"Swaddling clothes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the rigidity of law, and, indeed, without one of them, the Fiction of Adoption which permits the family tie to be artificially created, it is difficult to understand how society would ever have escaped from its swaddling clothes, and taken its first steps towards civilisation. We must, therefore, not suffer ourselves to be affected by the ridicule which Bentham pours on legal fictions wherever he meets them. To revile them as merely fraudulent is to betray ignorance of their peculiar office in the historical development ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... that to do with it? With these little swords" (waving his brush), "we'll fight for nature-light, truth light, and sunlight against a world in arms—no, worse, in swaddling clothes." ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... to the problem with a strong, fresh mind unhampered by the swaddling clothes of a college training, saw it from a view-point entirely different to that of the doctors. He wanted to know the elementary grammar of human disease. He found that no book dealt with it—nor attempted to deal with it. No recognized department of a medical course took ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... conceive of a man being such a hopeless ass (after serving as a legislative reporter, too) as to imagine that I or any other literary man in his senses would consent to chew over old stuff that had already been in print. If that man weren't an infant in swaddling clothes, his only reply to our petition would have been, "It has been in print." It makes me as mad as the very Old Harry every time I think of Mr. Chew and the frightfully narrow escape I have had at his hands. Confound Mr. Chew, with all my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the rear, some musicians, costumed as Brahmins, with spectacles on their noses, the better to decipher their score, fingered their brass instruments with a weary air, rocking them like infants in swaddling clothes. Actors in the garb of Indians, with painted cheeks, and legs encased in chocolate-colored bandages, were yawning, weary and flabby, and stretching themselves while awaiting the time for them to present themselves upon the stage. Others, dressed like soldiers, were ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... label said, Inscribed upon the baby's swaddling clothes. By the hand him Fortune leads in age more staid; And Valour as a guide before him goes. An unknown band in sweeping vest arraid, With long descending locks, the tapestry shows, Deputed by Corvinus to desire The tender infant from ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... than bricklaying or carpentering. And in America—everywhere in the world but a few theaters in Paris and Vienna—there is nothing seen but journeyman acting. The art is in its infancy as an art. It even has not yet been emancipated from the swaddling clothes of declamation. Yes, you can do well by the autumn. And if you develop what I think you have in you, you can leap with one bound into fame. In America or England, mind you—because there the acting is all poor to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... passage, relating to original sin. Whoever weakens its force, goes straying like the blind man in the sunlight, failing to see his own acts and experiences. Look at the days of our swaddling clothes; in how many ways sin manifests itself in our earlier years. What an amount of switching it requires until we are taught order, as it ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... behold! on the table in the middle of the room was a tiny babe. The night-lamp flung a flickering flame across its face, it could not have been more than a couple of months old. It was wrapped up in fine swaddling clothes, a tiny embroidered chemise covered its little body, and its wee round head was covered by a deep cap trimmed with pearls, from underneath which welled forth tiny little ringlets like fine gold thread. Just like those little painted angels of whom you only see the heads peeping ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... to make strong the curse he spake: "Thus perish all of Pleisthenes begot!" For that lies this man here; and all the plot Is mine, most righteously. For me, the third, When butchering my two brethren, Atreus spared And cast me with my broken sire that day, A little thing in swaddling clothes, away To exile; where I grew, and at the last Justice hath brought me home! Yea though outcast In a far land, mine arm hath reached this king; My brain, my hate, wrought all the counselling; And all is well. I have seen mine enemy Dead in the snare, ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... lists of trade with foreign nations, but our ports have been closed. England dictates how much and how little we shall do. We are not a nation of slaves, but brethren with them over the seas. We are not to be kept in the swaddling clothes of infancy. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... service of the "higher education," the freedom to take a part in whatever interests or stimulates her—lies in the fact that it fits her intellectually to be a companion worthy of a child. She should know that unless she does this thing for him he goes forth with his mind still in swaddling clothes, with the chances that it will not be released until relentless life tears ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... thought? At present, genius every where finds trammels; superstition invariably opposes itself to its course; man, straitened with bandages, scarcely enjoys the free use of any one of his faculties; his mind itself is cramped; it appears continually wrapped up in the swaddling clothes of infancy. The civil power, leagued with spiritual domination, appears only disposed to rule over brutalized slaves, shut up in a dark prison, where they reciprocally goad each other with the efferverscence of their mutual ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of competence we might never have attained to in England. Not that we wish to decry England; on the contrary, we would like to return there. But for a visit, merely. Here is our home, now. The young country that is growing out of its swaddling clothes, and that we hope, and we know, will one day be a Brighter Britain ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... afraid; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this is the sign unto you; ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... how you that are a man that knows the world, can talk with that simple fellow. He has been my bubble these twenty years, and to my certain knowledge, understands no more of his own affairs than a child in swaddling clothes. I know he has got a sort of a pragmatical silly jade of a wife, that pretends to take him out of my hands; but you and she both will find yourselves mistaken; I'll find those that shall manage her; ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Raymond Robins, of Chicago, became National President, a position which she has held ever since. To the tremendous task of aiding the young organization till it was at least out of its swaddling clothes she brought boundless energy and a single-minded devotion which admitted of attention to no rival cause. Being a woman of independent means, she was able to give her time entirely to the work of the League. She would be on the road for weeks at a time, speaking, interviewing ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... have died in foreign countries, and whose funeral rites had been performed in an honorary manner by their own relatives, if it turned out that they were not dead, and they returned to their own country, were considered impure, and were only purified by being dressed in swaddling clothes, and treated like new-born infants. We shall, then, be hardly surprised at Juno considering Halcyone to be polluted by the death of her husband Ceyx, although at a distance, and as ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the mind, in its progress from infancy to age. The progress of society depends on the exercise of this right. It is impossible that its powers should be developed, if it were to be forever wrapt up in its swaddling clothes, or coffined as a mummy. The early Christians submitted quietly to the unjust laws of their Pagan oppressors, until the mass of the community became Christians, and then they revolutionized the government. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Only yesterday it was in swaddling clothes. But today it is a vigorous young giant, well braced to battle for what it wants, and knowing precisely what it wants. It holds its international conventions, where world-policies are formulated by the representatives of millions of Socialists. In little Belgium there are ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... to read what is printed on the picture, which is as follows: "The Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;" which is printed at the top of the picture. At the bottom are the following words: "And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."—We then proceed to question them ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... gave with joy her virgin breast; She hid it not, she bared the breast, Which suckled that divinest babe! Blessed, blessed were the breasts Which the Saviour infant kiss'd; And blessed, blessed was the mother Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes, Singing placed him on her lap, Hung o'er him with her looks of love, And sooth'd him with a lulling motion. Blessed; for she shelter'd him From the damp and chilling air; Blessed, blessed! for she lay With such a babe in one blest bed, Close as babes and mothers lie! ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... body and arms are free will cry less than one bound fast in swaddling clothes. He who feels only physical wants cries only when he suffers, and this is a great advantage. For then we know exactly when he requires help, and we ought not to delay one moment in giving him ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... he says: "Everything is good as it comes from the hand of the author of nature; everything degenerated in the hand of man." In another place he breaks out: "Man is born, lives, and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he is stitched into swaddling clothes, at his death he is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form he is held ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... taken in their return cargoes, rendezvoused at Havana, and sailed from thence to Europe. Such was the stinted, fettered and restricted commerce which subsisted between Spain and her possessions in America for more than two centuries and a half, and such were the swaddling clothes which bound the youthful limbs of the Spanish colonies, retarding their growth and keeping them in a condition of abject dependence. The effect was most injurious to Spain as well as to the colonies. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Brother of Suns And all the Glorious Ones That circle skies, He flashed to these The night that brought the birth, The vision of the place And raised his awful face To all their glittering crowds, And cried from where It lay —A tiny ball of fire and clay In swaddling clothes of ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... gone! The babes in swaddling clothes, the girls to be married, the young married couples, the old married couples. And I, I live like a useless weed, coarse and dried, rooted in the rock. If I had the courage, I would say ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... founded, or when Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare wrote his masterpieces. Even at the time our great American republic was put into operation, modern science was still in its swaddling clothes. It is only in the last two generations that it may be said to have reached its true form and begun turning out in rapid succession the multitude of discoveries and inventions which have had such an immense effect in the daily ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... humility and joyfulness; but an infinitely greater one was behind in the event itself, to which he directed the shepherds, in that birth itself of the Holy Child Jesus. This he intimated in these words: "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Doubtless, when they heard the Lord's Christ was born into the world, they would look for Him in kings' palaces. They would not be able to fancy that He had become one of themselves, or that they might approach Him; therefore the ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... patience and kindness in bearing with his ill-tempered wife and his stupid children. When his son was born, he thought that nothing except the most important business of state ought to prevent his being present while his wife washed the child and wrapped it in swaddling clothes. His wife suckled the child herself; nay, she often gave her breast to the children of her slaves, and so taught them to have a brotherly regard for ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... others she revives but slowly, He, who with kindly visage comforts him, Sway'd in that country, where the water springs, That Moldaw's river to the Elbe, and Elbe Rolls to the ocean: Ottocar his name: Who in his swaddling clothes was of more worth Than Winceslaus his son, a bearded man, Pamper'd with rank luxuriousness and ease. And that one with the nose depress, who close In counsel seems with him of gentle look, Flying expir'd, with'ring the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... were there, in the stable, their first child was born to them, a little son. And because there was no cradle to put Him in, the mother made a little warm nest of the hay in the big wooden manger where the oxen had eaten, and wrapped the baby in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... birthed the haunting prostitute, the brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an efficient womanhood, whose strength lies in its freedom and whose chastity was won in the teeth of temptation and not in prison and swaddling clothes. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... The swaddled thing Hath nought of speech, whate'er discomfort come— Hunger or thirst or lower weakling need,— For the babe's stomach works its own relief. Which knowing well before, yet oft surprised, 'Twas mine to cleanse the swaddling clothes—poor I Was nurse to tend and fuller to make white; Two works in one, two handicrafts I took, When in mine arms the father laid the boy. And now he's dead—alack and well-a-day! Yet must I go to him whose wrongful power Pollutes this ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus |
