city, that every man carries within, must be stifled and coerced into silence. We have to take the animal in us by the throat, and sternly say, 'Lie down there and be quiet.' We have to silence tastes and inclinations. We have to stop our ears to the noises ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in order to shut out the light which is bounding from mountain to mountain and from the hills to the plains and valleys beneath, through the vast extent of our Northern States. But believe me, when I tell you, their attempts will be as utterly fruitless as were the efforts of the builders of Babel; and why? Because moral, like natural light, is so extremely subtle in its nature as to overleap all human barriers, and laugh at the puny efforts of man to control it. All the excuses and palliations of this system must inevitably be swept away, just ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... luxuries, and took the opportunity of a well-marked epoch to invest in new everythings from oil-cloth to cups and saucers. Especially was this so at Passover, when for a week the poorest Jew must use a supplementary set of crockery and kitchen utensils. A babel of sound, audible for several streets around, denoted Market Day in Petticoat Lane, and the pavements were blocked by serried crowds going ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... tottering, and immediately supplied with a chair, into which he sank in an exhausted condition) said, in a feeble voice, that his present shattered state he attributed solely to the never-ceasing strain to which his nerves had been subjected by the continuous Babel of street-noises that invaded the suburban quarter in which he had been induced to take up his residence in the belief that he was ensuring himself a quiet and snug retreat. (Sensation.) From the moment when he was roused from his slumbers in the early morning by Sweeps who came to attend to somebody ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... hansom rarely ventured, and from window over window the inhabitants looked forth in pleased contemplation of the scene. Dyson made his way slowly along, mingling with the crowd on the cobblestones, listening to the queer babel of French and German and Italian and English, glancing now and again at the shop windows with their levelled batteries of bottles, and had almost gained the end of the street, when his attention was arrested by a small shop at the corner, a vivid ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... minutes there was a babel of good-nights and parting sallies, in the midst of which Alex Shelby managed to say to Lloyd in a low tone, "Miss Lloyd, I am coming out to the Valley again a week from to-day. If you haven't any engagement for the afternoon will you go horseback-riding ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the classics, another confides to his neighbors ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... infancy can ever master it. It is said that, in Basque, "you spell Solomon, and pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar." Its antiquity is so great that one legend calls it the "language of the angels," and another says that Tubal brought it to Spain before the lingual disaster at Babel! And still another relates that the devil once tried to learn it, but that, after studying it for seven years and learning only three words, he gave ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... description, whom he mentions elsewhere; and seems to borrow his ideas from a similar object, some tower, or temple, that was sacred to him. Orion was Nimrod, the great hunter in the Scriptures, called by the Greeks Nebrod. He was the founder of Babel, or Babylon; and is represented as a gigantic personage. The author of the Paschal Chronicle speaks of him in this light. [267][Greek: Nebrod Giganta, ton ten Babulonian ktisanta—hontina kalousin Oriona.] He ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... figuratively speaking, for actual sight was quite impossible with the quick sympathetic tears that sprang to every one's eyes. Opinions flew about like papers in the wind, and Mrs. Dering could not make herself heard in the babel of tongues. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... commenced, awful and terrible, between the Kurus and the Pandavas, both of whom were inspired with the desire of winning great fame. A perfect Babel of voices of the shouting warriors was incessantly heard there, O royal Bharata, as they addressed one another by name. He who had anything, by his father's or mother's side or in respect of his acts or conduct, that could furnish matter for ridicule, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and majestically moved out into the stream. Shouts, cries, final words, hoarse orders from the officers—a perfect babel of sounds—filled the air, but the silently-curling smoke-wreaths were the only suggestion of life from that strangely indifferent form. He seemed like one so deeply absorbed in his own thoughts that he would have to be ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... America is unfolded from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the 5th century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... bought up at long figures. He had no plans for the future, so we stuck a false moustache on him, corked his eyebrows, and thus disguised kept him smuggled in our rooms for ten days, during which time Bacchus created Babel. And then we had him photographed in various attitudes—singly, and surrounded by groups of admirers—and then we went out with him to the station, saw him in a train for Liverpool Street, and—that's all. He was never viewed or heard of again. