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More "Babbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their many-colored wardrobe; and women are born to us that wear all these hues of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed brain-women are really admirable, if we only ask of them just what they can give, and no more. Only compare them, talking or writing, with one of those babbling, chattering dolls, of warmer latitudes, who do not know enough even to keep out of print, and who are interesting to us only as specimens of arrest of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... altogether wretched—thrust their repulsive forms forth into the bleak air—there, the soft rain-shower falls; here, the fierce snow-squall, or maddening sleet!—there, the field is traversed by the cheerful plough; here, it is covered with ice-heaps or thawing snow; there, the rivers run babbling onward under the green trees; here, they groan and chafe under heaps of dingy and slowly-disintegrating ice-hummocks; there, one's only weapon against the rigor of the season is the peaceful umbrella; here, one must defend one's self with caps and coats of fur and india-rubber, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... the major had been babbling of wine and water, been beholding things that were not, been hurling jewels at imaginary vultures. Now, well, the desert had ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and Sunday,—the former time at noon. The aspect of the solitude at noon was peculiarly impressive, there being a cloudless sunshine, no wind, no rustling of the forest-leaves, no waving of the boughs, no noise but the brawling and babbling of the stream, making its way among the stones, and pouring in a little cataract round one side of the mouldering dam. Looking up the brook, there was a long vista,—now ripples, now smooth and glassy spaces, now large rocks, almost blocking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... comedies were received with great applause, and still hold possession of the stage. Like his Satires, they were intended to expose fashionable vice and folly. They are twenty-five in number. The names of several will give some notion of their general character—The Babbling Barber; Always Busy and Doing Nothing; The Treacherous Step-father; The ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... fifteen seconds he died and was born again; with each stride all that was loyal and brave in his nature leaped into flame, all that was base sank, for he himself was racing with his horse, and the sweat poured down his brow. And his lips babbled broken sounds that no one heard, for all around were babbling too. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... climb up this bluff just before us and we shall have a first-rate view of things. Skip across this little temporary bridge over this babbling brook and now—climb! Whew! that takes your breath, doesn't it? But it is worth the trouble. Now you see we are standing on an embankment perhaps thirty feet high. We are in the midst, too, of a lot of tents. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... proud as is this MARCIUS?" There spake the babbling Tribune! Proud? Great gods! All power seems pride to men of petty souls, As the oak's knotted strength seems arrogance To the slime-rooted and wind-shaken reed That shivers in the shallows. I who perched, An eagle on the topmost pinnacle Of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... his pistol butt.] Take that, thou babbling fool! this is no fitting time to preach. Ho! Jepherson. Bring up ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Mrs. Lutwidge has been babbling, that she will go to Portsmouth with the Admiral; who says, he shall be so fully employed that he cannot be much with her. She whispered Bedford—"I have many ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... and then delivered, ex cathedra, a mock solemn charge, pointing out the conduct expected from him as a good member of the club; what he was to do, and especially what he was to avoid; including in the latter, no doubt, all those petty, prying, questioning, gossiping, babbling habits which had so often grieved the spirit of the lexicographer. It is to be regretted that Boswell has never thought proper to note down the particulars of this charge, which, from the well known characters and positions of the parties, might have furnished a parallel ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... were gliding along the footpaths, which were growing deserted and silent, while gloomy fear seemed, like fine rain, to be slowly, persistently falling with the dusk over the mournful-looking houses. The babbling confidence of the daytime was fatally terminating in groundless panic, in growing alarm as the night drew nearer; the inhabitants were so weary and so satiated with their triumph that they had no strength ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... louder and became like the roar of a high wind. By and by Jason imagined that he could distinguish words, but very confusedly, because each separate leaf of the tree seemed to be a tongue and the whole myriad of tongues were babbling at once. But the noise waxed broader and deeper until it resembled a tornado sweeping through the oak and making one great utterance out of the thousand and thousand of little murmurs which each leafy tongue had caused by its rustling. And ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... was Aleck Babson. 'Babbling Babson,' he's called at the clubs. He's the most inveterate ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... babbling streams of youth Grow to silent pools of truth When they find a thirsty ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... always see a number of them revelling at their banquet, which gave me no small pleasure.' Bodley was not one of those who like libraries to be open to all comers. 