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More "Namby-pamby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gout to take The reverend Croly from the stage, Or Southey, for our quiet's sake, Or Mr. Fletcher, Cupid's sage, Or, damme! namby-pamby Poole,— Or any other ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Iden's solicitor, from whom he had borrowed money, overtook her, walked his horse, and began to talk to her in his perky, affected, silly way. Of all the fools in Woolhorton town there was none equal in pure idiotcy to this namby-pamby fellow—it was wonderful how a man of Iden's intelligence could trust his affairs to such a man, the more so as there was at least one good lawyer in the place. This is very characteristic of the farming race; they will work like negroes in the field, and practise the utmost penury to ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... supervision is not of authority but of friendly interest. The home conditions of every boy are pretty well known, and his tendencies are observed. And no attempt is made to coddle him. No attempt is made to render him namby-pamby. One day when two boys came to the point of a fight, they were not lectured on the wickedness of fighting. They were counseled to make up their differences in a better way, but when, boy-like, they preferred the more primitive mode ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... said Mr. Culpepper, hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be as ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... tattered dresses, barefooted and dusty, walking and driving the loose cattle. Too many excursions and pleasure jaunts had reduced their horses to skeletons before the real trials of the journey had fairly begun. But the women of '52 and '53 were not of the namby-pamby sort. When the trials came they were brave and faced privations and dangers with the same ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... a chance," and took no credit to himself for it. This pleased her, won her confidence—if, already, that had not been done by his frank face, in spite of his fancy clothes and her assumption that he was a namby-pamby weakling. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... is a little of the chameleon, and takes a different hue with every different companion: he is very attentive and officious, and somewhat sentimental, with Lady Lillycraft; copies out little namby-pamby ditties and love-songs for her, and draws quivers, and doves, and darts, and Cupids, to be worked on the corners of her pocket-handkerchiefs. He indulges, however, in very considerable latitude with the other married ladies of the family; and has ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "None of this namby-pamby stuff," he had once been quoted as saying; "if you got enemies, don't tease 'em—show 'em who's running things. Blackjack 'em, if ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of it ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... haunt my mind with sweetness. Nature on either side is virginal. It flames and trembles with natural passion both in boy and girl, and they are as pure as a pair of daisies. Any workman in the school of Namby-Pamby could have kept their purity. Any writer of the Roman-candle-volcanic tribe could have heaped up their fires, after a fashion. But for this special piece of work God had first to make a gentleman, and then ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... rough-and-tumble with the boys I saw staring at me in the streets. But I was taught by my English tutor, Heath, that it would be lowering my dignity to associate with those fine young boys. My "dignity" was placed in a strait-jacket and, in a namby-pamby way, I was taught to play ALONE. I had cousins scattered over Europe who took their lot more happily than I; but even they regretted the mocking barriers that laid down a barrage between us and the more fortunate chaps ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... it," he shouted, "I'll close the theatre to-morrow and sack every one in it. I'll buy any theatre in New York where you try to present your namby-pamby play. I'll buy every manager she goes to for an engagement, every newspaper that says a word of praise of any work of yours. I tell you I'll stand behind the scenes and pull the strings which shall bring you and her to the knowledge of what failure and want mean. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this hereditary gift of veracity, honesty and good sense. So it was with Johnson himself. Behind all his learning lay something which no learned language could conceal. "On s'attend a voir un auteur et on trouve un homme." Authors then, as now, were often thought to be fantastical, namby-pamby persons, living in dreams, sharing none of the plain man's interests, eager and querulous about trifles and unrealities, indifferent and incapable in the broad world of life. Nobody could ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... which these lines are written the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby-Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject, little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... performance. Pope, one may believe, had a contempt for Philips, whose pastoral inanities, whether better or worse than his own, had not the excuse of being youthful productions. Philips has bequeathed to our language the phrase "Namby-pamby," imposed upon him by Henry Carey (author of Sally in our Alley, and the clever farce Chrononhotonthologos), and years after this he wrote a poem to Miss Pulteney in the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... manly independence and fierce patriotism of our forebears to a namby-pamby foreign policy that compels our citizens abroad to seek protection of the consuls of other countries from the spirit that made our flag respected in every land and honored on every sea, to the anserine cackle of "jingoism" ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be as ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... more; but I like to watch Eugenio and Flirtilla twirling round in a pretty waltz, or Lucinda and Ardentio pulling a cracker. Burn your little fingers, children! Blaze out little kindly flames from each other's eyes! And then draw close together and read the motto (that old namby-pamby motto, so stale and so new!)—I say, let her lips read it, and his construe it; and so divide the sweetmeat, young people, and crunch it between you. I have no teeth. Bitter almonds and sugar disagree with me, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Amelia's affairs; how she was living with her father and mother; how poor they were; how they wondered what men, and such men as their brother and dear Captain Osborne, could find in such an insignificant little chit; how she was still, as heretofore, a namby-pamby milk-and-water affected creature—but how the boy was really the noblest little boy ever seen—for the hearts of all women warm towards young children, and the sourest ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... safety; savage murmurings at wise measures and at the burdens that must be borne—none but those who lived through all these troubles could count half of them. If such came now, would the body of the nation strive to stand against them, or fall in the dust, and be kicked and trampled, sputtering namby-pamby? Britannia now is always wrong, in the opinion of her wisest sons, if she dares to defend herself even against weak enemies; what then would her crime be if she buckled her corselet against the world! To prostitute their mother is the philanthropy ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... I pretend that it was. Patience and industry dignified it; a certain rough jollity, a large amount of good temper and natural kindness, kept it from being foul; but of the namby-pamby or soft-headed sentiment which many writers have persuaded us to attribute to old-English cottage life I think I have not in twenty years met with a single trace. In fact, there are no people so likely to make ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... cloak before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject, little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with an inward burst. "A bashful, ridiculous fool! Why, in the name of all that's namby-pamby, doesn't he pop the question, like a man, and have done with it? Bashfulness is all very well—nobody likes a little of it better than I do; but there is no use running it ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... So much for namby-pamby. I may, after all, try my hand on it in Scots verse. There I always find myself most ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... have done that in the first place, without acting such a namby-pamby farce, I'd like ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... and immaculate. Unconsciously she felt that big men in good navy-blue suits, especially if they had reddish faces and rather big feet and if their hair was wearing thin, were a special type all to themselves, solid and rather namby-pamby and tiresome. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... knew! Maybe they're eating each other up! Yesterday she asked if he was a 'wildcat' and I told her 'yes.' Maybe, maybe—Oh! Why did you make us walk in front, namby-pamby so, Papa dear? If we'd been with them we'd know what they are doing and what has happened. Oh! dear! If I hadn't been in front I'd have been behind!" she complained. Nor was she greatly pleased by the laugh which her ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... to which he introduced his readers created a sensation by reason of its very novelty. His brilliant, but withering critiques were more eagerly looked for than the most thrilling of his stories, and though the little, namby-pamby authors whom the gleaming sword mowed down by tens were his and the Messenger's enemies for life, the interested readers that were gathered in by hundreds were loud in their praise of the progressiveness of the magazine and the genius of the man ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... the Sweetbriars a better spirit had come over the entire school. Mrs. Tellingham in secret spoke of this as the direct result of Ruth's character and influence; for although Ruth Fielding was not namby-pamby, she was opposed to every form of rude behavior, or to the breaking of rules which everyone knew ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... these ginks better than we do, and they've put the boots into them from the start," growled Tom. "There's been no namby-pamby dealing with the Huns in the bridge- heads where they've held control. They've made the Boches walk Spanish. If they didn't uncover when the flag went by, they knocked their hats off for them. They know that the only argument that a Hun understands ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... vulgarly supposed, only a great poetess. The word poetess is bad English, and it conveys a particularly bad compliment. Nothing is more remarkable about Mrs. Browning's work than the absence of that trite and namby-pamby elegance which the last two centuries demanded from lady writers. Wherever her verse is bad it is bad from some extravagance of imagery, some violence of comparison, some kind of debauch of cleverness. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... who started out so gay and care-free, in tattered dresses, barefooted and dusty, walking and driving the loose cattle. Too many excursions and pleasure jaunts had reduced their horses to skeletons before the real trials of the journey had fairly begun. But the women of '52 and '53 were not of the namby-pamby sort. When the trials came they were brave and faced privations and dangers with the same fortitude as ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... burdens that must be borne—none but those who lived through all these troubles could count half of them. If such came now, would the body of the nation strive to stand against them, or fall in the dust, and be kicked and trampled, sputtering namby-pamby? Britannia now is always wrong, in the opinion of her wisest sons, if she dares to defend herself even against weak enemies; what then would her crime be if she buckled her corselet against the world! To prostitute their mother ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... rapidly, a wonderful constitution; but it was touch and go. Marjorie was simply wonderful, I'll do her that credit. Between ourselves, Hugh, I always regarded Marjorie as rather weak, namby-pamby, early Victorian—you know what I mean; but she's a woman, and it has touched her. She wouldn't leave him. Honestly, I believe she did more for him than all ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... Boston in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... of employers and employed. Away with these palliatives; let us rejoice when we see working men starving and ill-clad, for in that way their eyes will be opened. The brute who gets the uttermost farthing out of the toil of his wage-slaves is more a friend to us and our cause than any namby-pamby Socialist, such as the late Dukeling of New Wanley. Socialist indeed! But enough. We have probably heard the last of this parvenu and his loudly trumpeted schemes. No true friend of the Revolution can ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... own business, Frank Bowman! You're one o' them foolish folk, too, that's allus tryin' ter hide the trewth 'cause it's bitter. Sure 'tis bitter; 'twas meant ter be. An' these namby-pamby people in this world that can't stand the trewth to be told ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... none but honorable men in its body. If this Senator had yielded to temptation and had offered a bribe, he was a soiled man and ought to be instantly expelled; therefore he wanted the Senator tried, and not in the usual namby-pamby way, but in good earnest. He wanted to know the truth of this matter. For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered that in trifling with his ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Mr. Culpepper, hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... your last book much better than the rest of them; but I don't like your heroine. She strikes both Julia and myself [Julia is his wife, who is acquainted with no literature but the cookery-book] as rather namby-pamby. The descriptions, however, are charming; we both recognised dear old Ramsgate at once. [The original of the locality in the novel being Dieppe.] The plot is also excellent, though we think we have ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... humidity, indescribable in colouring and form. Their full cup and the accents which experience had graven under them were something he had never dreamed of realizing. It was a Cosway; but a Cosway broadened and without a hint of genteel namby-pamby or overelaborate finesse. Hubert was fairly satisfied. Madame Mineur had little to say. During the sittings she seldom spoke, and if their eyes met, the richness of her glance was a compensation for her lack of loquacity. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... do it," he shouted, "I'll close the theatre to-morrow and sack every one in it. I'll buy any theatre in New York where you try to present your namby-pamby play. I'll buy every manager she goes to for an engagement, every newspaper that says a word of praise of any work of yours. I tell you I'll stand behind the scenes and pull the strings which shall ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indeed," Elsie cried, with a little contemptuous laugh. "I don't want any spoilt little namby-pamby cry-babies along with me; but that's no reason why I, a girl, should fetch milk for Robbie to drink while he stays at home. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... trivial and the intimate, which, when joined to a natural talent for observation and a picturesque narrative style, enable the possessor to illuminate a circle and a period in a fashion never achieved by the most learned lucubrations of the profoundest scholars. Thanks to his Boswellising powers, 'Namby-Pamby Willis,' as he was called by his numerous enemies, has left an admirably vivid picture of the literary society of London in the 'thirties,' a picture that steadily increases in value as the period at which it was painted recedes ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... opportunity before, so now I make haste to say that I thank you for showing me that a fellow need not be of the namby-pamby kind because he lets the stuff alone. I used to think that boys with any spirit must drink and carouse, occasionally, but I've learned better now. I ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Woolhorton, Iden's solicitor, from whom he had borrowed money, overtook her, walked his horse, and began to talk to her in his perky, affected, silly way. Of all the fools in Woolhorton town there was none equal in pure idiotcy to this namby-pamby fellow—it was wonderful how a man of Iden's intelligence could trust his affairs to such a man, the more so as there was at least one good lawyer in the place. This is very characteristic of the farming race; they will ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... had wandered over the face of the earth with her father and Valentine Hawkehurst. The few elder girls remaining at the Lodge thought Miss Paget unsociable because she preferred a lonely corner in the gardens and some battered old book of namby-pamby stories to the delights of their society, and criticised her very severely as they walked listlessly to and fro upon the lawn with big garden-hats, and arms ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... services can be done than to banish namby-pamby trash from juvenile literature, and to substitute for it what is healthy and jolly and interesting. This is the work that "The Nursery" performs for little children, and we therefore take pleasure in its ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... for you!" I cried. To hear that namby-pamby woman, who is about as capable of understanding you as an old cat, talking about your being firm! You see what you get by being quiet and patient! People would like you much better if you refused to be comforted, and wore a ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... girls, who give evidence of no more thought than is evinced by their namby-pamby chatter, call their existence living? They mistake pertness for wit; audacity for cleverness; disrespect to old age for independence; and general bad manners for individuality. Has nobody ever trained these girls to think? What kind of schools do they attend? Who ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
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