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... shalt visit us anew: But who without regretful sigh Can say, adieu, and see thee fly? Not he that e'er hath felt thy pow'r. His joy expanding like a flow'r, That cometh after rain and snow, Looks up at heaven, and learns to glow:— Not he that fled from Babel-strife To the green sabbath-land of life, To dodge dull Care 'mid clustered trees, And cool his forehead in the breeze,— Whose spirit, weary-worn perchance, Shook from its wings a weight of grief, And perch'd upon an aspen leaf, For every breath to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... each mud-walled hovel of the outcaste village there is the same stir of the returning day. Sheeted corpses stretched on the floor suddenly come to life and the babel of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... bright bloom faded in an instant and a kind of frenzy seized her. She had a wild desire to get down out of the carriage and run with all her might away from this hateful scene. The sky seemed to have suddenly clouded over and the hum and buzz of voices about seemed a babel that would never cease. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... characters of all who went and came was posted, and around whom some fifty representatives of half as many nations were now clustered in a clamorous throng, filling the air with a confusion of tongues that had some probable affinity to the noises which deranged the workmen of Babel. It appeared, by parts of sentences and broken remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron, whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese laws, a rumor was rife among these truculent travellers, that Balthazar, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... jugglers and mountebanks plied their trades. The cries of the water-carrier and vender of sweet-meats mingled with those of the inevitable beggar who asked alms for the love of God; invoking blessings or curses upon the head of him who gave or refused him a centavo. Babel reigned. Donkies brayed, geese and turkeys hissed and gobbled, chickens cackled and fighting-cocks, tethered by the leg, strutted and crowed, while brown children of all sizes and ages laughed and screamed as they chased one another in and out among the crowds ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the Strand—dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights! And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and divers taunts that otherwise might ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... hearing these strange noises: 'Bou, bou, grou, ou, ou, houic, houic, briff, briffnac, nac, nac, fouix, fouix, trr, trr, trr, trr, za, za, zaaa, brr, brr, raaa, ra, ra, ra, fouix!' so well blended together in a babel of sound, that a council at the Hotel de Ville could not have made a greater hubbub. During this tempest a little mouse, who was not old enough to enter parliament, thrust through a chink her inquiring snout, the hair on which ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... by his merely intellectual qualifications. To leave the everyday circle of society, in which the literary and scientific rarely— the rest never—break through the spell of personality;—where Anecdote reigns everlastingly paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to generalize the Babel of facts, and to control temporary and individual phenomena by the application of eternal and overruling principles, is unintelligible to many, and disagreeable to more;—to leave this species of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... had understood Greek,—which was doubtful,—he could scarce have comprehended this babel. He struggled vainly; tears started to his eyes. Then he committed a blunder. Not attempting a protest, he thrust a small hand into his crimson belt and drew forth a handful of gold as ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... time the lever was turned. But in five seconds the bow of the Titan began to lift, and ahead, and on either hand, could be seen, through the fog, a field of ice, which arose in an incline to a hundred feet high in her track. The music in the theater ceased, and among the babel of shouts and cries, and the deafening noise of steel, scraping and crashing over ice, Rowland heard the agonized voice of a woman crying from the bridge steps: "Myra—Myra, where are you? ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... that issued from the officers' mess-house testified. Round after round of cheers followed the noisy toast, filling the night with the merry uproar that echoed far and wide. A confusion of voices succeeded these; and then by degrees the babel died down, and a single voice made itself heard. It spoke with easy fluency to the evident appreciation of its listeners, and when it ceased there came another hearty cheer. Then with jokes and careless ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... of the hill above the fountain and temple of the Nymphs is a most puzzling building, the Tourmagne. It is of Roman construction, a great tower like that of Babel, in stages, the upper stage with semicircular recesses that sustained the external wall, now in part fallen. No one can tell its purpose. It has clearly been utilised since its first construction by the Romans, by making it an angle tower of some other building, the foundations ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... moment when the Calais-Douvres, slipping between the waves, ran close in to the granite pier. She accomplished the feat safely, and was quickly made fast. The gangway was thrown across, and there was a mad rush of passengers hurrying to get ashore. A babel of shouting voices broke loose: "London train ready!" "Here you are, sir!" "Luggage, sir?" ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And tho a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... once could not endure That finish'd Babel should those men secure, Whose pride design'd that fabric to have stood Above the reach of any second flood; 30 To thee, his chosen, more indulgent, he Dares trust such ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of spare space, will be the ideal setting for my treasures. There be it that the public shall throng to steep itself in the splendour of possibilities, beholding, under glass, and perhaps in excellent preservation, Penelope's web and the original designs for the Tower of Babel, the draft made by Mr. Asquith for a reformed House of Lords and the notes jotted down by the sometime German Emperor for a proclamation from Versailles to the citizens of Paris. There too shall be the MS. of that fragmentary 'Iphige'nie' which Racine laid aside so meekly at the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... first really great ruler of the country." It is significant, as Mr. T. G. Pinches points out, in his Old Testament in the Light of the Records from Assyria and Babylonia, that just as in Genesis it is stated that "the beginning of his (Nimrod's) kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh," so Merodach is stated, in the cuneiform records, to have built Babel and Erech and Niffer, which last is probably Calneh. The Hebrew scribes would seem to have altered the name of Merodach in two particulars: they dropped ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... tribe can not understand each other.[181] This segregation of dialects is due in great part to the inflexibility of Indian character, and his isolated and narrow round of thought and life. When and where the Babel existed, whence the many branches of the great Tupi family separated, we know not. We only know that though different in words, these languages have the same grammatical construction. In more than one respect the polyglot American is antipodal to the Chinese. The language of the former is richest ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... surrounded Hermia, all shouting at once, and waving their arms under Hermia's nose. She attempted replies, but the noise was deafening and no one listened to her. Peasants working in the fields nearby who had heard the crash came running and added their numbers and temperaments to the Babel. The gate-keeper thrust herself violently into the midst of the group pointing at the wreck of the machine and at Hermia, her remarks as unintelligible to the train crew ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... noises heard nowadays were not yet in existence. Still it was noisy, a perfect bedlam of jabbering foreigners, who crowded this busiest of busy streets as they crowded no other section of this cosmopolitan city. Von Barwig, usually so sensitive to noises, apparently did not notice this babel. Curiously enough his thoughts were miles away from New York, and the idea that he was going to sell his violin to buy a breakfast was not borne in upon him with sufficient force to prevent his thinking of something else. Although it ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... the room with palpable suddenness—like a blinding flash, numbing for a moment the senses of all who had been taken by surprise. The reflex of the shock was manifested in a very babel of incoherent shouts, jostlings and stumblings and sharp collisions ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... August, 1771, we find him once more in Milan, he is on cordial terms with all his fellow-artists, and hard at work composing a dramatic serenata for the approaching marriage of the Archduke Ferdinand with Princess Beatrice of Modena. He is working amidst a Babel of sounds, for in the room above dwells a violinist, in the room below another, whilst a singing-master lives next door, and an oboist opposite. But he is not dismayed. 'It is capital for composing,' he writes to Marianne; 'it gives ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Paris we were sorrowful and wrapped in thought. This Babel is not our home. Emile casts a scornful glance towards the great city, saying angrily, "What a time we have wasted; the bride of my heart is not there. My friend, you knew it, but you think nothing of my time, and you pay no heed to my sufferings." With steady look and firm voice I reply, "Emile, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the Scamandre was immediately surrounded by a multitude of caicks filled with bearded Turks, veiled women, and various coloured bales. Upon deck rose a deafening Babel of voices,—the sailors swore, the women screamed, and the porters fought, until at length quiet was restored, and one hundred and eighty-six new Mussulman passengers came on board the steamer. Amid the caicks ranged along the sides of the vessel, was one much more richly freighted than the rest; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... forgotten me, and had sprung into the hall. At almost the same instant, someone must have discovered that the door was unlocked, for a sudden draught eddied through the passage. Then there was a confused babel of voices, to which I did not listen. I was busy swinging up the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... and river, and our curiosity fed by the countless strange glimpses into the secrets of nature afforded us as we wended our way through that lonely wilderness. We slept well at night in spite of the babel of sounds which rose and fell around us; awoke in the morning refreshed and hungry; and so entered upon another day. The life was by no means one of hardship; and what was most important of all, Smellie was slowly but steadily regaining strength and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... hand a cutworm, a young tuber the size of a marble and a stem cut half off, which he was willing to sacrifice because of our evident interest. But the two friends who had met were held apart by the babel of tongues. ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... was no idle one. Even as he spoke there was a tramping, a rush of feet, and a babel of confused, frightened voices, and into the room flocked the dwellers of the hamlet,—men, women, and children, all with wind-tossed hair and ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... was within, and would see Mr. Verdant Green. So that young gentleman, trembling with agitation, and feeling as though he would have given pounds for the staircase to have been as high as that of Babel, followed the servant upstairs, and left his father, in almost as great a state of nervousness, pacing the quad below. But it was not the formidable affair, nor was Mr. Slowcoach the formidable man, that Mr. Verdant Green had anticipated; ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... And when she opened the door, there stood Betty, and I was in Eden. The moist glow of her eyes, the faint blush of her cheeks, the nervous fluttering of her voice, spoke more eloquently than all the tongues of Babel could have spoken, and I could not help comparing her welcome with that which Maxy Hamilton had given me at ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... big ones. They are mostly either incorrigibly bellicose themselves, like Montenegro, or standing temptations to the big Powers, like Bosnia and Herzegovina. They multiply frontiers, which are nuisances, and languages, which have made confusion since the building of Babel. The striking contrast between the United States of North America and the disunited States of South America in this respect is, from the Pacifist point of view, very much in favor of the northern unity. The only objection to large political units ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... illustration. On some occasions, however, the author assumes a more elevated tone, and his verse rises to a degree of poetic beauty, deepened by the moral reflection so characteristic of the Spaniards. At other times, his pieces are disfigured by such a Babel-like confusion of tongues, as makes it doubtful which may be the poet's vernacular. French, Spanish, Italian, with a variety of barbarous patois, and mongrel Latin, are all brought into play at the same time, and all comprehended, apparently with ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... became known that San Martin had left Peru for ever, and instantly men's tongues were loosed in a babel of talk. Some few judged him rightly; but for the most part his splendid services were forgotten, and with sickening haste people turned their gaze toward Bolivar, the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... meaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities can never grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeeding generations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving them from the Babel of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... commenced praying with might and main. In the passage near our room stood several barrels, filled with broken dishes, which at every lurch went banging from side to side, jarring the board partition and making a horrible din. I shall not soon forget the Babel which kept ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... mistake. When the sacred writer wishes to tell us the origin of human society, he transports us into Lower Mesopotamia. It is there that he causes the posterity of Noah to build the first great city, Babel, the prototype of the Babylon of history; it is there that he tells us the confusion of tongues was accomplished, and that the common centre existed from which men spread themselves over the whole surface of the earth, to become different nations. The oldest cities known to the collector ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and pushing one another in mad efforts to get closer to the Rostra and to a small group of magistrates, who, with grave faces, were clustered at the foot of its steps. These latter spoke to each other in whispers, but such a babel of sounds swelled up around them that they might safely have screamed ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... raced at once for the launch; a Babel of strange oaths jarred the brooding silence; alarm, almost panic, stirred men's hearts and bubbled forth in wild speech. Under pressure of this new peril the instinct of self-preservation burst the bonds of discipline. The first law of nature may be disregarded by heroes, but the Andromeda's ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... reigned in the camp. The Rancheros sprang to their feet, and hurried hither and thither, each one asking questions, and giving orders, to which nobody paid the least attention, and the babel of English and Spanish that arose awoke the echoes far and near. The chief was the only one who seemed to know what ought to be done. He examined the beds to satisfy himself that the prisoners had really gone, and then his voice was heard above ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon |
