"Babbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interjection pish! with an acrimony of aspect altogether peculiar to himself, "If," said he, "impertinence and folly were felony by the statute, there would be no warrant of unexceptionable evidence to hang such an eternal babbler." "Anan, babbler!" cried Tom, reddening with passion, and starting up; "I'd have you to know, sir, that I can bite as well as babble; and that, if I am so minded, I can run upon the foot after my game without being in fault, as the saying ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... following concluding reasoning, as our pious priest has it weekly in his reviving and searching discourses, came uppermost in my mind: If these mariners were honest and conscientious slavers, would they overlook a labouring man with a large family, to pour their well-earned gold into the lap of a common babbler? I proclaimed to myself at once, sir, that they would not. I was bold to say the same in my own mind, and, thereupon, I openly put the question to all in hearing, If they are not slavers, what are they? A question which the King himself would, in his royal wisdom, allow to be a question easier asked ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... glory! Nor will I think Myrtilla's virtue lessen'd for your mistaken opinion of it, and she may be as much in vain pursu'd, perhaps, by the Prince Cesario, as Sylvia shall be by the young Philander: the envying world talks loud, 'tis true; but oh, if all were true that busy babbler says, what lady has her fame? What husband is not a cuckold? Nay, and a friend to him that made him so? And it is in vain, my too subtle brother, you think to build the trophies of your conquests on the ruin of both Myrtilla's fame and mine: oh how dear would your inglorious passion ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... really looks like, and if you saw any trepangs upon them? And what sort of strata is the gold really in? And you saw one of those giant rays; I want a whole hour's talk about the fellow. And—What an old babbler I am! talking to you when you should be talking to me. Now begin. Let us have the trepangs first. Are they real Holothurians ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... high value here placed upon speech must not be transferred to mere talk. The babbler will always be justly regarded with contempt. Without ideas, opinions, information, talk becomes the most wasteful product in the world, wasteful not only of the time of the person who insists upon delivering it, but more woefully and unjustifiably wasteful of the time and patience of those poor ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Babbler, n. a bird-name. In Europe, "name given, on account of their harsh chattering note, to the long-legged thrushes." ('O.E.D.') The group "contains a great number of birds not satisfactorily located elsewhere, and has been called the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... pack, and first to climb the rock, Or plunge into the deep, or thread the brake With thorns sharp-pointed, plashed, and briers inwoven. Observe with care his shape, sort, colour, size. Nor will sagacious huntsmen less regard His inward habits: the vain babbler shun, Ever loquacious, ever in the wrong. His foolish offspring shall offend thy ears With false alarms, and loud impertinence. Nor less the shifting cur avoid, that breaks 70 Illusive from the pack; to the next hedge ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... perfect revelation of God—the only "manifestation of God in the flesh." He pointed to his "resurrection" as the proof of his superhuman character and mission to the world. Some of his hearers were disposed to treat him with contempt; they represented him as an ignorant "babbler," who had picked up a few scraps of learning, and who now sought to palm them off as a "new" philosophy. But most of them regarded him with that peculiar Attic curiosity which was always anxious to be hearing some "new thing." So they led ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... "Cease, babbler! 'tis enough! I know Thy proud, rebellious nature well. Ho! Captain of our lifeguards, ho! Take down this lad to dungeon-cell, And bid the executioner wait Our orders." All unmoved and calm, He went, as reckless of his fate, Erect and ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear, and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. "That old fellow," said he, "went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers here; the bailiff is his friend: in five minutes we shall lie in a dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity, are you strong enough to hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to lie down in a boat instead ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... your ugly mouth, you babbler.—Six children! Oh! we must make an example of this fellow. An't I the village lawyer? and an't I the terror of all the rogues of the parish? (aside to him.) You must plead ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... agreeableness of our situation—that is to say, that it would not be very great. It nevertheless appeared to me enormous, and Horace's impatience during his celebrated walk was trifling compared to mine. Our Yankee, like the Roman babbler, had abundance of time to discourse on fifty different subjects. The first which he brought before our notice was naturally his own worthy person. From the interesting piece of biography with which he favoured us, we learned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... The babbler opened his ears, no doubt secretly intending to appropriate this story to himself in future time, when none of the hearers should be present, and modestly owned, that all those he had mentioned were mere children's ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... babbler! noisy declaimer though thou be, refrain, nor be forward singly to strive with princes; for I affirm that there is not another mortal more base than thou, as many as came with the son of Atreus to Ilium. Wherefore do not harangue, having kings in thy mouth, nor cast reproaches against ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... the 500 men of the rear guard, who, it is pretended, saw them die! I make no doubt that the story of the poisoning was the invention of Den——. He was a babbler, who understood a story badly, and repeated it worse. I do not think it would have been a crime to have given opium to the infected. On the contrary, it would have been obedience to the dictates of reason. Where is the man who would ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young;—while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... did you tell her, then, you eternal babbler?" said his master, impatient of his prate, yet curious to know what it was ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... that binds her to my heart. Long I've refused to leave her side, Lest there should aught remain untried, Which might her wasting form restore, And tinge her cheek with bloom once more. Oft by her couch, the livelong night, I've watched, till morn's unwelcome light, Like some vain babbler, must reveal The tears, which I would fain conceal; Then softly stole, in silence, where No sigh could reach the sufferer's ear. But, shall I thus forever weep, And let my harp forgotten sleep, When there's one sweet melodious strain, Whose power can wake its ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... this crisis admit one change and your dyke is burst, your land flooded. Every Russian is asked at this moment to believe in simple things—his religion, his Czar, his country. Grant your reforms, and in a week every babbler in the country will be off his head, talking, screaming, fighting. The Germans will occupy Russia at their own good time, you will be beaten on the West and civilisation will be set back two hundred years. The only hope for Russia is unity, and for ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... observations which he made the other day, on the management of his workpeople, would have been thought original if they had been printed. The true artist knows that his hero must be a character shaping events and shaped by them, and not a babbler about literature. Frank, also, was so susceptible. He liked to hear her read to him, and her enthusiasm would soon be his. Moreover, how gifted he was, unconsciously, with all that makes a man admirable, with courage, with ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... the intellectuals, over which brooded the sublime spirit of Plato—the Plato of the gloriousness of the risk of immortality; and there Paul disputed with Epicureans and Stoics. And some said of him, "What doth this babbler (spermologos) mean?" and others, "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods" (Acts xvii. 18), "and they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? for thou bringest certain strange things ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... calls it, has nothing of the Babbler in it. It rises perpendicularly out of the reeds, sings rather screechingly while in the air, and descends suddenly. It has much more of a song than any of the Babblers, a much stronger flight, and its sudden, upward, towering flight and equally sudden descent are unlike ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... went, and no man wist; Hapless, my child, no breast you kist; On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb, Nor knew the ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an old babbler; Dunstan was sometimes a fool, sometimes a hypocrite, sometimes even a sorcerer, although this was said sneeringly; the clergy were divided into fools and knaves; the claims of the Church—that is of Christianity—derided, and the principle freely avowed—"Enjoy life while you can, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... that loves his wife?" said Lady Richmond. "Behold now the rude babbler! Do you not believe, then, that we women ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... I have sacrificed him, my hopes cannot tread the halls of fear so long as Aegisthus is true to me. There he lies, seducer of this woman, darling of many a Chryseis in Troyland. As for this captive prophetess, this babbler of oracles, she sat on the ship's bench by his side and both have fared as they deserved. He died as ye see; but she sang her swan-song of death and lies beside him she loved, bringing me a sweet relish for the luxury of my ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... dubiously at the doctrine of innate ideas, and were divided in opinion as to whether their mythology was a shrewd device of legislators to keep the populace in subjection, a veiled natural philosophy, or the celestial reflex of their own history, mocked at such a babbler and went their ways. The generations of philosophers that followed them partook of their doubts and approved their opinions, quite down to our own times. But now, after weighing the question maturely, we are compelled to admit ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... mere abortion: faith and innocence Are met with but in babes, each taking leave Ere cheeks with down are sprinkled; he, that fasts, While yet a stammerer, with his tongue let loose Gluts every food alike in every moon. One yet a babbler, loves and listens to His mother; but no sooner hath free use Of speech, than he doth wish her in her grave. So suddenly doth the fair child of him, Whose welcome is the morn and eve his parting, To negro blackness change her virgin white. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... babbler," she said. "I am done with your God. When I meet Him I will outface Him. He has broken His compact and betrayed me. My riches go to the Burgrave for the comfort of this city where they were won. Let your broken rush of ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... "Hush! babbler!" the scribe exclaimed, his eyes twinkling nevertheless, "thine art will make an untimely mummy ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... hear you say that. It makes up for the bad times, in between. The Babbler has turned up. He's been living abroad for a few years. I saw him at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
