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Childishly   Listen
adverb
Childishly  adv.  In the manner of a child; in a trifling way; in a weak or foolish manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Childishly" Quotes from Famous Books



... disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying him with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, young people are still so near childhood that they often conduct themselves childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of them fully ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles Grandet ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... only for writers who had visible means of support. Property thus appears as the condition of the freedom of the press, indeed of the morality of the writer. The straightforwardness of the first days of citizen sovereignty only expresses in a childishly frank manner what is today artfully obtained by bonding and stamp taxes. With these main characteristic facts corresponding to our consideration of the Middle Ages we shall have to be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly, childishly happy. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... half embodied, above the flower-cups. Twilight, moonshine, dew, and spring perfumes, are the element of these tender spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted as a poetical enchantment, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... thee! even thy father feasts not with us.' Then shall the boy Astyanax return weeping to his widowed mother,—he who formerly, indeed, upon the knees of his own father, ate marrow alone, and the rich fat of sheep; but when sleep came upon him, and he ceased childishly crying, used to sleep on couches in the arms of a nurse, in a soft bed, full as to his heart with delicacies. But now, indeed, Astyanax,[719] whom the Trojans call by surname (because thou alone didst defend their gates and lofty walls for them), shall suffer many things, missing his dear ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... tarry pigtail, and echoed to strange oaths and wild sea-songs. Men had carved those steps in the passage—thirty-two of them. In the sand of the floor, as I kicked it up with my feet, hoping rather childishly to strike the corner of the chest, I found the hilt and part of the blade of a rusty cutlass, and a chased silver shoe-buckle. I shall take the buckle home to Helen—and yet how trivial it will seem, with all else that I have to offer ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... unreturning on itself is but one part of reason, and that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy at any rate, will never do. Though each one may report in different words of his rotational experience, the experience itself is almost childishly simple, and whosoever has been there instantly recognizes other authentic reports. To have been in that eddy is a freemasonry of which the common password is a "fie" on all the operations of the ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495. He was welcomed and feted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are more childishly delighted with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his retinue.[2] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... first quick survey of the room she knew so well. Her preoccupied maid was childishly questioning the busy Israel as he and the man out on the basement ladder removed bricks from the edges of the ragged opening ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... tallies of our boyish sports,—but here used for how different a purpose! Were these the records of days, or weeks, or months? The only furniture of the cells is a raised platform of wood, the sole bed of the miserable inmate. The Italian visitors, before leaving, childishly vent their useless rage at the sight of these places of confinement, by breaking to pieces the windows and shutters, and scattering their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... who had both a big sister and a mamma, and as he walked across the mesa with Marguerite his small brain was busy with the problem and his childish heart was full of longing. He lifted his serious, puzzled face, with its big, blue, childishly earnest eyes to his sister, who was as absorbed in her problem ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... one curious instant he looked out over the village, his fastidious scholar's soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation, of which Rose understood absolutely nothing. She stood bewildered, silent, longing childishly to speak, to influence him, but not knowing what ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... flushed, childishly miserable face that stared indignantly through glittering tears, rose before his eyes. He forgot that ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... now before us thus admits of a childishly easy refutation on strictly formal grounds, I suspect that in substance the argument in a general way is often relied upon as one of very considerable weight. Even though it is clearly illogical to say that causes cannot give to their effects any perfection which they themselves do not ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... will either wipe it off, or else suck down sweet and bitter together; so is it with some Christians, let God embitter all the sweets of this life, that so they might feed upon more substantiall food, yet they are so childishly sottish that they are still huging and sucking these empty brests, that God is forced to hedg up their way with thornes, or lay affliction on their loynes, that so they might shake hands with the world before ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Reade, as she rose to go, looking straight into her friend's eyes with joyful earnestness, "and I am so glad. Good bye," and she retreated as unceremoniously as she had come, leaving Mrs. Hayden to wonder why she should be so childishly pleased over that invitation. It never occurred to her that Mrs. Reade should be so glad to come merely to tell more about this new way ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... drink the best of wine, and pay court to stately ladies. Thereto ye be served with the best of food that ever king did gain in the world. And were this not so, yet should ye tarry here for your fair wife's sake, before ye risk your life so childishly. Wherefore I do counsel you to stay at home. Your lands be rich, and one can redeem his pledges better at home than among the Huns. Who knoweth how it standeth there? Ye should stay at home, Sire, that ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... You say she loves,—loves me!—me, a boy in age; bred in clownish ignorance; scarcely ushered into the world; more than childishly unlearned and raw; a barn-door simpleton; a plough-tail, kitchen-hearth, turnip-hoeing novice! She, thus splendidly endowed; thus allied to nobles; thus gifted with arts, and adorned with graces; that she should choose me, me for the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... still pale and his voice broke, childishly. "Only, all of a sudden it seems cowardly to me for you to hit Mother. She's not a child. You haven't got the excuse that you're training her. And you know she can't hit you. You're a good fighter, but I notice you don't hit Peter Knight or ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... care; you are very cruel to me." The voice was childishly broken and muffled. He looked down at her, slowly realising that it was a child he still was dealing with—a child with a child's innocence, repelled by the graver phase of love, unresponsive to the deeper emotions, bewildered by the glimpse of the mature role his attitude had compelled ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... weak again, and had once more fallen on her back, stammering, talking childishly. "Besides, nobody loves me," she said. "My father was not even there. And you, my friend, forsook me. When I saw that it was another who was taking me to the piscinas, I began to feel a chill. Yes, that chill of doubt which I often felt in Paris. And that is at least certain, I doubted—perhaps, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Rowlett, over there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... the idea of going to the country, and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought "very English" to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of distinction to what ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... smiled, looked confusedly at his glass and bit his lower lip with three childishly white ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble." His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his victim had, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Often, as Hinatini means, was perhaps thirteen years old, with a grace of carriage, a beauty and perfection of features, a rich coloring no canvas could depict. Her skin was of warm olive hue, with tinges of red in the cheeks and the lips cherry-ripe. Her eyes were dark brown, large, melting, childishly introspective. Her hands were shapely, and her little bare feet, arched, rosy-nailed, were like flowers on the sand. She wore the thinnest of sheer white cotton tunics, and there were flamboyant flowers in the shining dark hair ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... the sun. There had been no rain for days, and the locusts filled the air with their zeeing. The wide field was dotted with golden patches of the arnica blossom, or yellow daisy, as the farmers called it. I wandered through the hot, knee-high grass, picking handfuls of the broad yellow suns, then childishly threw them away, and pulled others, with great heads of sweet red clover, and spears of timothy too. I was so happy. My whole being was filled with causeless peace and gladness. From time to time I glanced back to the shade of the oak trees, to the tall, slender figure, with the dark head ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... recur to the scene which was just over, support himself by the remembrance of the silence that gives consent, and exult as a happy lover. But even this feeling was not without a shade of remorse. Had he not shown himself childishly weak thus to yield up the resolve of many hours of thought to the tears of a pretty girl? How was he to meet his lawyer? How was he to back out of a matter in which his name was already so publicly concerned? What, oh ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... plan, but hung there in the air detached, enigmatic, spectral. Below it, more on humanity's level, could be dimly distinguished, now, the Mission Buildings, apparently in two groups with an open space in the middle. Where are the white people? wondered the Boy, childishly impatient. Won't they come and welcome us? He followed the Esquimaux and Indians from the river up to the left group of buildings. With the heathen jargon beating on his ears, he looked up suddenly, and realized what the white thing was that had shone out so ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... in Touraine with Balzac, as she considered that a journey with him in France would compromise her; but, apparently, in Italy this objection did not apply. She travelled in man's clothes, as Balzac's page, and both he and she were childishly delighted by the mystification they caused. Comte Sclopis, the celebrated Piedmontese statesman, who acted as their cicerone in Turin society, was much fascinated by the charming page. The liking ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... he and Byron had very little in common. Byron disliked his familiarity and his airs of equality; while he himself was not long in discovering Byron to be egotistical to the verge of insanity, childishly vain of his rank, ill-natured, jealous, coarse, inconsiderate, disloyal, a blabber of secrets, mean, deceitful. But the glamour of Byron's fame, the romance that surrounded him, his rank, which Leigh Hunt valued almost pathetically, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... have in the past been so hampered by the traditions of a tortuous diplomacy, so tossed and perturbed within by the cross-currents of intrigue, that they have shown themselves almost childishly incapable of arriving at clear-cut decisions. Old policies, old formulae, old jealousies, old dynastic influences still hold control of the majority of the chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these things it is that have made questions simple in themselves ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... gone. It was still there and he heard it speaking to him, begging him to listen, pleading with him to go somewhere, go back, back to something or other. And there was an arm about his waist and some one was leading him, helping him. He broke down and cried childishly and some one ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... gave me constantly that feeling. So much the more affecting was it, when the sanity of his perceptions and his remembrances returned; but these intervals were of slower and slower occurrence. In this condition, silent or babbling childishly, self- involved and torpidly abstracted, or else busy with self-created phantoms and delusions, what a contrast did he offer to that Kant who had once been the brilliant centre of the most brilliant circles for rank, wit, or knowledge, that Prussia afforded! A distinguished person from Berlin, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... ashore he wandered away among the crowd of spectators. A woman, observing his wan face and feeble walk, called him into her house, and set food and wine before him. He made a hearty meal, but only shook his head when she addressed him, and laughed childishly and muttered his thanks in Spanish when she bestowed a dollar upon him as he left. He watched at the port while boat-load after boat-load of sick came ashore, until at last one containing the surviving ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... miss of romance could be more given to the vapours. You will absolutely destroy the remaining respect I have for you, unless you tell me the truth, and what is underneath in your mind influencing you to behave so childishly." ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... had walked across the meadows by that path on several occasions, and in the dead silence of the brilliant night vivid recollections of a warm summer's evening long past came back to me—sweet remembrances of days when we were childishly happy in each ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... at sundown and slept little that night. Next morning he was in a raging fever and ever he called for "My Badgie!" He seemed at death's door the next day, but a week later he began to mend and in three weeks was strong as ever and childishly gay, with occasional spells of sad ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... enthusiastically of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Moreover, Edwin despised him for his obvious pride in being a bachelor. The Vicar would not say that a priest should be celibate, but he would, with delicacy, imply as much. Then also, for Edwin's taste, the parson was somewhat too childishly interested in the culture of cellar-mushrooms, which was his hobby. He would recount the tedious details of all his experiments to Darius, who, flattered by these attentions from the Established Church, took immense delight in the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and, thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual perfection, universal brotherhood, the power of acquiring what one lacks, and a life composed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Fanny went flying to Grandma now, perfectly, childishly confident that Grandma would and could fix up everything. She began to talk as soon as she opened the door. But what she saw in Grandma's kitchen sent the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... unfailing delight, used to call him, "Codd Colonel." "Tell little F——, that Codd Colonel wants to see him;" and the little gown-boy was brought to him; and the Colonel would listen to him for hours; and hear all about his lessons and his play; and prattle almost as childishly about Dr. Raine, and his own early school-days. The boys of the school, it must be said, had heard the noble old gentleman's touching history, and had all got to know and love him. They came every ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... even if he does not. 'Mamma—mamma Constance!' how pretty that sounds. Oh, that is what I shall always call her from this time—'Constance,' as usual, you know, with 'mamma' before it." And I kept repeating "mamma Constance," childishly. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snored we in the Seven Sleepers' den? 'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... cold on his face as he rushed out. But it brought to his nostrils odors strange and yet strangely familiar. He was oddly light-headed, irresponsible as a child as he shouted and danced and threw himself high in the air, to laugh childishly at the pure pleasure ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... safely in the sun. Once in a long while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat, swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the golden surface into long, parabolic ripples; ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... laughed, but it rang false, for I recollected the detail. It was childishly simple; perhaps that was why the thing bothered me. I noticed that in the growing darkness the forest took on a peculiar look. It had been partly burnt over, leaving the ground black, and some of the trees gaunt, upbristling, and sentinel-like. The place, even in broad daylight, would ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... green-painted flower boxes outside the eleventh-story south window in the New York flat. Outside her window here a great scarlet hibiscus stuck its tongue out at her. Harrietta stuck her tongue out at it, childishly, and turned away. She liked a certain reticence in flowers, as in everything else. She sat down at the desk, took up a sheet of lavender and gold paper and the great lavender plumed pen. The note she wrote to Ken was the kind of note that only Ken ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up, trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs and tears. Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up against a wall—for he was sure of not being observed—and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the iron balustrade bright with the friction ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... serving the purposes of the Tory party, they had brought that party over to the side of Whiggism. It must indeed be admitted that, though both the King and the Prince behaved in a manner little to their honour, though the father acted harshly, the son disrespectfully, and both childishly, the royal family was rather strengthened than weakened by the disagreement of its two most distinguished members. A large class of politicians, who had considered themselves as placed under sentence of perpetual exclusion from office, and who, in their despair, had been almost ready to join ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to his knees, and the escort, dismounting, formed a wide circle of sentries round the little party, the undernote of danger suggested by their presence giving a distinct flavour to the childishly simple affair. The white man's craze for carrying his food many miles from home, in order to eat it on the ground, remains a perpetual bewilderment to the natives, who express their opinion on the matter in all ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... the detective's official card procured him speedy entrance to a parlour in which sat two old gentlemen, who were evidently greatly surprised to see him. They were so much surprised indeed, as to be almost childishly interested, and Starmidge had never had such attentive listeners in his life as these two elderly city men, to whom crime and detention were as unfamiliar as higher finance was to their visitor. They followed Starmidge's ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher

... bride, the steamer, the sights of the bay, crowded with shipping, and the pageantry of the city are dazzling. The luxuries of city life are wonders. Relying on her husband, she glides into her new position. Childishly pleased at the jewels, ornaments, and toilets soon procured in the metropolis, Donna Dolores Valois is soon one of Eve's true daughters, arrayed like ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... next two miles she sang lustily, childishly, with the complete abandon of a girl without a burden. Daddy Skinner was coming home, and God had given her back the student. The remembrance of his eyes thrilled her ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... signed the order, and her command was executed. They took from Anna Leopoldowna her last joy, her only consolation—they took away her son, whose smiling face had lighted her prison as with sunbeams, whose childishly stammered words had sounded to her as the voice ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... and acute analysis; for it will fit in with, and explain his outside observation of those Catholics with whom he has actually come in contact, far better than the preposterous notions that were in vogue fifty years ago. It represents them not as monstrously wicked and childishly idolatrous; but as narrow, extravagant, out-of-date, albeit, well-meaning ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... out his one hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it, as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough for Richard to recognize and follow it, with ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was one of two Belgian girls who since the beginning of the war had acted as infirmieres with the Belgian troops, giving the first aid in the trenches, carrying hot soup to them, and living with them under fire. She seemed hardly more than a child, and spoke childishly in a pitiful way, while she twisted the corner of her jacket so that water came out and made a pool about her on the boards. She dried herself in front of the fire and ate—ravenously— some food which ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... revived the memory of this circumstance,—more painful, alas! for Mother Bunch than Agricola could imagine, for she loved him passionately, and her infirmity had been the cause of that quarrel. Notwithstanding his strength and resolution, Agricola was childishly sensitive; and, thinking how painful that thought must be to the poor girl, a large tear filled his eyes, and, holding out his hands, he said, in a brotherly tone, "Forgive my heedlessness! Come, kiss me." And he gave her thin, pale ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... childishly, Corporal! We have to be on the road again to-morrow. What good purpose will it serve if we allow ourselves to be over-fatigued and so fit for nothing?... After all, a bad night will not last forever!... We must manage to put up with ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... to feel how childishly I felt on the occasion. No person could have said prettier things than myself upon the importance of stoicism concerning the opinion of others, when their applause or censure refers to literary character only; and ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... he said, simply. And, his boy snuggled childishly in his arms, the minister prayed, as he never had prayed before, for the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... now suggested by one of the attendants which seemed to me childishly absurd, but it was nevertheless tried. The plan was to send a man to the prisoners, who was to make them believe that he had obtained entrance into their dungeon upon some other pretence, but that he had in reality come to treat with them ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... done a respectable amount of gallery-slaving, and I have been amusing myself by picking up the topography of ancient Rome. I was going to say Pagan Rome, but the inappropriateness of the distinction strikes me, papal Rome being much more stupidly and childishly pagan than imperial. I never saw a sadder sight than the kissing a wretched bedizened doll of a Bambino that went on in the Ara Coeli on Twelfth Day. Your puritan soul would have longed to arise ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... understand him, because for most of the time I myself am supremely dull, childishly dogmatic, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... deceiving her; but her unhesitating acceptance of his word made him hate the part he was playing. At the same moment a doubt shot up its serpent-head in his own bosom. Was it not he rather than she who was childishly trustful? Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and dismiss once for all the tiresome question of the letter? Considering what her experiences must have been, such trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But the moment his eyes fell on her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... that the daughters of Guitierrez do not ride alone with strangers!' Or even the little Liseta would say, he! he! 'Why does the stranger press my foot in his great hand when he helps me into the saddle? Tell him that is not the way, Pereo.' Ha! ha!" He laughed childishly, and stopped. "And why does Senorita Amita now—look—complain that Pereo, old Pereo, comes between her and this Senor Raymond—-this maquinista? Eh, and why does SHE, the lady mother, the Castellana, shut Pereo ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... he had changed his mind. Warren, meeting Jack in the barn at the usual hour, said "good morning" pleasantly, but Jack merely gave a curt nod. He might be working, but there was no reason why he should pretend to like it, he said to himself childishly. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... as if it were personally responsible for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall. Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror—her flushed cheeks, tumbled hair, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... idea. And the truth of the matter is that I am a superstitious man. I really believe, childishly, that the mechanics and motions of the galaxy may turn themselves upsidedown just to snap man out of his apathy and give ...
— No Moving Parts • Murray F. Yaco

... carried from Carlisle for the arrest of the prisoner who now holds it; this is the very warrant which has been missing since the night of the murder of Wilson; and where, think you, my lords, it was found? It was found—you have heard how foolish be the wise—look now how childishly a cunning man can sometimes act, how blundering are clever rogues!—it was found this morning on the defendant Ray's person while he slept, in an inner breast pocket, which was stitched up, and seemed to have been ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... pinned and braided, but stray little golden feathers had loosened about the soft olive forehead, and the neck of her thin white blouse was open, showing the straight column of her young throat; the effect was unstudied and youthful, almost childishly engaging ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... where he is," she asserted childishly. "He is in Temple Bar, Brooklyn, and he would get them for me quickly, I'm sure. You see, in April we shall need these things for the planting. He told me—" she added this with delicious positiveness, "to remember to let him know if you did not ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... to you that I had reflected about the matter for three days, and drawn up, and learned by heart, this little speech in order to address it to the mistress of ceremonies at the first opportunity. I am really tired of being treated so childishly, when I am a woman, and may ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... up" at all; she sat with a picture torn from an old magazine across her knees—a color-plate of a dancing girl which she meant to copy for herself—poring over it with shining eyes, her breath coming and going softly between childishly curved lips as she devoured every ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... Boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly a consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his method. His manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and dignified Boldwood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now engaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few months ago. We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek. Where there is much bias there must be some narrowness, and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... to explain what they were doing to Adam McNulty, but the old man seemed almost childishly mystified. It was with a feeling of dismay that the boys realized that, in all probability, this was the first time the blind man had ever heard the word radio. It seemed incredible to them that there could be anybody in the world who did not know ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... no doubt; we are commanded so to do; but we ought to love her with moderation and discretion."—"I am afraid I shall be guilty of some sin in spite of all my endeavours," says Joseph; "for I shall love without any moderation, I am sure."—"You talk foolishly and childishly," cries Adams.—"Indeed," says Mrs Adams, who had listened to the latter part of their conversation, "you talk more foolishly yourself. I hope, my dear, you will never preach any such doctrine as that husbands can love their wives too well. If I knew you had such a sermon in the house I am sure ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... all been so peaceful, so elemental and satisfying before: that companionship with the little lonely, aspiring, neglected child. She was so responsive and joyous; so eager to learn, so childishly interested in the fairy tales of another sort of existence that he kept from decay by repeating to her. And then that sudden, upleaping flame in the purple-black eyes. The fierce rush of hot, live blood to the pale face. The grip of those small work-stained ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... content to spend hours over her instructions in chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house. Though really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more, and was so in all her ways. It never occurred to her to run childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did Dennet, who, with little five- years-old Will Streatfield for her guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows and goats milked, watching ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... confess I was in total ignorance of what you tell me. I don't see how, under the circumstances, you can do anything. I was never more surprised in my life, in fact, than when I read your letter. The whole thing is too childishly preposterous. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... childishly rooted in her refusal to preside at his board, unless compelled; and her brow, knit at the remembrance of her fall, was set to meet the further encounter. Joan and Madge and Mysie, with their blooming cheeks, and their kissing-strings new for the occasion, stared as if their strange sister ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... with flowers, but loved to "speak to them, to bend down and say caressing things, to stoop and kiss them, to praise them for their pretty ways of looking up at her as into the eyes of a friend and beloved. There were certain little blue violets which always seemed to lift their small faces childishly, as if they were saying, 'Kiss me; don't go by like that.'" She would sit on the porch, elbows on knees and chin on hands, staring upward, sometimes lying on the grass. Heaven was so high and yet she was a part of it and was something even among the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... looks pale and sickly. Her flaxen curls still dangle prettily upon her shoulders. She expected her mother; that mother has not come. The picture seems strange; she looks childishly and vacantly round,—at the dealers, at Graspum, at the sheriff, at the familiar faces of the old plantation people. She recognizes Harry, and would fain leap into his arms. Nicholas, less moved by what is going on around him, hangs reluctantly behind, holding by the skirt ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... scientific discovery is like that strange and awful manifestation known as the "Milky Way." We see it with our naked eye—numberless stars and a pale, growing blur around and behind them, and we childishly call ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... back on us every week, like the stone of Sisyphus, and need to be won over again next week, the mistakes of a censorship that was absolutely right as a military measure, but may have been unintelligently, not to say childishly, conducted—all these are beside the real question. They must not obscure the duty of restoring order in the regions where our troops have been assailed, or prejudice ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... childishly trustful and confident in her assurance that he smiled. "Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it gives me hope to hear ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the woods-boss cheerfully and extended his hand for a cordial greeting. His wayward employee stood up, took the proffered hand in both of his huge and callous ones, and held it rather childishly. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... and in that way I occasionally catch some of the very ablest of them napping; for they are so subtle that they will sometimes tell you the truth because they think you will suppose it to be a lie. I do not wish to catch them napping, however; I cling to the wisdom of ignorance, and childishly enjoy the way in which things work themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... Parliamentary history how a debate on Budget of the day a great statesman began his speech by utterance of he word "Sugar." Contrast of imposing personality of the Minister and sonorousness of his voice with commonplace character of utterance tickled fancy of House, then as now almost childishly eager to be amused. The great man looked round with stern glance that cowed the tittering audience. "Sugar," he repeated amid awed silence, and triumphantly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... had the fire lighted and the table spread when she came. She had run up the stairs and was out of breath, bringing in a whiff of the night's fresh dampness, and childishly glad to be there. She made no attempt to hide it, laughing as she slid out of her coat and tossed her hat on a chair. With her feet in their worn, high-heeled shoes held out to the fire, her hands rosily transparent against the blaze, she filled the room with ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Then, childishly, half ashamed, she begins to "pretend." She snatches off the red table cover and drapes it about herself for a train, casts the crude furniture for the roles of moat and drawbridge and castle wall, and herself for ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... doesn't want me. She doesn't like to have me here. I've been unhappy about that ever since I came. And it's been getting worse. Yesterday she said she couldn't bear to have me whistling round her kitchen. Mr. Hudson"—Sheila's voice broke childishly—"I can't help whistling. It's a habit. I couldn't work at all if I didn't whistle. I wouldn't have told you, but since you ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... Palla gaily; but her childishly lovely mouth was working, and she clenched her hands in her ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling story—once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable—begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to old man Dawson's car and said rather childishly, "It can't be that Claude's grown taller? I suppose it's the way they learn to carry themselves. He always was a ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... give will almost cure her. If you would dine with us? They will give us a dinner, now"—and she laughed childishly—"when I have paid the bill. It will be very stupid for you at a place like this, but you will have a welcome, and it is the best we ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... it was time next morning (September 15th), to visit the gallery, and worship the Venus de Medicis. I felt, upon entering this world of taste and elegance, as if I could have taken up my abode in it for ever; but confused with the multitude of objects, I knew not where to turn myself, and ran childishly by the ample ranks of sculptures, like a butterfly in a parterre, that skims before it fixes, over ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... [1663]resolute, secure, never merry, but in continual pain: that, as Vives truly said, Nulla est miseria major quam metus, no greater misery, no rack, nor torture like unto it, ever suspicious, anxious, solicitous, they are childishly drooping without reason, without judgment, [1664]"especially if some terrible object be offered," as Plutarch hath it. It causeth oftentimes sudden madness, and almost all manner of diseases, as I have sufficiently illustrated in my ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... his companion, is still half reclining and hardly audibly strumming on the accordion. He is little more than a boy, with no trace of a mustache; his full white face with its broad cheek-bones is childishly dreamy; his eyes have a melancholy and tranquil look unlike that of a grown-up person, but he is broad, strong, heavy and rough like the old man; he does not stir nor shift his position, as though he is not equal to moving his big body. It seems as though any movement he made would tear ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... wise, kind woman, or an old priest who had seen and forgiven much, or men who knew and pitied youth, would have understood. Neither of the men to whom she spoke realized the significance of that childishly pitiful confession. Champneys felt that she had shamed his name, belittled the sacred Family which was his fetish; Glenn thought she had made a fool of him for her own amusement. Never again would he trust a woman, he told himself. And in his pain and shame, his smarting sense ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis



Words linked to "Childishly" :   childish



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