"Childish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had some. She asked me to look in a pocketbook which was in her bosom, and in it I saw two photographs of quite young children, a boy and a girl, with those kind, gentle, chubby faces that German children have. In it there were also two locks of light hair and a letter in a large childish hand, beginning with German words which meant: 'My dear ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... the sisters looked at him out of Agnes's big childish eyes; in her they were both melted and moulded into a single being. A presageful horror crept over him. Sisters! The word had a solemn sound in his ears; it seemed full of mysterious meaning; ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... inflexibly, and then, with a childish flash, "Since you dislike me to feel grateful—I should think you would be glad to let ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... lanes of laughter that our childish rambles knew, Where the roses gave their glories in a ruddy crown ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... country, it was only from the seventeenth century, and particularly under Louis XIV., that court etiquette really became a science, and almost a species of religions observance, whose minutiae were attended to as much as if they were sacramental rites, though they were not unfrequently of the most childish character, and whose pomp and precision often caused the most insufferable annoyance. But notwithstanding the perpetual changes of times and customs, the French nation has always been distinguished for nobility and dignity, tempered with ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Parker's Glossary in his skirt pocket. He began that evening with the Parochial History, article "Langona," and smoked his pipe over it till midnight in a sort of rapture it would be hard to analyse. In fact, no doubt it was made up of that childish delight which most men feel on reading in print what they know perfectly well already. "The eastern end of the north aisle is used as a vestry, and the eastern end of the south aisle is impropriated to the church-warden's use." Yes, that was right. And the inscription on the one marble ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... How childish these and other giants in warfare were, appeared by the breaking out of rivalries and quarrels even in the ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... many ways. "All the same," she persisted, "I think I had better have a nurse, now. I shall feel more comfortable. Ask Miss Jessop if she could come out to me. I believe I could get along with her, now. I'm afraid I was childish, before." ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the Edda, we shall find there also at least as deep a sense of the awfulness and mystery of life, and we shall find a moral element which the Pagans never had. The lives of the saints are always simple, often childish, seldom beautiful; yet, as Goethe observed, if without beauty, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... sheep comes from the hill, Faint sounds of childish play are in the air. The river murmurs past. All else is still. The very graves seem stiller than ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... With childish reverence, my young lips did say The prayer my pious mother taught to me: "O gentle God! oh, let me strive alway Still to be wise, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Antoine, could you read my heart you would see that all I desire is to show to you the love that the world would give me no credit for, that my own children even, thy—thy mother, Antoine, and—and Sara—ah! leave me just now, my dear; I am surely growing old and childish, but I have still enough of the old manhood left not to wish even my grandson to witness my weakness. Leave me, boy, and let us meet at supper in my room. I shall go out presently to see old Pierre, and, if I can, to bring him home with me. ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... the north of Germany: [16] yet he derived some revenue from his silver mines; [17] and his family is celebrated by the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. [18] After the death of this childish princess, Andronicus sought in marriage Jane, the sister of the count of Savoy; [19] and his suit was preferred to that of the French king. [20] The count respected in his sister the superior majesty of a Roman empress: her retinue was composed of knights and ladies; she ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... years in those Islands I have met among the upper classes but one young girl whose conduct offered reason to men to take her lightly. In a pretty, childish way, Filipino girls are coquettes, but they are not flirts. Their conception of marriage and of their duty to their own husbands and their children is a high and noble one. Nevertheless, with innately good and pure instincts, they cannot take half as good care of themselves as ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... crowd; the dauphin, a lovely child, seated on the lap of his mother, and absorbed in the play, repeated the gestures of the actors to his mother as though to explain the piece to her. This careless tranquillity of innocence between the two storms—this childish sport at the foot of a throne, so soon to become a scaffold—this expansion of the heart of the queen, that had been so long closed to joy and security, filled every eye with tears, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... and a criminal waste of conscience that goes on among some of our best Christian people through the want of light and space, room, and breadth, and balance in their consciences. We are all pestered with people every day who are full of all manner of childish scrupulosity and sickly squeamishness in their ill-nourished, ill-exercised consciences. As long as a man's conscience is ignorant and weak and sickly it will, it must, spend and waste itself on the pennyworths of religion and' ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... she went to his room. He had been calling her just before, and when she came he did not know her. He was very ill that day, and he was wandering, and when he saw her he talked some childish ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger language, nor I her childish prattle. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of my father's intimates and an imposing and familiar figure about Washington. He was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a distinction in those days, had been mayor of Mobile and was an unending raconteur. To my childish mind he appeared to know everything that ever had been or ever would be. He would tell me stories by the hour and send me to buy him lottery tickets. I afterward learned that that form of gambling was his mania. I also learned that ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and hatred: the one will let poverty anguish at its door, the other will hound on the vassal against his lord. Papers like the "Fiery Cross," even though such a man as Westlake edit them, serve the cause of hatred; they preach, by implication at all events, the childish theory of the equality of men, and seek to make discontented a whole class which only needs regular employment on the old conditions ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... certain garden some distance from the town, which I granted; and they clubbed their pittances to purchase sweetmeats and fruits. I attended them on this excursion, and was as much delighted as themselves with the pleasure they enjoyed, and their childish gambols. When evening approached we returned homewards, and on the way, my boys having fatigued themselves with play, as well as eaten much sweets and fruit, were seized with extreme thirst, of which they heavily complained. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... faith in the fixity of the past to the future by observation led to intellectual development. The exercise of faith and the imagination even in unproductive ways prepared the way for broader service of investigation. But these standing alone could permit nothing more than a childish conception of the universe. They could not discover the reign of law. They could not advance the observing and reflecting powers of man; they could not develop the stronger qualities of his intellect. Individual ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... that in the pines her echo lived, and Janice could almost hear now the childish wail of the little one as she shouted, "He-a! he-a! he-a!" to the mysterious sprite that dwelt in the pines and mocked her with its voice. Blind and very deaf, Lottie had been wont to run fearlessly out upon the broken dock and "play with ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... of arguments to bear upon a single point, was to him as impossible as the power of devising an elaborate strategical combination to a dashing Prince Rupert. The reasonings in the Essay are confused, contradictory, and often childish. He was equally far from having assimilated any definite system of thought. Brought up as a Catholic, he had gradually swung into vague deistic belief. But he had never studied any philosophy or theology whatever, and he accepts in perfect unconsciousness ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... the destined silences. Yes, it was gone; the clattering coach was gone, And those it bore I pitied even to tears, Because they must go forth, nor see the lights, Nor hear the chiming bells. In after days, Remembering of the childish envy and The childish pity, it has cheered my heart To think e'en now pity and envy both It may be are misplaced, or needed not. Heaven may look down in pity on some soul Half envied, or some wholly pitied smile, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... quickly becomes rabbinism, almost cabalism. The differences are huge and sprout up in all directions. Nor do I see anything save a flaming up of colonial passion in the current efforts to fit him into a German frame, and make him an agent of Prussian frightfulness in letters. Such childish gabble one looks for in the New York Times, and there is where one actually finds it. Even the literary monthlies have stood clear of it; it is important only as material for that treatise upon the patrioteer ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... allured by mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain, surely, is the net spread in sight ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... foster-mother of Henriette's little girl and to play an important part in her life. But the pair had no idea of that at present. They simply saw a proud and happy mother, and Henriette played with the baby, giving vent to childish delight. Then suddenly she looked up and saw that George was watching her, and as she read his thoughts a beautiful ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... so close together there had been no meeting between them. The White House still gleamed just as brightly over the heath and overlooked his window as at the time when the longing to wander thither had arisen in his childish heart, but the magic glitter which surrounded it then, and for fifteen years after, had now vanished, extinguished by the deepening shadows ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... that Pascal at the age of twelve wrote a dissertation on acoustics suggested by his childish discovery that when a metal dish was struck by a knife the resulting sound could be stopped by touching the vibrating dish ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... went up to the little woman, and kissed her cheek like a sister, as she spoke; while Miss Spong, so utterly unused as she had been for years to the smallest demonstration of affection, looked at first bewildered and aghast, and finally sank down on the chair in a childish fit of crying. I cannot say how much the sight of that poor little old maid's tears affected me! They seemed to speak of such long years of heart-loneliness—such loving impulses strangled by the chill hand of solitude—such weary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... the regulator and confidant of all their joys and hopes. She saw herself again listening, amid her sums, for the welcome voice that would call her away; she saw herself again examining its grave face and striving to calculate, with childish eagerness, if she would have time to build another Tower of Babel or put another tack in the doll's frock before the ruthless iron tongue ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... chair, Laine put his feet on the fender and with half-shut eyes saw other pictures in the fire. The gray dawn of Christmas morning came again, and he seemed to hear the clear, childish voice below his window. Half asleep, he had stirred and wondered what it was, then sat up to listen. The quaint words of the old carols he knew well, but never had he heard them sung as Gabriel was singing them. Shrill and sweet in the crisp, cold air, the ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... parrel of it. The beauty and harmony of things consist in their entire union, and though there should appear many discrepancies and unpleasant discords in several parts, yet all united together, makes up a pleasant concert. Now this is our childish foolishness, that we look upon the gospel only by halves, and this being alone seen, begets misapprehensions and mistakes in our minds, for ordinarily we supply that which we see not with some fancy of our own. When the blood of Jesus Christ is holden ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... help, they must be put to death by the worldly sword, as St. Paul says, Romans xiii: "The worldly ruler bears the sword, and serves God with it, not as a terror to the good, but to the evil." [Rom. 13:3 f.] The fourth class, who are still lusty, and childish in their understanding of faith and of the spiritual life, must be coaxed like young children and tempted with external, definite and prescribed decorations, with reading, praying, fasting, singing, adorning of churches, organ-playing, and such other things as are ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to the blazing logs; "speaking, we found, always broke the spell, so we agreed to keep perfect silence for as long a time as possible. You must try it, Tom, some day, for although it may seem to you a childish thing to do, there are many childish things which, when done in a philosophical spirit, are deeply interesting and profitable ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... back from the standpoint of knowledge which we have reached in the present war to the notions which prevailed in the past, they seem to us hollow and even childish. Seventy years ago, Buckle, in his History of Civilisation, stated complacently that only ignorant and unintellectual nations any longer cherished ideals of war. His statement was part of the truth. It is true, for instance, ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was too young to fully appreciate her loss, and although she grieved in her childish way for the sweet, smiling mother who had so loved her, it was a child's blessed evanescent grief, which could find consolation in her pets ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... as she read it, and cried in a sobbing, frightened, childish way, much to her husband's distress. Mrs. Shaw was breakfasting in her own room, and upon him devolved the task of reconciling his wife to the near contact into which she seemed to be brought with death, for ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning To other times shall slumber in the past, And be a child again, and die at last In the protecting arms of our great Mother Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother. Thou in thy sorry dreams, I in my childish grief, Thy heart in tears, mine eyes amazed with tears, Thy sorrow rich with the repining years, My sorrow frail as childhood, and as brief." Who art thou, haunting boy, nocturnal elf? "I am the Dead; the Dead that was thyself." Then falls a darkness on that starless ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... but of faction. Religious controversy on Romish doctrines has long ceased to exist. Romanism has no grounds on which a controversy can be sustained. It cannot appeal to the Scriptures, which it shuts up; and it will no longer be suffered to appeal to its mere childish pretence of infallibility. Its only ground in Ireland is party; and the present unhappy condition to which it has reduced Ireland, exhibits the natural consequences of indulgence to Popery, and the only means by which its spirit can be rendered consistent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the sum would have been expended upon perfectly useless and absolutely childish devices. It might be that he would buy toy pistols and paper caps for himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... replied: "How, brother, can a man of worth, True to his vows, of noble birth— A man like me, commit a sin The lordship of the land to win? No slightest shade of fault I see, O tamer of thy foes, in thee. But ne'er shouldst thou in childish thought The queen thy mother blame in aught. O brother wise and sinless, know The sacred laws would have it so, That from good wife and son require Obedience to their lord and sire. And we are all the king's, for thus The virtuous ever reckon us: Yea brother, be it ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... father, or might relieve his mother's pain. Whenever it would have been out of tune, and out of time, his patient devotion and watchfulness came into play, and made him an admirable nurse. Then Margaret was almost touched into tears by the allusions which he often made to their childish days in the New Forest; he had never forgotten her—or Helstone either—all the time he had been roaming among distant countries and foreign people. She might talk to him of the old spot, and never fear tiring him. She had been afraid of him before he came, even while she had longed for ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... them as they talked, at first with the same intent, peculiar expression she had worn in the sick room, but gradually her features relaxed as she heard their harmless chatter, subdued so as not to disturb the sufferer near by, but full of little childish gossip and kindly details of daily life. After talking for a few minutes about Dr. Alphege's last report, which was that some slight improvement was visible, Clothilde asked her sister with much interest if she had finished the novena ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Germany you wonder how he can submit so patiently to the pettiness and multiplicity of his written ones. He vaguely feels the pressure and criticism of your indefinite code of manners; you think his elaborate system of titles, introductions, and celebrations rather childish and extremely troublesome. If you have what the English call manners you will take the greatest care not to let him find this out, and in course of time, however much you like him on the whole, you will lose your ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... to this childish chatter. But Jeanne talked to relieve her excited brain. She launched out again, giving the minutest details about the ball, and investing each little incident with ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... passed away. She felt a certain delight even in the thought that she was sacrificing plenty and comfort for her Truth, and was entering on an unknown and wandering existence. Perhaps there was in this a little also of childish curiosity as to what that life would be, off somewhere in remote regions, among wild beasts and barbarians. But there was still more a deep and trusting faith, that by acting thus she was doing as the Divine Master had commanded, and that henceforth He Himself would watch ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... when any little grief pressed upon his childish heart, to go and pour out his troubles on the breast of his mother; but he instinctively shrunk from confiding this to her; for, child as he was, he knew it would make her very unhappy. He therefore gently stole into the house, crept quietly up to his ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... red-rimmed eyes—never looked up at his master's future brother-in-law without looking away again rather uneasily, and thoughtfully drilling holes in the grass with his long sharp-pointed cane. Even the bride herself—the pretty, innocent girl, with her childish shyness of manner—seemed to be affected like the others. Doubt, if not distress, overshadowed her face from time to time, and the hand which her lover held trembled a little, and grew restless, when she accidentally caught her ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... were more than a hundred years old, they were so short that the little mountain-climber who stood by them was taller than they. After stroking one of the trees with her hand, Harriet stood for a time in silence, then out of her warm childish nature she said, "What brave little trees to live up here where they have to stand all the time in the snow!" Timber-line, with its strange tree statuary and treeless snowy peaks and crags rising above it, together with its many kinds of bird and animal life and its flower-fringed snowdrifts, ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... not, then, make use of my friendship, it appears," replied Krantz. "I have risked my life with you before now, and I am not to be deterred from the duties of friendship by a childish foreboding on your part, the result of an agitated mind and a weakened body. Can anything be more absurd than to suppose, that a secret confided to me can be pregnant with danger, unless it be, indeed, that my zeal to assist you may lead ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... wooden sound, And fill the hearing with childish glee Of rhyming riddle, or story found In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-bound Old book of ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... it shall, and nobody shall say a word against its little girly's mother." Eunice rose from her chair, and patted Dan on the head as she passed to the adjoining room. He caught her hand, and flung it violently away; she shrieked with delight in his childish resentment, and left him sulking. She was gone two or three minutes, and when she came back it was in quite a different mood, as often happens with women in a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hand, and turning me round, examined my countenance with critical minuteness, neither moved by my childish indignation nor my tears. "A strong-limbed straight-made fellow, this. I did not think that Edward could be the father of such an energetic-looking boy. He's like his grandfather, and if I mistake not, will be just ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... considerably to the southward of North Cape. We had already seen several ships, and you would hardly imagine with what childish delight my people hailed these symptoms of having again reached more "Christian latitudes," as ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... a power before which you shall shrink away and throw yourselves trembling into the dust. There shall go by no day in which I and my friends shall not win soldiers for our side, and the silly, simple fool, Marie Antoinette, makes it an easy thing for us. Go on committing your childish pranks, which, when the time shall threaten a little, will justify the most villanous deeds and the most shameless acts, and I will keep the run of all the turns of the times, and this fine young queen cannot desire that we should look at the world with such simple eyes as she does. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... was thought and done and taught in order to agree with the silly story of the "fall of man in the Garden of Eden," which every one acquainted with the simple rudiments of science or the history of the races knows to be a childish legend of an undeveloped people. Instead of a "fall" from perfect beginnings, there has been and is a constant rise in the moral as well as in the mental and physical conditions of man. The type is higher, the race nobler and ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... opposite kind. When I delivered, as I did recently, a series of addresses on socialism to various meetings in America, I approached the subject in the manner in which I have approached it here. I began with the process of production pure and simple, and I showed how crude and childish, as applied to production in modern times, was the analysis of Marx and all the earlier socialists. I showed, as I have shown here, that, the amount of labour being given, the quantity and quality of wealth that will result from its exercise ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... known to Sir William and to Mr. Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects, while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... can, while the people entertain a just idea of the nature of civil government, and are upon their guard against the daring encroachments of arbitrary, despotic power. The people were inclin'd to disperse, and did disperse, in the beginning of this childish dispute; as appeared by the evidence of Mr. Parker: And notwithstanding the mutual animosity, if the reader pleases, which afterwards arose between the centry and them, they would have finally dispers'd, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... And through our still confronting foes once fought their way to peace. 'Twixt woe and weal, a balm to heal our every wound they found, An outlet for each pool of strife, that whirls us round and round. And if perhaps their childish time discerned not all aright,— While Fancy her stained windows reared between them and the light,— That in these clearer latter days 'tis given to thee to know, Then seek the spirit they received, and bid the letter go. Thy heart unto its Lord unlock; and shut thy closet's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... he knew. Lucy's comments were very characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would have provoked David but for its childish naivete. Many of the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ready to wait. Day after day we discussed our little plans, with Hetty for our confidante. On our drives we spied out pretty cottages that we thought might suit young people of small means; we devised all sorts of delightful schemes and childish economies. We were Strephon and Chloe to be sure. A cot and a brown loaf should content us! Gumbo and Molly should wait upon us (as indeed they have done from that day until this). At twenty, who is afraid of being poor? Our trials would only confirm our attachment. The "sweet sorrow" ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against the Revolution. But there are two political observers at least who see that Monarchical Europe is making a mistake—Kaunitz and Cowper. "The French," observes Cowper to Lady Hesketh in December, 1792, "are a vain and childish people, and conduct themselves on this grand occasion with a levity and extravagance nearly akin to madness; but it would have been better for Austria and Prussia to let them alone. All nations have a right ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... it to many Horatian students the most popular of his conversational works. It abounds in passages of finished beauty; such as his comparison of verbal novelties imported into a literature with the changing forest leaves; his four ages of humanity—the childish, the adolescent, the manly, the senile—borrowed from Aristotle, expanded by Shakespeare, and taken up by Keats; his comparison of Poetry to Painting; his delineation of an honest critic. Brief phrases which have become classical abound. The "purple patch" sewn on to ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... shaking his thin body, he looked even smaller and more vulnerable. Shann drew his knees up close under his chin. The hood of his woodsman's jacket was pushed back in spite of the chill of the morning, and he wiped the back of his hand across his lips and chin in an oddly childish gesture. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... parents, and toward each other—never an improper word; never an improper action; never riotous; never disobedient. They approach you with confidence, yet with modesty, and are respectful even in the mirth of childish play. Around the mansions of these people universally are pleasure-grounds, permeated with delightful promenades through parterres of flowers and lawns of grass, covered with the delicious shade thrown from the extended limbs and dense foliage of the great trees. These ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... down to the stream for water, and in the few moments that he was gone his mind worked swiftly. He believed that he understood, perhaps even more than the girl herself. There was something about her that was so sweetly childish—in spite of her age and her height and her amazing prettiness that was not all a child's prettiness—that he could not feel that she had realized fully the peril from which she was fleeing when he found her. He had guessed that her dread was ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... having been sold. Rudolph Baumbach deals with a wonderland which is all his