'A grant of such scope,' said his statute, 'would but minister an occasion of pestering all the room with their gazing; and the babbling and trampling up and down may disturb out of measure the endeavours of those that are studious. Admission, from the first, was granted only to graduates, and every one on his entrance had to take the oath against 'razing, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... the North Star we should be certain to find it. Wheeling the Man before us, we made a North Star track for ourselves through the underwood and over last year's rustling beech-leaves, till Guy ceased babbling and crooning, and dropped into a slumber, as he soon does in the fresh of the morning. Then we had to go slowly for fear he should be wakened by the noise of the dead wood underfoot, for, as we passed over it with wheels and boots, it snapped and crackled like a freshly-kindled fire. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Queen Hortense was now babbling away, and no one could understand a word. She was pronouncing names, many names, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was beautifully picturesque up here, and the latter part of their row was by a lovely grove of beeches which grew on a chalk ridge— almost a cliff—at whose foot the clear river ran babbling along. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... one and then another began to mutter incoherently before sinking into a heavy sleep, the mate, who was the most vigorous man present, having the hardest fight of all, and when he did cease babbling as he lay there in the darkness there was a coldness of hand and weakness ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... master. Diana would never betray her lover, but the thing was in the air as soon as uttered: and off to the printing-press! Dacier's grotesque fancy under annoyance pictured a stream of small printer's devils in flight from his babbling lips. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their bodies for a title, a carriage, a place at the head of some rich man's table. Bohemia sufficed her. Her terrible widowhood, too, was rendered less terrible to her by the care of her little one. Babbling lips, pattering feet, made heaven in her attic. Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in child-bearing. Herminia was far removed indeed from that blatant ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... following the other rapidly and vehemently, as if the performer intended to display all his accomplishments in a breath. Cheyenne vanished like "the magic mountain of a dream," blue skies were forgotten, the babbling brook unheard, every sense was instantly alert ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... have been well-nigh impossible for a man to make an offer of marriage with a child of three years old clinging to her mother's skirts and incessantly babbling in her mother's ear; so the child with her nurse was sent into the interior of the plantation, in search of the lovely primroses said to flourish there, while the two elders wandered with slow steps and down-bent eyes upon the outskirts of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... his hand and looks at him affectionately). Farewell then, my fair boy; bear thee in courtly wise at the feast-house, that I may have honour of thee. Beware of idle babbling; but what thou sayest, let it be keen as a sword. Be friendly to those that deal with thee in friendly wise; but if thou be taunted, hold not thy peace. Drink not more than thou canst bear; but put not the horn aside when it is offered ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... myself with the babbling volubility of one whose manners have been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I cried protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How could your stepmother give such a thing away? Why, it ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... put himself on even terms with the commercial interests in the 39 jealous states. The leaders of Liberalism were, as a rule, men of theoretical rather than practical ideas; essentially a cultured lite, as it were, engaged in babbling about German Constitutions, German fraternal alignments and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... mere babbling are we uttering these thy praises and excellences; but we suppliantly pray thy immense sweetness. Do thou, by thy benignity, supply our insufficiencies, that we may worthily praise thee through the endless ages of ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... nothing. "Tell that to others! Ho, ho!" replied he. When he had resumed his seat, M. le Duc d'Orleans said something, I don't know what, M. de Troyes still standing, I also. In passing La Vrilliere, I asked him to go to the door every time anything was wanted, for fear of the babbling of M. de Troyes; adding, that distant as I was from the door, going there looked too peculiar. La Vrilliere did as I begged him all the rest of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... time came for the move. The new abode was a charming house, with the park behind it, and the space between nearly all glass. Great ferns, tall citrons, fragrant shrubs, brilliant flowers, grew there; a stone-lined pool, with water-lilies above, gold-fish below, and a cool, sparkling, babbling fountain in the middle. There was an open space round it, with low chairs and tables, and the parrot on her perch. Indeed, Popinjay Parlour was the family title of this delightful abode; but it might almost as well have been called Mother Carey's bower. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ecstatically self-conscious, Rae Malgregor repeated her demand. To her parched mouth the very taste of her own babbling impudence refreshed her like the shock and prickle of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... of sea-board: and from the inclination and soil of the beach, from the weeds and shell-fish, from the configuration of the coast and the depth of soundings outside, he must deduce what magnitude of waves is to be looked for. He visits a river, its summer water babbling on shallows; and he must not only read, in a thousand indications, the measure of winter freshets, but be able to predict the violence of occasional great floods. Nay, and more: he must not only consider ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by witchery of sound and magic of phrase, to rouse receptive mood: of this it was incapable. A course of reading in the first attempts of such as rose after to well-merited distinction, might reveal not a few things—among the rest, their frequent poverty. Much mere babbling often issues before worthy speech begins. There was nothing in Walter's mind to be put in form except a few of the vague lovely sensations belonging to a poetic temperament. And as he grew more and more of a reader, his inspiration came more and ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... plumed his feathers, and after a few moments resumed his singing. He uttered a few trills of a rare musical quality that held his listener spellbound, then lightly flew to another branch overhanging the little ravine, at the bottom of which a babbling brook made music,—"not so liquid as siffleurs,"—says the historian. Here a few more strains fell from him, then he flitted to a swinging vine, repeated his bewitching note, and in a moment disappeared. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... toiler among his books. Few possess the breadth and equipoise which will enable them to pass from day to day along mental paths, which have the Forum of Augustus or the Groves of the Academy at one end and the babbling square of a modern town at the other; remaining equally at home amid ancient ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... looks, under good or bad luck, has considerably the advantage of one who appears elated with success, or cast down with ill fortune, from our being able to read his cards in his face; so the man of the world, having to deal with one of these babbling countenances, will take care to profit by the circumstance, let the consequence, to him with whom he deals, be as ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... done; the charm, it seemed, was to find herself familiar with him to the extent of all but nursing him and making him belong to her. Pilgrims coming upon the source of the mysteriously-abounding river, hardly revere it the less because they love it more when they behold the babbling channels it issues from; and the sense of possession is the secret, I suppose. Julia could inform me rapturously that her charge had slept eighteen hours at a spell. His remarks upon the proposal to fetch a doctor, feeble in themselves, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... name among the early Greeks for all foreigners. The word is probably onomatopoetic, designed to represent the uncouth babbling of which languages other than their own appeared to the Greeks to consist. Even the Romans were included in the term. The word soon assumed an evil meaning, becoming associated with the vices and savage natures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... out his words and repeated these things for his own purposes, the Queen following behind. When they were come to the corridor-end, there he found, as he had thought, a knot of lords and gentlemen, babbling ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... say so," Tamino returned, stoutly, this being one of the temptations he was to meet: but Papageno was frightened enough. "Stop thy babbling, Papageno," Tamino cautioned. "Or ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair tumbled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... experience of Javanese volcanoes. The broken track, knee-deep in mud and rent by landslips, traverses fields of Indian corn, rocky clefts, and rugged water-courses. The familiar flora of Northern Europe fringes babbling brooks, their banks enamelled with wild strawberries and reddening brambles. Curtains of ghostly mist lift at intervals to disclose the magical pink and blue of the mountain distance, as sunrise throws a shaft of scarlet over the grim cliff's of the Moengal Pass. A chasm in the stony wall ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... to face what is, shake your fist at it if necessary, but never meet it, if disagreeable, half-way. I never meet anything half-way. But it's a cruel trick time plays on us, this making of body and brain a withered, wrinkled thing, whimpering for warmth and food and sleep, and babbling of the past. It's ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... grinder at one point, and a clarion and a flute at another, accomplished what their could towards filling the wide space with tuneful noise, Their small uproar, however, was nearly drowned by the multitudinous voices of the people, bargaining, quarrelling, laughing, and babbling copiously at random; for the briskness of the mountain atmosphere, or some other cause, made everybody so loquacious, that more words were wasted in Perugia on this one market day, than the noisiest piazza of Rome would utter ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frown the errant earth in winter seems Prostrate to lie, and petulant of mood; Restrained in icy fetters all the babbling streams, Like naughty babes who're learning to ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... starts out, Sergeant leading the way. We wriggled through the mud like Wapping eels at low tide for the best part of an hour, and at last we got to their trench and halted to listen. There wasn't a sound to be heard; nobody snoring, nobody babbling of beer in his sleep; only absolute silence. Sergeant was lying next to me and I distinctly heard his heart miss several beats. Then all at once we leaps into the air, gives a yell fit to make any German wish he'd never been born, and falls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... cowled and dusky-sandalled Eve, In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, Departs with silent pace! That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook, From its full laver, pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. And frequent, on the everlasting hills, Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself In all the dark embroidery of the storm, And shouts the stern, strong wind. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... will soon find out his mistake, for the poor young man will never be able to make statues. He has forgotten all he knew of art, and the knees of your Christ are worth more than all Rome together." It was Sebastiano's wont to run babbling on this way. Once again he returns to Pietro Urbano. "I am informed that he has left Rome; he has not been seen for several days, has shunned the Court, and I certainly believe that he will come to a bad end. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... hushed into silence by the dominating desire to verify rumours of an impending change, now gave vent to long, excited cheering. "The folks were frantic," said an eye-witness; "the delegates daft. All other enthusiasms were as babbling brooks to the eternal thunder of Niagara. The whole mass was given over to acclaims that cannot even be ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... enjoyed, if it were not too inexperienced. Caelius's smile, for instance, boyish and inviting, had seemed to her full of promise. He was worth the winning and was close at hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If she could play with this disciple of his, and then divest him of every shred of reputation, she might feel that at last ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? 30. They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. 31. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... investigations of Signor Rosa, places it on a little hill over-looking the Licenza, and his theory has a great deal to recommend it. The plough still turns up on the spot the bricks and tiles of an old Roman villa; a spring of clear water, like that of which the poet so often sang, 'breaks babbling from the hollow rock,' and is still called by the peasants Fonte dell' Oratini, some faint echo possibly of the singer's name; the view from the hill is just what is described in the epistles, 'Continui montes nisi dissocientur opaca valle'; ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... first sergeant. Every man in the troop knew that soon after their arrival at Scott, Howard began to get letters from the East, and some of these contained money orders, which he had cashed in Braska. Some men in the troop, notably that babbling drunkard Paine, declared that in a little strong box he had brought with him Howard had some letters tied up in ribbon that he watched with jealous care. "New hands" who came out in the same batch of recruits ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... stray, And wake, to simpler theme, the lyric lay[9]? Or steal from beauty's lip th' ambrosial kiss, Paint the domestic grief, or social bliss[10]? With patient step now tread o'er rock and hill, Gaze on rough ocean, track the babbling rill[11], Then rapt in thought, with strong poetic eye, Read the great movement of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... vivid descriptions of natural phenomena, which showed that the coinage of his brain had been stamped in Nature's mint. The most casual reader would at once discover that, with Thomson, he has ever been the devoted lover and worshiper of Nature—at wanderer by babbling streams—a dreamer in the leafy wilderness—a worshiper of morning upon the golden hill-tops. He gives us pictures of rural scenery warm as the pencil of a Claude, and glowing as the sunsets ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Here babbling "Insight" shouts in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... raw whiskey, meanwhile babbling at the barkeeper and trying to induce him to indulge in potations. "Come on. Have a drink. Come on. What—no? Well, have a little one, then. By gawd, I've whipped a man to-night, and I want to celebrate. I whipped him good, too. ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... mere tongue-threshing; not prayer but a work of obedience. Hence the confused sea of howling and babbling in cells and monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects without any spiritual devotion. Though I had done no more but only freed people from that torment, they might well give me thanks ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... might of August overhead Weighed on the world, was yet one roseleaf shed Of all their joys warm coronal, nor aught Touched them in passing ever with a thought That ever this might end on any day, Or any night not love them where they lay; But like a babbling tale of barren breath Seemed all report and rumour held of death, And a false bruit the legend tear impearled That such a thing as change was ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils from tree ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... to Nemours in Louis Stevenson's Rob Roy. We generally congregate down in the garden by the big tree after dinner. Mama swings in the hammock, looking as pretty as possible, and we all form a group around her on the grass, Louis and Bob Stevenson babbling about boats, while Simpson, seated near by, fans himself with a ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Channel there are patches of sand, shingle, or rock, which being deep down are not dangerous as regards any risk of striking upon them, but still even without any wind they cause the tide-stream to rush over them in great eddies, and confused babbling waves. The water below is in action, just like a waterfall tumbling over a hill, and the whirlings and seethings above look threatening enough until you become thoroughly aware of the exact state of the case, being precisely that which occurs above Schaffhausen, on the deeps of the ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... shore in dancing currents, and to leave the middle clear and stagnant. The set towards either side was nearly equal; about one half of the whole water plunged on the side of the castle, through a narrow gullet; about one half ran ripping past the margin of the green and slipped across a babbling rapid. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swung, and every joint in my body went limber as a rag. I caught at El Mahdi's mane, then I felt Jud's arm go round me, and heard Ump talking at my ear. But they were a long distance away. I heard instead the bees droning, and Ward's merry laugh, as he carried me on his shoulder a babbling youngster in a little white kilt. It was only an instant, but in it all the good days when I was little and Ward was father and mother ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Kalitin, who had a great distaste for the quiet of country life, "there would be no need for them to be dragging themselves off into the country." In her heart Marya Dmitrievna more than once regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its babbling brook, its wide meadows, and green copses; but she never opposed her husband in anything and had the greatest veneration for his wisdom and knowledge of the world. When after fifteen years of married life he died leaving her with a son and two daughters, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the vein Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine Such measures, and with falt'ring awe I touch The mighty theme; for to describe the depth Of all the universe, is no emprize To jest with, and demands a tongue not us'd To infant babbling. But let them assist My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid Amphion wall'd in Thebes, so with the truth My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr'd folk, Beyond all others wretched! who abide In such ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... change, no retraction, and no tripping. These things were for those whose dogmas could alter. After this it is almost superfluous for us to be assured that the sage never got drunk. Drunkenness, as Zeno pointed out, involved babbling, and of that the sage would never be guilty. He would not, however, altogether eschew banquets. Indeed, the Stoics recognized a virtue under the name of 'conviviality,' which consisted in the proper conduct of them. It was said of Chrysippus that his demeanor was always ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... betray: Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear, And sees at Canons what was never there; Who reads, but with a lust to misapply, Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie. A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, But all such babbling blockheads in his stead. Let Sporus tremble— A. What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk, Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? P. Yet let me flap this ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... camp which he had left, and in the vast multitude on the plains of Tara, there was stir and revelry, and babbling speculation as to the contest of to-morrow—the contest which was to decide whether the chief bard of Erin was to hold his own against all comers, or yield the palm. For rumour said that a great Skald had come from the northern lands to compete ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... shod, the other had worn through the stocking, and ugly red blisters showed on the sole as he ran. His face was far whiter than his shirt, save for a blue welt or two and some ugly red scratches; and his gaunt eyes were full of hunger and yearning, and his lips happily babbling the curses that the ships' captains ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... O defender of our house! attend My secret utterance. No friendly ear Is that which hearkens for my voice. My thought Must not be blazoned with her standing by, Lest through her envious and wide-babbling tongue She fill the city full of wild surmise. List, then, as I shall speak: and grant the dreams Whose two-fold apparition I to-night Have seen, if good their bodement, be fulfilled: If hostile, turn their influence on my foes. And yield not them their wish that would by guile Thrust me ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... yet sixty years have passed away since my boyhood. How fleeting is time, how swiftly does old age creep upon us with its infirmities. The curling smoke, dispelled by the passing wind, the water that glides with a babbling murmur in the gentle stream, leave as deep a mark of their passage as do the fleeting ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... not living in a talking, babbling world, nor yet among people who are trying to worm facts out of me; you needn't look so frightened because you have let the cat out of the bag to a faithful old hermit like me. I shall never name his having been in England; I shall be out of temptation, for no one will ask me. Stay!' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nearest, saying that he needed no more labor. The tide of applicants ceased, but Mrs. Rawling was nervous. Pete declared his intention of running away, and riding home in the late afternoon, Margot was stopped by a drunken, babbling man, who seized her pony's bridle, with unknown words. She galloped free, but next day Rawling sent his wife and children to the seaside and sat waiting Sanford's coming to cheer his desolate house, the new revolver cold ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... need be given to the formation of right physical habits? or that bodily exercise ought not to be joined to mental toils? or that the walk in the woods, the row upon the quiet river, the stroll with rod in hand by the babbling brook, or with gun on shoulder over the green prairies, or the skating in the crisp December air on the glistening lake, ought to be discouraged? Do we speak disrespectfully of dumb-bells and clubs and parallel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... to a noisy brook and, sitting down, listened in silence. "Why do you come every day to me?" asked the brook. "I am condemned to silence by my tyrants, and I come to voice my complaints through your clamorous babbling." ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... rising slowly; but they dropped again; and there came a little faint babbling from the writhing lips; but no words were intelligible. Then ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... jeers of the court-folk; I am not received as a guest should be; I am girded at with harsh gibing, and stung with babbling taunts. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... we shall be greeted by a babbling fountain of water—a nymph, holding the cup of ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... singing and the bees humming; and so many beautiful things to see,—the flowers and butterflies and green grass! And after a while he came to a wood, where every tree wore a green dress; and through the wood, under the shade of the trees, flowed a babbling creek. ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... a step forward, and began babbling excuses, explanations, entreaties. She was coldly and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... what a world's convention of agonies is here! All external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,—the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the desperate fidelity of Kent—surely such a scene was never conceived before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific than any which a Michel Angelo, inspired by a Dante, could have conceived, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... while to his lips, and, wagging his head in an absurd way, burst into tears: so much feeling but no words! Father Yevmeny, that delightful little old man, sat down by me, and looking tearfully at me kept babbling something like a child. I did not understand what he said, but I know how to understand true feeling. The police captain, the handsome man of whom I wrote to you, went down on his knees to me, tried to read me some verses of ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... critic may consider too much that has been set down here is disconnected, yet if he will let a gramophone record an animated conversation, he will find that it ebbs and flows with the uncertain babbling of a brook—and so it has been with me. Only the other day, in the preface to Camden's History of the British Islands, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... thunder, silent; yet remember all He spoke among you, and the man who spoke; Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow Thro' either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work; whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe; Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named; Truth-lover was our English Duke; ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... is us," Gefty explained, somewhat hoarsely. He cleared his throat, went on, "Our true ship position, that is—" He stopped, realizing he was talking too much, almost babbling, in an attempt to take some of the tension out of the moment. The next few seconds might not tell them where they were, but it would show whether they had been carried beyond the regions of space charted by Federation instruments. Which would mean the difference between having a chance—whether ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... fill my apron with sweet flowers and golden fruit—great oranges, and those fragrant, delicious tiny mandarins—and I would get a crowd of little Italians about me, all a-babbling their pretty, pretty tongue, and I would go down to the bay and get in an anchored boat, and lie there all the morning, catching the sunlight in my eyes, trimming the brown babies and the boat with flowers, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... the envoys, when a diverse murmur ran through the troubled lips of the Ausonians; even as, when rocks delay some running river, it plashes in the barred pool, and the banks murmur nigh to the babbling wave. So soon as their minds were quieted, and their hurrying lips hushed, the king, first calling on the gods, begins ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... they were so to a man of his class of perceptions. I thought of the measure with which I had been meting to him when Brother Robinson was here last Thursday, and told me that a poor little quotation I was making from the Georgics savoured of vain babbling and profane heathenism. He went so far as to say that by learning other languages than our own, we were flying in the face of the Lord's purpose when He had said, at the building of the Tower of Babel, that He would confound their languages so that they should not understand each other's ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all these young people, and took a mischievous pleasure in doing me the honours of the cellar so often and so copiously, that my tongue commenced to become heavy, uncertain, and as the young folk said to me, in their somewhat free language. "Uncle, you are babbling." Happily the last of the effendis had just arrived, and there was nobody else to announce; for it was in vain that I sought to shake off the impression, every time I advanced between the curtains to send a name ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... method was rigid self-assertion, and the power of the strong. The affront he conceived to have been laid upon him and upon the country he represented could only be wiped out by martial law. Theoretic babbling about equality had no place in his ethics of the universe. He proceeded to raid and burn both private dwellings, palaces, and magazines; and the Government House, which was reputed to be the finest building in the world, was operated upon for a month, until it was reduced to dust. These ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... conscious of the direction he takes, but his footsteps guide him straight over the lawn and down to the very end of it, where a broad stream runs babbling in one corner. It is a veritable love-retreat, hedged in by larches and low-lying evergreens, so as to be completely concealed from view, and a favorite haunt of Molly's,—indeed, such a favorite that now as he enters it he finds himself ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... pine, at timber-line, In straggling patches strewn, Surcharge the breeze with melodies, The forests' plaintive tune; As they descend, the waters blend In babbling harmony, And soothe to rest my tranquil breast, With ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... man's receptions on his death-bed; whilst, amongst the rest of the company came Madame du Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused the lethargic man, by inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de Castelmaron—about whom he went on babbling until ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the girl once more flashed her white teeth in a pretty smile. Such a reception of his not very striking remarks put the young man at his ease, and he became composed enough to observe delicately the face of his new acquaintance. He had but little time, for of course he could not stand for long babbling stupidities with a country girl. The face was strong and dark, with composed, full lips, and a dusky glow in the cheeks. The eyes which had at first put him to such confusion looked liquid and strangely attractive when the light of laughter was in them. Mr. Ellington had ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... one who talks like Emerson or like Carlyle soon finds himself surrounded by a crowd of walking phonographs, who mechanically reproduce his mental and vocal accents. Emerson was before long talking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes, and not unnaturally was now and then himself a mark for the small-shot of criticism. He had soon reached that height in the "cold thin atmosphere" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... asked. "Two whole caravans have vanished on the way to Estka beyond the mountains." And he told us more, reports that had arrived from other cities. Survivors had arrived, with the light of madness in their eyes, babbling some nameless fear. Others had died from ghastly wounds—great burns that refused to heal, but spread a kind of disease through the tissues. I, Braanol, examined some of these wounds and ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... Brush, Lord John Howard, he revengefully ordered me to 'edify' your Majesty with wise utterances; as if such poor, rude words as mine could please the ear that should only listen to the singing of birds, the babbling of brooks, or the silvery ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of them bedizened with the cheap finery of the stores, some of them wearing only bright-hued blankets, but with wonderful head-dresses of eagle feathers, and all of them looking gravely on with a curiosity as silent as that of the habitans was noisy and babbling. The presence of so many Indians and on such friendly terms struck me as strange, for in Kentucky there were no such friendly relations between Indians and whites, and the presence of so many of them would have betokened ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... irregular way of babbling came lately out of Asia into Athens; and having, like some ill planet, blasted the aspiring genius of their youth, at once corrupted and put a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... to slacken our speed. The river runs far more slowly in its latter course than when it came babbling and leaping down the hillside. And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen country, which move so slowly that you cannot tell which way the water is flowing. Are not there all round us, are there not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... levity of Italian monks who were babbling faulty Latin prayers which they did not understand and remarked laughing to him: "Never mind; the Holy Ghost understands us, and the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... transfiguration into any modern language; such, for instance, as the "much-wooed white-armed Maiden Muse" ([Greek: polymneste leukolene parthene Mousa]) of Empedocles; the "long countless Time" ([Greek: makros kanarithmetos Chronos]), or "babbling Echo" ([Greek: athyrostomos Acho]) of Sophocles; the "son, the subject of many prayers" ([Greek: polyeuchetos uios]) and countless other expressions of the Homeric Hymns; the "blooming Love with his pinions of gold" ([Greek: ho d' amphithales Eros chrysopteros henias]) of Aristophanes; "the eagle, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... buckram borne by the weak-eyed on their foreheads, the phylactery of the have-beens—I lay myself open to be believed a cripple, or to look an old fool. A vivacious reviewer in Punch's "Booking Office," will have a vision of me as a babbling elder peering at society from below a green pent. However—I must risk it. It says exactly what I mean; and what I ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Herr Vogt." He took him at once across the yard, and pointed out to him, in his clumsy, babbling way, the fine glossy appearance of the cows and the appetising sleekness of the pigs. Who could be found to take more trouble with the beasts than he? And he had been very economical with the food, although the local authorities had not given him ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... By making the least, to make the most of it! As you may suppose, She had plenty of beaux Bowing around her beautiful toes, Praising her feet, and eyes, and nose In rapturous verse and elegant prose! She had lots of lovers, old and young: There was lofty Long, and babbling Lung, Opulent Tin, and eloquent Tung, Musical Sing, and, the rest ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Again through fields of air he sprang, And now, his travail wellnigh done, The distant shore was almost won. Before him on the margent stood In long dark line a waving wood, And the fair island, bright and green With flowers and trees, was clearly seen, And every babbling brook that gave Her lord the sea a tribute wave. He lighted down on Lamba's peak Which tinted metals stain and streak, And looked where Lanka's splendid town Shone on the mountain ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... as men do on such occasions, one "Friar Lawrence did say that the King was dead." Then said Croxton, "thanks be to God, his Grace is in good health, and I pray God so continue him;" and said further to the said Lawrence, "I advise thee to leave thy babbling." Croxton, it seems, had been among the suspected in earlier times. Lawrence said to him, "Croxton, it maketh no matter what thou sayest, for thou art one of the new world." Whereupon hotter still the conversation proceeded. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... from which he presaged the very worst, Kaku beat his head upon the ground, babbling denials of this awful crime, and at the same time began to implore pardon for what he ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... madness fired, Forbears to touch: sweet cool thy waters yield To ox with ploughing tired, And lazy sheep afield. Thou too one day shalt win proud eminence 'Mid honour'd founts, while I the ilex sing Crowning the cavern, whence Thy babbling wavelets spring. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... record, "A Traveler at Forty" and "A Hoosier Holiday," there is the same furious accumulation of trivialities. Consider the former. It is without structure, without selection, without reticence. One arises from it as from a great babbling, half drunken. On the one hand the author fills a long and gloomy chapter with the story of the Borgias, apparently under the impression that it is news, and on the other hand he enters into intimate and inconsequential confidences about all the persons he meets ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... effort to find the logs for pedestrians when the road crossed the brook. She plunged straight through the babbling waters with ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... ain't any reason for you not speaking out your ideas to me," she said cautiously. "I ain't much of a fount of wisdom, but I ain't a babbling brook, neither." ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... become to her like a friend, with its ever-varying monotony. Somehow she loved this old, fresh, blue, babbling, restless giant, who had carried away her heart's love to hide him in some far-off palmy island, such as she had often heard him tell of in his sea-romances. Sometimes she would wander out for an afternoon's stroll on the rocks, and pause by the great spouting cave, now famous to Newport dilettanti, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a moment still on reaching the upper platform. A tiny brook that makes its way among briars and shingle to the more considerable mill-stream of Redman's Dell, sent up a hoarse babbling from the darkness beneath. Why exactly he halted there he could not have said. He glanced over his shoulder down the steps he had just scaled. Had there been light his pale face would have shown just then a malign anxiety, such as the face of an ill-conditioned ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain them. Only three were left. "Better turn to, now?" said ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse, Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use. And all the long verandas, eloquent With echoes of a score of Simla years, Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment— Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonour; which would not fail to be distributed in strict ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cave, there to fall and lie filling the place with my lamentations and oft-repeated cry of "Damaris! O Damaris!" I remember a patch of silver light, a radiance that crept across the gloom, and of dreaming my lady beside me as of old, and of babbling of love and forgiveness, of pain and heartbreak, whiles I watched the beam of light creeping nigh me upon the floor; until, sobbing and moaning, yet gazing ever upon this light, I saw grow upon it a sudden ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... to her with each step. She had almost relaxed her precautions when, suddenly, from a clump of bushes, several men leaped out. They seized Flint, who merely started babbling afresh. Zita, ignorant of what was really happening, struck out right and left in the hopeless encounter, until one of the men with a grin seized her wrist in his powerful grasp and twisted it until she screamed with pain. Then she realized ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Mr. Montenero, and having failed in all my objects, I grew excessively tired, and was going away, leaving my mother to the care of Mowbray, but he stopped me. "Stay, stay," said he, drawing me aside, behind two connoisseurs, who were babbling about a Titian, "you will have some diversion by and by. I have a picture to sell, and you must see how it will go off. There is a painting that I bought at a stall for nothing, upon a speculation that my mother, who is a ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
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