own, though he suggests Hans Andersen in his simplicity of treatment, and Heine in his delicacy, grace, and humour. These are stories which will appeal vividly to the childish imagination, while the older reader will discern the satirical or humorous application ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... knew—father, friend, comrade, adviser—standard of men and morals—all and more was his beloved uncle. No thought of his heart but he had given him, and never once had he been misunderstood. He could put his arm about his uncle's neck as he would about his mother's and not be thought effeminate or childish. And the courtesy and dignity and fairness with which he had been treated; and the respect St. George showed him—and he only a boy: compelling his older men friends to do the same. Never letting him ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... But sometimes her anguish would find an outlet in strange sounds, something between a cry and a musical note,—such as none had ever heard her utter before. These were old remembrances surging up from her childish days,—coming through her mother from the cannibal chief, her grandfather,—death-wails, such as they sing in the mountains of Western Africa, when they see the fires on distant hill-sides and know that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... certain facts that lent probability to that thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost ready to admit it, as an odious but decisive denouement. The early dawn found me struggling still in this mental anguish, calling up my recollections, examining in a childish way the most minute circumstances that might tend to confirm or to banish my suspicions. Excess of fatigue, brought on at last two hours of prostration, from which I emerged with a better command of my reason. ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... with a miserly rich man. A fool everyone beats. He is a liar and a despicable man. A coward fears even his own shadow. This old man has become quite silly and childish. A learned man undertook an important scientific work. Only saints have the right to enter here. He only is the great, the powerful (One). It is not the legend about the beauty Zobeida. After an infectious disease the clothes of the patient ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... I'd numbered, ere the fearful man, They told me was my father, met mine eyes. One morning 'twas, when with a stroke I saw him Sign four death-warrants. After that I ne'er Beheld him, save when, for some childish fault, I was brought out for chastisement. O God! I feel my heart grow bitter at the thought. Let ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... boxes, photographs of blonde girls, bayonets, hand bombs, ... everything dead thrust into the ditches, both men and horses, the latter smelling earlier and stronger than the former. (The more I look at dead bodies, the more childish and improbable does the old idea of personal immortality appear to ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... her composure. But I own I felt disappointed in her. It seemed such a paltry thing to be disingenuous over. She had deliberately acted a fib before me; and why? Merely because she preferred the kitchen to the pantry tap. It was childish. 'But servants are all the same,' I told myself. 'I must take Mrs. Carkeek as she is; and, after all, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to brook withholding the hope from the fainting hearts all the ensuing Sunday, which was a specially trying day, as Nuttie pined for her dear little companion with the pictures, stories, and hymns that he had always enjoyed, and made pretty childish remarks about, such as she began to treasure ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and, despite the old man's strenuous efforts to bow low at every step he took, drew him forward, made him sit down in an armchair, and, in order that he might not get up again, threw her arms round him in childish fashion, which plunged the old fellow into the most unutterable confusion. Naturally, the moment Fanny let him go, and sat down herself, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Spain were quarrelling over the division of Naples and the Campagna barons were quiet, Cesare set out once more in search of conquests. In June he seized Camerino and Urbino, the news of which capture filled the pope with childish joy. But his military force was uncertain, for the condottieri were not to be trusted. His attempt to draw Florence into an alliance failed, but in July Louis of France again invaded Italy and was at once bombarded with complaints from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... whom they had lured to proffer them divine honours were exchanging obeisance for scorn and worship for shame; that holy rites were being accounted sacrilege, and fixed and regular ceremonies deemed so much childish raving. Fear was in their souls, death before their eyes, and one would have supposed that the fault of one was visited upon the heads of all. So, not wishing Odin to drive public religion into exile, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... remarkable culture. He owned a small vineyard, and had a picturesque chateau, which he inherited from his ancestors, among the hills. Pretty Rosalie was without money. She had neither fortune nor education. She sprang from a lower class than her husband; but her young and childish face possessed so rare an order of beauty that it would be impossible for any man to ask her where she came from, or what she did. Maurice D'Albert loved her at once. He married her when she was little more than ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... hunting its pre-eminence. It is on record that four thousand years ago the ancient emperors of China started periodically on hunting expeditions. They thus sought relief from the monotony of life in those days; in the days of the Stuarts, in England, royalty found pleasure in shows which were childish and even immoral. Of course in barbarous countries all savages used to hunt for food. For them hunting was an economic necessity, and it is no slander to say that the modern hunt is a relic of barbarism. It is, indeed, a matter of surprise to me that this cruel practice has not ceased, but still ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... grasp everything. We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us; for of that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... The infant prince derived great strength from the fruit of Pujani's giving that he ate. One day the infant prince, while borne on the arms of his nurse, saw the little offspring of Pujani. Getting down from the nurse's arms, the child ran towards the bird, and moved by childish impulse, began to play with it, relishing the sport highly. At length, raising the bird which was of the same age with himself in his hands, the prince pressed out its young life and then came back to his nurse. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the band, however, had yet attained to the age which renders young people ashamed of childish play. When Young and Adams appeared on the scene, Sally, her hair broken loose and the wreath confusedly mingled with it, was flying round the square with Dolly Young on her shoulder, and chased by Charlie Christian, who ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... young child manifests indisposition to activity, a dislike for play, lifelessness and languor, suspect his habits, if there is no other reasonable cause to which to attribute his unnatural want of childish sprightliness. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... exclaimed the youth, grasping a hand that was reluctantly extended. "I meant it not in unkindness; but indeed I have ever had the conviction strongly impressed on my spirit. I know I appear weak, childish, unsoldierlike; yet can it be wondered at, when I have been so often latterly deceived by false hopes, that now my heart has room for no other tenant than despair. I am very wretched," he pursued, with affecting despondency; "in the presence of my companions do I admit it, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... mere male relate all the pretty childish things that were done and said to baby, and of baby, before the inevitable squalling began, and baby was taken away to be consoled ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... I remember in my childish years being greatly struck with that passage in the Bible, where it is written, "But I say unto you, that, for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account in the day of judgment:" and, as I was very desirous of conforming myself to the directions of the sacred volume, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... lost to her sense of hearing. About midnight the glare of a candle crossed her eyes, and she was broad awake in an instant. On rising in her berth she found Nanny Sidley, who had so often and so long watched over her infant and childish slumbers, standing at her side, and gazing wistfully ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... conscientious work. He could show interest in divers trifles, because in their nothingness (quite contrary to the trifles in which half an hour previous, with painful interest, he had ferreted out crime), they appeared to him as belonging to an innocent, childish world; and if conversation approached more earnest things, he spoke freely, and evidently gave himself quite up to the subject, letting the whole surface of his soul flow out. And this procured him friendship ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... had been frightened. Was there some mysterious life in the thing, after all? Why should these indefinite forebodings come over him as he looked at her!—But he was growing as childish as Beatrice. Surely midnight, a dark wood, a lantern, and a death-mask, with two owls whistling to each other across the valley, were enough to account for any number of forebodings! But Antony shivered, for all that, as he locked the door and hastened back again ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... storms, and good luck always followed me; that with me, therefore, they need fear nothing. The storm would soon cease and the sun would shine to show us the way we should go, for God cares for us and guides us as long as we are trustful and brave, therefore all childish fear must be put away. This little speech did good. Kadachan, with some show of enthusiasm, said he liked to travel with good-luck people; and dignified old Toyatte declared that now his heart was strong again, and he would venture on with me as far as I liked for ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... which terminate the picture above, are here seen only from the waist downwards. The figures of the elect, loving, ecstatic and beautiful, clad in flame-coloured robes, with stars and flowers, as in similar compositions by Fra Angelico, are absolutely sublime, while those of the wicked are almost childish, especially the demons with faces of cats and jackals, with red eyes and mouths, black bodies and clawed feet. How much happier he is in the clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... ignorance by the innate force of the mind. Reason, the great magician, has uplifted its wand; and lo, the creatures of night disappear! It has dispelled the foolish old notions of magic, witchcraft, and miracles. It has overcome the spirit of persecution, the childish conception of original sin, and the doctrine of eternal punishment. It has put an end to bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and all the lower forms of vicious pleasure. It has secularized politics, overthrown the notion of the divine right of kings, and now creates ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... them before she decides. She's still waiting for something, and my head's splitting so I can hardly see what I'm doing." With a final surrender of her arrogance, she grew suddenly confidential and childish. "I'm sick enough to die," she finished despairingly, "and I've got a friend coming to take me to the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... brought as a proof that Flossie was really their prisoner. On lifting the lid it was found to contain a most lovely specimen of both bulb and flower of the Goya lily, which I have already described, in full bloom and quite uninjured, and what was more a note in Flossie's childish hand written in pencil upon a greasy piece of paper that had been used to wrap up some food ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the desire for childish things had passed away, and she raised her grave eyes to the reflected eyes in the mirror, studying ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... General Oliver O. Howard, and was assigned to the Jamestown peninsula in Virginia. There were huddled together thousands of the freedmen,—the unconscious cause of the war, the problem of the future,—simple, half-dazed, a mixture of good and bad, of physical strength, kindly temper, crude morals and childish ignorance. For a time the officials of the Bureau, as best they could, kept order, found work, settled quarrels, and promoted schools. But what was to ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... over his mind, of which power she had herself made a happy experiment. What she had to fear was another herself—I mean a Princess on the same terms with the King as she was, who, being younger than she, would amuse him by new childish playfulness no longer suited to her age, and yet which she (the Duchess) was still obliged to employ. The very contrast of her own untimely childishness, with a childishness so much more natural, would injure her. The new favourite ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... shifts Into the leane and slipper'd Pantaloone, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, His youthfull hose well sau'd, a world too wide, For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice, Turning againe toward childish trebble pipes, And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all, That ends this strange euentfull historie, Is second childishnesse, and meere obliuion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans euery thing. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... historian whose work was published in 1843. He complains most bitterly that the natives bothered the missionaries by trying to give them the benefit of native thought. They wanted to do some of the talking, and said very childish things, and were so intent on their own thoughts that they would not listen to the preachers. But it ought not to have been held to be an offense for a procession of heathen to march to a missionary's house and tell him their thoughts. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the phenomena about which naturalists have a difference of opinion. Some of them say there are vast beds of salt at the bottom which keep the water always impregnated. I think this notion is very childish; and they who hold it offer only childish arguments to support it. Others assert that the salt water of the ocean is a primitive fluid—that it was always as it now is—which you will perceive is giving no reason at all, more than saying, "it is salt, because it was salt always." ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the curse of being twins linked like galley-slaves, were Heather-bells in a childish chorus which piped forth the information "We are the Heather-bells: list to our song," but which was almost ruined by their common desire to get away from each other and lead in two ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... well-grown, but of her face I could see little, since she was all muffled in a great horseman's cloak. The hood of it covered her hair, and the wide flaps were folded over her bosom. She sniffed the chill wind, and held her head up to the rain, and all the while, in a clear childish voice, she ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of this strangely unknown allied people, with its incredible otherworldliness, its broad tolerant charity, its freedom from chilly conventions, its joyous neglect of the hustle and fussiness of Western life, its deep faith, its childish or childlike superstitions, the glorious promise of its future. An interesting—even a fascinating—rather than a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... one sees a child hang back from a nurse, but she moved forward though unwillingly, and so at last they passed from my sight, through the grey trees and the weeping moss, the thin old man stepping doggedly forward, the pretty, gay-clothed childish little figure dragging back. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... even think of this gift without fancying the tiny unskillful fingers as they toilsomely labored over those silks that would catch and twist, and I think of the sweet brow and eyes which bent over the work, and am as sure as if I had seen it of the loving smile which hovered about the childish lips at the thought that she was going to give ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... this, love, for many days," she went on, twining and twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in her fingers, which poor Mrs. Vesey still tries so patiently and so vainly to cure her of—"I have thought of it very seriously, and I can be sure of my courage when my own conscience tells me I am right. Let me speak to him to-morrow—in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... mean that it was Kate Fox, who thus, in childish jest, first discovered that these mysterious sounds seemed instinct with intelligence. Mr. Mompesson, two hundred years ago, had already observed a similar phenomenon. Glanvil had verified it. So had Wesley, and his children. So we have seen, ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... him again for awhile, having some business out in the city, and he was alone in his room for an hour. What was there left to him now in the world? Old as he was, and in some things almost childish, nevertheless, he thought of this keenly, and some half-realised remembrance of "the lean and slippered pantaloon" flitted across his mind, causing him a pang. What was there left to him now in the world? Posy and cat's-cradle! ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... kill me! I knew Albert had told you. Now I won't say a word about it. If he has told it, there is no use of my saying anything," and she covered up her face in a stubborn, childish petulance. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... human life. "From his earliest years," says Mrs. Shelley, "all his amusements and occupations were of a daring, and in one sense of the term, lawless nature. He delighted to exert his powers, not as a boy, but as a man; and so with manly powers and childish wit, he dared and achieved attempts that none of his comrades could even have conceived. His understanding and the early development of imagination never permitted him to mingle in childish plays; and his natural aversion to tyranny prevented him from ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... at our very doors on lower degrees of evidence, and no one exclaims. And yet the decisions of this Catholic tribunal are set aside without hesitation. People think them not even worthy of listening to. The whole affair they count a childish trifling; and with a shrug or a sneer they pass ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... I mind the most is that I don't like it more," said the girl slowly. "Mamma wanted it so. She really loved study. I don't, but if I did—I should love it more than this. This would seem so childish. And if I just wanted a good time, why, then this would seem such a lot of trouble. All the good things here ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... the crowd, and, without any apparent design, attached himself to the steps of Militona and the duenna. He saw them get into their cabriolet, and when the vehicle rolled away on its great scarlet wheels, he hung on behind, as if giving way to a childish impulse, and was whirled through a cloud of dust, singing at the top of his voice the popular ditty of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... understand. He leaped up and trotted to the yard, turning his head and silently coaxing his master to follow him. Sundown, with a childish and most natural faith in Chance's intelligence, followed him to the fence, scrambled through and trailed him out on the mesa. In a little hollow Chance stopped and stood with crooked fore leg. Sundown stalked up. At his feet fluttered his red rooster and not far from ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the glee with which they paraded the battlements, and flung out the ancient banner of the house of Aescendune to the winds, from the summit of the keep, after which they penetrated chamber after chamber, with almost childish curiosity, so new was the idea of such a ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... moment a small face peeped over the top of the wall which divided the garden from that of the next house, and a childish voice asked: ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... might have seen had I cared to look, that that hope only was keeping her alive. She grew more wan and thin month by month. You will agree with me, at least, that such conduct would have driven any one to despair. It was uncalled for; childish; unwomanly. I maintain that she was much to blame. And again, sometimes, in the black, fever-stricken night-watches, I have begun to think that I might have been a little kinder to her. But that really is a "delusion." I could not have continued ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Davis a little comfort and inspirit me to venture with her, by piquing my childish curiosity with the fine sights that were to be seen in London: the Tombs, the Lions, the King, the Royal Family, the fine Plays and Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell within her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which perfectly turned ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Hugh pensively, "and then when I get into a company where no one knows me from Smith the chemist's clerk, a childish resentment comes ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... childish head, And smiled serenely at the light, "And have you found him, then," he said, "My brother who I thought was dead, I lost him in ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... any danger, a childish habit, a Corsican habit, reappeared; he always made a rapid sign of the cross on his breast ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... went on until the time of Sir John Hill's satire, in 1751. This once well-known work is, in my judgment, the greatest compliment the Royal Society ever received. It brought forward a number of what are now feeble and childish researches in the Philosophical Transactions. It showed that the inquirers had actually been inquiring; and that they did not pronounce decision about "natural knowledge" by help of "natural knowledge." But for this, Hill would neither ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... creature on God's earth, my other Margaret. If you want to see me when I am intensely proud and happy, you must see me with her at my side walking in the Park or down the Green Gate at Stafford, with all eyes turning on her because of her surpassing childish beauty. ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... which he did not feel a personal need: had become, as it were, a climate in which only his own requirements survived. This might seem to imply a deliberate selfishness; but there was nothing deliberate about Arment. He was as instinctive as an animal or a child. It was this childish element in his nature which sometimes for a moment unsettled his wife's estimate of him. Was it possible that he was simply undeveloped, that he had delayed, somewhat longer than is usual, the laborious process of growing up? He had ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... could not. Again desperately she pressed her hand to her throat. How would he take it? She wondered. Would he regard it as a mere childish whim? Or would he see that he was dealing with a woman, and a desperate ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Her story tallied in some of its details with that of the two Waterhouse women; she had been haunted by the horned dog, and she added certain descriptions of its conduct that revealed good play of childish imagination.[2] ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... grumbling off to the other end of the world, leaving the wood so quiet and still that the little hammers inside seemed almost as loud as the plop-plop of the first big raindrops on the leaves. But, in spite of secret tremors, he wanted tremendously to hear the thunder speak again. The childish feeling of pursuit was gone. His legs that had been in such a fearful hurry, came to a sudden standstill; and he discovered, to his immense surprise, that he ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... island of Unamok there was no word of the ship, nor in Kadiak, nor in Atognak. And so I came one day to a rocky land, where men dug great holes in the mountain. And there was a schooner, but not my schooner, and men loaded upon it the rocks which they dug. This I thought childish, for all the world was made of rocks; but they gave me food and set me to work. When the schooner was deep in the water, the captain gave me money and told me to go; but I asked which way he went, and he pointed ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my saddle and gathered her another armful of fagots, and laid them on her hearth. I left the old soul shedding such tears of gratitude over that slight service and calling down such childish blessings upon my head that I began to have little doubt that she was no witch, but only a poor and solitary old woman, which to my mind is the forlornest state of humanity. How a man fares without those of his ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits, her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of everything—clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation—at any rate for the female ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish happy days when it had been her constant companion—the shadows of the Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather; and the very atmosphere of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all alone with them, reading the Encyclopaedia and hunting ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... is the test of good evidence. German learning is decidedly imposing. But after all there are Germans and Germans; and with all that there has been of great in German work there has been also a large proportion of what is bad—conceited, arrogant, shallow, childish. German criticism has been the hunting-ground of an insatiable love of sport—may we not say, without irreverence, the scene of the discovery of a good many mares' nests? When the question is asked, why all this mass of criticism ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... to act against public opinion; but on this occasion they were resolute. To hear the voice of authority meet them with the very words wherewith Divine lips had comforted those other sisters, would comfort them, as nothing else could. I remember how from a window we watched the funeral with childish awe and curiosity—the thrill with which we heard a maid announce 'the coffin,' and caught sight of the flapping pall, and tried to realize that old Mr. Brooke was underneath. Then close behind it came the two figures we knew so well, veiled, black, and bent, and clinging together ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to detect the presence of heat in the sun's corona. The most familiar of these lesser inventions is the Phonograph by which sounds are made self-recording and capable of being repeated. While this curious invention—almost childish in its simplicity—is as yet little more than a plaything, and has proved of small utility, it makes, nevertheless, a strong appeal to the imagination when we reflect that by its aid the voice of any human being may be transmitted to ages far in the future, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Italian, as with the most brilliant hostess in London. And he always found fashion and ceremony a bore. He was so great a favourite in England that he had been given that most English of titles, a knighthood, just as though he were very rich, or political, or a popular actor. In a childish way it amused him, and he was pleased with it. But though he was remarkable for his courtly tact, he loved most of all to be absolutely free and Bohemian, to be quite natural among really sympathetic, witty, or beautiful friends. He liked to say ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... adage, to give is more fun than to receive. Especially if you have wit enough to give to those who don't expect it. Surprise is the most primitive joy of humanity. Surprise is the first reason for a baby's laughter. And at Christmas time, when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavor of our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we once heard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcels being tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised—a ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley |
