"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... haunted sometimes by the fancy that some day, when the air in the room is unusually bad and the trains are delayed, a curious phenomenon will be seen. The petrifaction will be carried a little farther than usual, and, when the bell rings and the official calls out, "Train made up for Babel, Hinnom, and way stations?" no women will come forth from the "Ladies' Room," no eye will move, no muscle will stir. Husbands and brothers will wait and search vainly for those who should have met them at the station, with bundles of the day's shopping to be carried out; ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... substantial business blocks, schools, churches, factories, and foundries. The lusty, titanic clang of boiler making may be heard there, and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues. The main streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers, merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored and shiny; and fashions and bonnets of every ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... Babel Marmaduke at last slowly wound his way, and arrived before the mighty mansion in which the chief baron of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... draw them to each other, to penetrate to the very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... of a furious orgie; the Babel of cries, of fragments of songs, of insane, meaningless laughter, is dying away, through the pure exhaustion of the revelers; on the gay carpet and the rich damask are pools of spilled liquors, heaps of shivered glass, and bouquets ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Babel strains from Babel tongues? Who's that calls "Silence!" with such leathern lungs? He who, in quest of quiet, "Silence!" hoots, Is apt to ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... catamaran raced at once for the launch; a Babel of strange oaths jarred the brooding silence; alarm, almost panic, stirred men's hearts and bubbled forth in wild speech. Under pressure of this new peril the instinct of self-preservation burst the bonds of discipline. The first ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the windows of the old farmhouse over at Boyntons' gleam with unaccustomed lights and voices break the stillness, lessening the gloom of the long grass-grown lane of Lois Boynton's watching in days gone by. On sunny mornings there is a merry babel of children's chatter, mingled with gentle maternal warnings, for this is a new brood of young things and the river is calling them as it has called all the others who ever came within the circle of its magic. The fragile harebells hanging their ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... His picture was doubtless a highly exaggerated one. The discretionary powers which some of the schemes of comprehension proposed to give would not have left the Church of England a mere scene of confusion, an unseemly Babel of anarchy and licence. A sketch might be artfully drawn, in which nothing should be introduced but what was truthfully selected from the practices of different London Churches of the present day, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... entered a vigorous protest, and for a time there was a babel of argument and declamation, from which no clear line of thought disengaged itself. Dennis, however, in his persistent way, had been revolving in his mind what I had said, and at the first opportunity he turned to me with the remark, "There's one point in your position that I ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every color, in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin of the waves, or scattered here and there, really looked like immense bouquets on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds—voices near and far ringing thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children being bathed, clear laughter of women—all made a pleasant, continuous din, mingling with the unheeding breeze, and breathed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... act or word, bustled forward her bevy of young folks to offer their babel of congratulations. As she presented them one by one, Ruth mustered a wan smile, let them take her cold, limp hand. But her mind was not on them. All the while she was thinking: "This is my HUSBAND.... I belong to this man.... I am his WIFE." Once in a while she would glance ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... good a right to maintain, and to complain of, our inarticulate mode of speaking, as we have of theirs—indeed much more—for monkeys speak the same, or nearly the same, language all over the habitable globe, whereas men, ever since the Tower of Babel, have kept chattering, muttering, humming, and hawing, in divers ways and sundry manners, so that one nation is unable to comprehend what another would be at, and the earth groans in vain with vocabularies and dictionaries. That monkeys and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... tombstones. There was Lucifer among them, struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children; and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider, at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence, flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmaeon, who made ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Saucy Sally, almost the only one on the great water way which spoke not, in the midst of a babel of confusing sounds. Syrens whooped, steam whistles shrieked hoarsely; the raucous voices of fog-horns proclaimed the whereabouts of scores of craft, passing up and down the river; but the trim-built barge slid noiselessly along, ghost-like, in the dun-colored "smother," giving ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... town's third part was this, or little less, Fore which the duke his glorious ensigns spread, For so great compass had that forteress, That round it could not be environed With narrow siege — nor Babel's king I guess That whilom took it, such an army led — But all the ways he kept, by which his foe Might to or from the city ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the Shack were two large sea elephant rookeries, very close to each other, and on the 3rd Sandell and I went along to see what was happening there. We found about two hundred and fifty cows in the nearer one, and, as closely as we could count, about five hundred in the adjacent colony. The babel of sounds made one feel thankful that these noisy creatures were some distance from the Shack. Nearly all the cows had pups, some of which had reached a fair size, while others were only a few hours old. We saw several dead ones, crushed out almost flat, and some skuas were busily ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... selected by no one in authority, elected by no committee. He has occurred, emerged from the mass of men; by virtue of some energy within him has made good his position in front of the instrument. He flogs the keys, and above the babel of talk sounds some rag-time melody, once popular, now forgotten or despised at home. Here or there a voice takes up the tune and ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... songs were succeeding each other in rapid succession. Sometimes, indeed, two or three of the guests seemed disposed to sing or speak at the same time, one exciting the other, and adding not a little to the Babel of tongues. At this state of affairs the ladies took their departure, though not without several gentlemen rushing after them to bring them back. "Are ye after leaving us without a sun in the firmament!" exclaimed one. "The stars are ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... breeze, and continue to make some progress for an hour or two amidst a noise caused by the rumbling of the vehicle, the creaking, jingling, rattling, and clanking, of the atalage, the unceasing crack of the whip, and the chattering of your companions, to which the sounds at Babel were music. The movement then becomes adagio, and soon afterwards the conducteur's voice is heard, begging the passengers in all parts of the vehicle to descend. Wondering what is the matter, you ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... inshore, as he would have liked to do in order to make a survey. But the prescribed period of absence having expired, and the provisions being nearly exhausted, it was necessary to make as much haste as possible. On January 8th the Babel Isles were marked down, and named "because of the confusion of noises made by the geese, shags, penguins, gulls, and sooty petrels." Anyone who has camped near a rookery of sooty petrels is aware that they are ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... noon, and the great belfry above the Gothic Cloth Hall in the Grande Place was casting a lengthening shadow athwart the crowded square. Above the Babel of voices sounded on a sudden the note of a horn, and there was a cry of "The Duke! The Duke!" followed by a general scuttle of the multitude to leave a clear way down the middle of ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... she was ever welcome at Clipstone, and she walked up thither with General Mohun, arriving just after the others from the Goyle; and in the general confusion of greetings, and the Babel of cousinly tongues, there were no introductions nor naming of names. Bessie declared herself delighted with the chance of seeing Lady Ivinghoe, whom she considered more to realise the beauty of women than any one she had hitherto beheld, and the fair ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... some men's doors, who have heaps of filth before them. But this must be when they have a little angered me; for hitherto I am provoked no further than to smile at them. And indeed, to look upon the whole faction in a lump, never was a more pleasant sight than to behold these builders of a new Babel, how ridiculously they are mixed, and what a rare confusion there is amongst them. One part of them is carrying stone and mortar for the building of a meeting-house; another sort understand not that language; they are for snatching away their ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... merchants elbow their sisters of the old nobility. Pressing amongst them impudent young Bedouins pester the fair travellers to mount their saddled donkeys. And as if they were charged to add to this babel a note of beauty, the battalions of Mr. Cook, of both sexes, and always in a hurry, pass by ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... formed any plan, a movement took place near the door. The stairs shook beneath the sudden trampling of feet, a voice cried "De par le Roi! De par le Roi!" and the babel of the room died down. The throng swayed and fell back on either hand, and Marshal Tavannes entered, wearing half armour, with a white sash; he was followed by six or eight gentlemen in like guise. Amid ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... thou torturest, iv. 19. O to whom now of my desire complaining sore shall I, v. 44. O toiler through the glooms of night in peril and in pain, i. 38. O turtle dove, like me art thou distraught? v. 47. O waftings of musk from the Babel-land! ix. 195. O who didst win my love in other date, v. 63. O who hast quitted these abodes and faredst fief and light, viii. 59. O who passest this doorway, by Allah, see, viii. 236. O who praisest Time with the fairest appraise ix. 296. O who shamest the Moon and the sunny glow, vii. 248. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... are the music makers And we are the dreamers of dreams.... We in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... The old woman's voice, shrill and cracked, but steady and unafraid, cut through the babel of shrieks and cries, "You fools, there ain't no fire! If you'll stop yellin' an' pushin' and go quiet you'll all get out in a minute. It's jest a step ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... do with genii or giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded the giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher above all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise above it, and go on rising for ever and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... a protracted banquet, and a merry one withal; there was a perfect Babel of noise; and the excellent old custom of drinking healths with distant friends was freely adopted. Miss Girond did her best to amuse the good-looking boy whom she had been instrumental in rescuing from his solitary dinner in the coffee-room; but he did not respond as he ought to have done; from ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... children who inhabited the next state-room, and the men stared at one another stolidly across the smoking-room. The more experienced travellers knew that ere a week had passed the scene would be changed, that a laughing babel of voices would succeed the silence, and deck sports and other entertainments take the place of inaction; but the younger members of the party saw no such alleviation ahead, and resigned themselves to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... in from the verandah, still laughing, whereat Mrs. Stratton flushed red again and denounced Josie and George for hiding away, then introduced them and Arty to Ned. There was a babel of conversation for awhile, Josie and George talking of their boating, Connie and Ford of the opera, Stratton and Arty of a picture they had seen that evening. Geisner sat by Ned and Nellie, the three ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... entrance through the scuttle hole, and was slushing back and forth as the bark rolled. About half the bunks seemed to be occupied, the figures of the sleeping men barely discernible, although their heavy breathing evidenced their presence, and added to the babel of sound. Every bolt and beam creaked and groaned in the ceaseless struggle with ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... comparative seclusion, than in the overcrowded town, an opinion with which my own completely coincided. And this opinion was strengthened to absolute conviction when, as the sun sank behind the western mountains and the soft, tropical night settled down upon the valley, our ears were assailed by a perfect babel of sound emanating from the town, which, even at the distance of half a mile, rendered sleep almost impossible. What it would have been like to be lodged in the midst of the storm ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... unfolded from its first settlement by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the 5th century of the Christian era. We are informed by these records that America in ancient times has been inhabited by two distinct races of people. The first were called Jaredites, and came ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... many policemen guard our wealth, however many so- called criminals, revolutionists, and anarchists we punish, whatever exploits we have performed, whatever states we may have founded, fortresses and towers we may have erected—from Babel to the Eiffel Tower—there are two inevitable conditions of life, confronting all of us, which destroy its whole meaning; (1) death, which may at any moment pounce upon each of us; and (2) the transitoriness of all our works, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... aux bors do ce superbe fleuve Que de Babel les campagnes abreuve, Nos tristes coeurs ne pensoient qu' a Sion. Chacun, helas, dans cette affliction Les yeux en pleurs la morte peinte au visage Pendit sa harpe ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... parlors uv the hotel. The Chairman asked who shood make speeches after dinner, wen every man uv em pulled from his right side coat pocket a roll uv manuscript, and sed he hed jotted down a few ijees wich he hed conclooded to present extemporaneously to the Convenshun. That Babel over, the Chairman sed he presoomed some one shood be selected to prepare a address; whereupon every delegate rose, and pulled a roll uv manuscript from his left side coat pocket, and sed he had jotted down a few ijees on the situashn, wich he proposed to present, et ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... sceptre of the great. But who are these that, linking hand in hand, Transmit across the twilight waste of years The flying brightness of a kindled hour? Not always, nor alone, the lives that search How they may snatch a glory out of heaven Or add a height to Babel; oftener they That in the still fulfilment of each day's Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, And leap like lightning to the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... which preceded, and which shames them and theirs for ever and ever. I shall be told that amongst those I have been (or it may be still am) conspicuous—true, and I am ashamed of it. I have been amongst the builders of this Babel . . . but never among the envious destroyers of the classic temple of our predecessor." "Neither time nor distance nor grief nor age can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings, and of all stages of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... belonged to the Guelf party; and, unlike his great fellow-citizen, he adhered to it throughout, though by no means approving all the actions of its leaders. After the fashion of the time, he begins his chronicle with the Tower of Babel; touches on Dardanus, Priam, and the Trojan war; records the origin of the Tuscan cities; and so by easy stages comes down towards the age in which he lived. The earlier portions, of course, are more entertaining and suggestive than trustworthy in detail; but as he approaches a time for ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... there rose up two men who vowed to God it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith; of which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have a fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel:—which two buildings you have ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... A Babel of eager voices arose then, but Mr. Smith was not listening now. He was watching Mr. Jim's face, and trying ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... dernier siecle a vu sur la Tamise Croitre un monstre a qui l'eau sans bornes fut promise, Et qui longtemps, Babel des mers, eut Londre entier Levant les yeux dans l'ombre au pied de son chantier. Effroyable, a sept mats melant cinq cheminees Qui hennissaient au choc des vagues effrenees, Emportant, dans le bruit des aquilons sifflants, Dix mille hommes, fourmis eparses ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... no longer in command of circumstances; the vessel was off. But the count stamped his foot, and nodded imperatively. Thereupon Roland repeated the eloquent demonstrations of Renee, and the count lost patience, and Roland shouted, 'For the love of heaven, don't join this babel; we're nearly bursting.' The rage of the babel was allayed by degrees, though not appeased, for the boat was behaving wantonly, as the police officer ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it crowded, and piled, and heaped with books. There were huge, ponderous folios and quartos, and little duodecimos, in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and all other languages, that either originated at the confusion of Babel, or have ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dynasty which might plausibly be mistrusted of respect for visible accumulations of private wealth. Defoe's projects were of an extremely varied kind. The classification was not strict. His spirited definition of the word "projects" included Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel, as well as Captain Phipps's scheme for raising the wreck of a Spanish ship laden with silver. He is sometimes credited with remarkable shrewdness in having anticipated in this Essay some of the greatest ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... to Bethel's Lord and King That He would lead them through this vale of woe, And to the promised land his children bring, Where Babel's streams in living waters flow. They left: again all silence in the dell Save hum of bumble-bee on nimble wing, Or zephyr sporting round the wild blue bell, While fancy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... stanzas, which I send you as a brick of my Babel, and by which you can judge of the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... had seated himself in his study, with a view of investigating systematically the circumstances attending the affair, so far as they were known. At present all seemed involved in a Babel of confusion, even the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of the sorrows of our life that we were prevented (by business) from being present at the building of the Tower of Babel. To say nothing of the great knowledge which we should have acquired of the ancient languages, it would have been jolly to have marked the foreman of the works swearing at the laborers in Syriac, while they answered ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... was able to evolve a law, a universal principle, out of the confused babel of common life and thought and speech, strong enough and wide enough on which to build a new order for this world, a new hope for the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... of Hillah lies in latitude 32 deg. 31 min. 18 sec.; in longitude 12 min. 36 sec. west of Bagdad, and according to Turkish authorities, was built in the fifth century of the Hegira, in the district of the Euphrates, which the Arabs call El-Ared-Babel. Lying on a part of the site of Babylon, nothing was more likely than that it should be built out of a few of the fragments of that great city. The town is pleasantly situated amidst gardens and groves of date trees; and spreads itself on both sides of the river, where it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... New York seemed a Babel after the quiet of that little north of England home. She shivered as thoughts surged in a ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... in the tumult on yonder hill, And the clamour has grown less loud, Though the Babel of tongues is never still, With the presence of such a crowd. The bell has rung. With their riders up At the starting post they muster, The racers stripp'd for the "Melbourne Cup", All gloss and polish and lustre; ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... darkened earth and air; Then feasted they before that cliff-like wall, Ceteian men and Trojans: babel of talk Rose from the feasters: all around the glow Of blazing campfires lighted up the tents: Pealed out the pipe's sweet voice, and hautboys rang With their clear-shrilling reeds; the witching strain Of lyres was rippling round. From far away The Argives gazed and marvelled, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... of New York; militia regiments in many-coloured uniforms, marching in and out of the city all day; groups of emigrants bewildered and amazed, emaciated with dysentery and sea-sickness, looking in at the shop-windows; representatives of every nation under heaven, speaking in all earth's Babel languages; and as if to render this ceaseless pageant of business, gaiety, and change, as far removed from monotony as possible, the quick toll of the fire alarm-bells may be daily heard, and the huge engines, with their burnished equipments ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... wonderful rapidity; story rose upon story, till it seemed as if the new manufactory, with its windows and abutments, was destined to become another Babel. When Charlotte came to Clyde, she gazed with astonishment. "All this," said she to Howard, "is the project of a speculator! Grown men now-a-days remind me of the story of the boy who planted his bean at ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... beautifully tinted in blues and pinks. The other clouds rolled over water and land. They entirely obscured the lower portions of the houses: only the upper stories and the roofs and gables were visible. Some of the buildings appeared to be as high as the Tower of Babel. The boy no doubt knew that they were built upon hills and mountains, but these he did not see—only the houses that seemed to float among the white, drifting clouds. In reality the buildings were dark and dingy, for the sun in the east was not ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... His greatest works are the "Ocean Symphony," "Dramatic Symphony," and a character sketch for grand orchestra called "Ivan the Terrible;" his operas, "Children of the Heath," "Feramors," "Nero," "The Maccabees," "Dimitri Donskoi," and the "Demon;" the oratorios "Paradise Lost," and "Tower of Babel," and a long and splendid catalogue of chamber, salon, and concert music, besides some beautiful songs, which are great favorites in ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... was, in fact, an oratorio designed to be staged and acted; in other words, a biblical opera. Of Israelitish race, the stories of the Old Testament appealed to him with intense force, and his "Tower of Babel," "The Maccabees," "Sulamith," "Paradise Lost," and, later, "Christus," were very important ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... in this description, whom he mentions elsewhere; and seems to borrow his ideas from a similar object, some tower, or temple, that was sacred to him. Orion was Nimrod, the great hunter in the Scriptures, called by the Greeks Nebrod. He was the founder of Babel, or Babylon; and is represented as a gigantic personage. The author of the Paschal Chronicle speaks of him in this light. [267][Greek: Nebrod Giganta, ton ten Babulonian ktisanta—hontina kalousin Oriona.] He is ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... on the stage, in the dressing-room, and even in her room at the hotel, through the thin partition walls: a lingo made up of coarse remarks and thick stories, punctuated with spitting and oaths strong enough to carry a tower of Babel. Lily opened her eyes and ears, heaping it all up, storing it all away behind ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... consulted together, and, after much disputation, agreed that, before they proceeded to extremities, it was expedient to prove what the prisoner would not confess. A venerable Sheikh, clothed in flowing robes of green, with a long white beard, and a turban like the tower of Babel, then rose. His sacred reputation procured silence while he himself delivered a long prayer, supplicating Allah and the Prophet to confound all blaspheming Jews and Giaours, and to pour forth words of truth from the mouths of religious men. And ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... in a foreign language. I procured myself, therefore, a sort of lexicon, in which were German, French, and English words with Danish meanings, and this helped me. I took a word out of each language, and inserted them into the speeches of my king and queen. It was a regular Babel- like language, which I considered only suitable for such ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... was very seldom—to wound the pride of the English soldiery, used to say significantly, in that jargon by which the various nations in the Crimea endeavoured to obviate the consequences of what occurred at the Tower of Babel, some time ago, "Malakhoff bono—Redan no bono." And this, of course, usually led to recriminatory statements, and history was ransacked to find something consolatory to English pride. Once I noticed a brawny man, of the Army Works Corps, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... complication of machinery was added the confusion of tongues. Natives of various races were employed as operatives. Foremen had been obtained from Europe. No fewer than seven separate languages were spoken in the shops. Wady Halfa became a second Babel. Yet the undertaking prospered. The Engineer officers displayed qualities of tact and temper: their director was cool and indefatigable. Over all the Sirdar exercised a regular control. Usually ungracious, rarely impatient, never unreasonable, he moved ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... when we reached home, and now a meditative man might well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association. Late in the morning we must ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... maintained that, in default of union between the Southern Slavs, a selfish interference of the Great Powers in the Balkans and unceasing wars among the natives would be unavoidable. The ideas of Bogdanov regarding the Bulgarian and Serbian languages were current. "It is not a tower of Babel," says he, "but a temple of God. When we are united there will be no curse yelled in a hundred voices but a harmonious prayer." And in another passage he declares that "there is less difference, for example, between Serbian and Bulgarian than ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... perfect Babel at the French criolla's. Some are endeavouring to dance with little more terra firma to gyrate upon than 'La Nena' had on her foot square of table. Others are beating time on tables, trays, and tin pots. Somebody has brought a dismal accordion, but he is so jammed up in a corner by the dancers, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... had sapped my last strength, however; and with the first whiff of the gutters, the first rush of barefooted gamins under my horse's hoofs, the first babel of street cries—the first breath, in a word, of Paris—there came a new temptation; to go for one last night to Zaton's, to see the tables again and the faces of surprise, to be for an hour or two the old Berault. That would be no breach of honour, for in any case I could not reach ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sirs, that except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political structure no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided and confounded and we ourselves become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And, what is worse, mankind may hereafter despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... indignation was so violent that nobody was shocked. Cornudet brought his beer glass down on the table with such a bang that it broke. There was a perfect babel of invective against the base wretch, a hurricane of wrath, a union of all for resistance, as if each had been required to contribute a portion of the sacrifice demanded of the one. The Count protested with disgust that these people behaved really as if they were ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... from distant buildings, a babel of howls and shrieks, inhuman, unearthly. There were no phrases or syllables, but to Blake it was familiar ... somewhere he had heard it ... and then he remembered the radio and the weird wailing note that told of communication. These things were ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... up that outlandish Greek, and all that babel of foreign tongues, and your fine friends, and your grand college, and you hopes of being a famous woman by and by? Do ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... In a few seconds it ceases for a momentary lull, and then suddenly breaks forth again, louder than before. The tones of the different ones are so different that the cries of nearby individuals may be plainly distinguished amidst the babel of voices coming from the distance. It sounds as if thousands upon thousands of them were striving to express every emotion with their tiny tenor voices. No words can describe the effect that these sounds produce. One of the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... the sun, the moon, birds flying in the air, &c., could be put in afterward by an artist of higher grade. And, by the way, now I think of it, I may as well open with a sunrise off Cape Guardafui, and a distant view of the Straits of Babel Mandel, give a passing glance at the sources of the Nile, which lie in that undiscovered region, a brief glimpse at the Mountains of the Moon, and wind up with a splendid sunset in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... towering upward to the clouds, mile after mile, league after league; the consequence of which would be, that I should be expected to run up and down this ladder, like any fatigue party of Irish hodmen, carrying hods of mortar and bricks to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirer might choose to build. But I put a stop to this villainy. I nipped the abominable system of extortion in the very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man could ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... they should do it, and then if you happen to have any foreigners working for you, you can hire a fellow at fifteen per to translate hustle to 'em into their own fool language. It's always been my opinion that everybody spoke American while the tower of Babel was building, and that the Lord let the good people keep right on speaking it. So when you've got anything to say to me, I want you to say it in language that will grade regular on ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... volume of Manchester, but could not read it; it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.' Walpole's ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... ours of saying "advertisment," since we say "advertise" too. But then, although the Americans say "inquire," just as we do, they illogically put the stress on the first syllable when they talk about an "inquiry." The Tower of Babel is thus carried up one storey higher. The original idea was merely to confuse languages; it cannot ever have been wished that two friendly peoples should speak the same ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Tower. To the right, another forest of masts, and a maze of buildings, from which, here and there, shot up to the sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra's Needle, vomiting forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy—occasionally a gorgeous one—of the more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames—the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch—a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, fascinated me. Who knows but I should have leapt into its ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... between "a learned knight and a pitifull pedagogue," and contained an amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the classics, another confides to his neighbors how much he ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to say any thing respecting the introduction of death into the world, the continual interventions of spiritual agencies in the course of events, the offices of angels and devils, the expected conflagration of the earth, the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of mankind, the interpretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses, the rainbow, etc. Above all, I abstain from commenting on the Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too anthropomorphic, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Tower of Babel and the Confusion of tongues—by Mr. Howes: the contribution of various tradesmen connected with ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... city went; Where having cast his coat, and well pursued The methods most in fashion to be lewd, Return'd a finish'd spark this summer down, Stock'd with the freshest gibberish of the town; A jargon form'd from the lost language, wit, Confounded in that Babel of the pit; Form'd by diseased conceptions, weak and wild, Sick lust of souls, and an abortive child; Born between whores and fops, by lewd compacts, Before the play, or else between the acts; Nor wonder, if from such polluted minds Should spring such short and transitory ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... handkerchiefs and a babel of parting cries, each 'bus-load of girls departed from the Hall to the station singing the farewell ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of approval among the bystanders, so boldly Dick declared his innocence; but at the same time a throng of accusers arose upon the other side, crying how he had been found last night in Sir Daniel's house, how he wore a sacrilegious disguise; and in the midst of the babel, Sir Oliver indicated Lawless, both by voice and gesture, as accomplice to the fact. He, in his turn, was dragged from his seat and set beside his leader. The feelings of the crowd rose high on either side, and while some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dress; it was the end of the season, and the streets were thronged with foreigners—the Moor from Morocco, in his white burnous, elbowed the Slav from Moscow; the Eiffel Tower had become a veritable Tower of Babel; the theatres were packed, the cafes crowded. Austrian, Russian, English, and American gold was pouring into the city—pouring in ceaselessly from the four corners of the world and by every great express disgorging at the Gare du Nord, the Gare ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... latent evil in that heart she found, More open here, but here the core was sound. Various our Day-Schools: here behold we one Empty and still: —the morning duties done, Soil'd, tatter'd, worn, and thrown in various heaps, Appear their books, and there confusion sleeps; The workmen all are from the Babel fled, And lost their tools, till the return they dread: Meantime the master, with his wig awry, Prepares his books for business by-and-by: Now all th' insignia of the monarch laid Beside him rest, and none stand by afraid; He, while his troop light-hearted leap and play, Is all intent ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the size of every family was decided in heaven. More modern views would not have startled her; they would simply have seemed foolish—thin chatter, like the boasts of the men who built the tower of Babel, or like Axel's plan to breed ostriches in the chicken yard. From what evidence Mrs. Kronborg formed her opinions on this and other matters, it would have been difficult to say, but once formed, they were unchangeable. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... pass the open door of their school some day when it is in session, you would hear a perfect Babel of voices all talking at once and saying such things as this,—only they would say them in Spanish ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... reason of a confusion of tongues, work was knocked off on the Tower of Babel, if then all hands had turned to outdoor sports, the resultant scene would have been, I imagine, much like the picture that is presented on most Saturdays on the sixty-acre stretch of turf known as Indian Field, up ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... were asking many questions; they were firing them off by the hundred almost, they were shouting them at their prisoners and at one another, till there was such a babel that no one could answer and few could understand. It was not, indeed, until a non-commissioned officer of burly form and bullying appearance came upon the scene that the commotion ended, and some sort of order ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... arrested the Sejmist's harangue. As he pushed it open, a babel of other voices made continuance impossible. The noise came entirely from a party of four, huddled in a cloud of cigarette-smoke near the stove. In one of the four David recognised the tea-merchant of the morning, but the tea-merchant seemed to have no recollection ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... according to the Malay custom. Then he begged admittance very humbly, and after paying a fee of five dollars, was admitted. His followers rush in first—such a clatter! Greetings, welcomes, jokes, and laughter, make a Babel of noise; everybody speaking at once. Then a cloth was laid down for the bridegroom to pass over, and he was pulled with apparent reluctance into the room, panting and shutting his eyes as if exhausted. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... you fancy anything so unlikely?" I asked aside at last, behind the babel of voices. "You quite ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... 'Humpty Dumpty!' cried others; there was a perfect babel of voices! Only the fir-tree kept silent, and thought, 'Am I not to be in it? Am I to have nothing ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... bechapped men belonging to the valley, with their long hair, their unwashed skins, their frowsy garments, and the firearms adorning their persons, when strident voices kept up an almost continual babel of coarse oaths, interlarded with rough laughter, or deadly quarrelings, when the permeation of alcohol had done its work and left its victims in a condition when self-control, at all times weak enough in these untamed citizens, was ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... that owns yer tongue on the whole face o' God's airth, if ever ye had either; whilst the laws and language o' England are at this time universal! ay, sir, universal, or at least mair sae than any one tongue ever yet was since the Lord made men strangers to their fellows at the confounding o' Babel." ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... he sets forth: demonstrating, likewise, that things are ruled by a wise free providence; not by destiny or necessity, which even Porphyry and the wiser heathens had justly exploded, though the Apostate adopted that monstrous doctrine. He justifies against his cavils the history of the Tower of Babel: and in his fifth book, the Ten Commandments; showing in the same, that God is not subject to jealousy, anger, or other passions, though he has an infinite horror of sin. Julian objected that we also adore God the Son, consequently have ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Rex stretched himself at full length on the ground, moved up and down to get at the right distance, and began to assail the grating with a series of such violent kicks as woke a babel of subterranean echoes. Not in vain he had been the crack "kick" of the football team at school; not in vain had he exercised his muscles ever since childhood in scrambling over mountain heights, and taking part in vigorous out-of-door sports. Norah clasped her hands in a tremor of ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... can a perfect production be expected? It, therefore, astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does: and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded, like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... enacted in the little glade beside which Madam Rothsay and Edith Hester had been left helplessly bound by their captors. From the moment of the girl's brave effort to warn the camp, these two had listened with straining ears to the babel of sounds by which the whole course of the tragedy was made plain to them. They shuddered at the volleys, at the screams of the wounded, and at the triumphant yells of the victors. They almost forgot their own wretched position in their ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... at one of the little marble-topped tables, was in too great maze and exaltation of spirit and of senses to be conscious of its glare and babel, even of its beauty. He sat so very still that his neighbours, with the instinctive aversion of the human creature to what is too remote from its own mood, after one good stare, turned their eyes away, as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sir,—though its murduring high, and almost entirely quite aqual in stapeness to the ould ancient Tower of Babel, yet, sir, there is them living now as have been at the top of that same; be the same token I knew both o' the spalpeens myself. It's grown up they are now; but whin they wint daws'-nesting to the top there, the little blackguards weren't above ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... effects, which those of us who happened to possess any ready cash bought up at long figures. He had no plans for the future, so we stuck a false moustache on him, corked his eyebrows, and thus disguised kept him smuggled in our rooms for ten days, during which time Bacchus created Babel. And then we had him photographed in various attitudes—singly, and surrounded by groups of admirers—and then we went out with him to the station, saw him in a train for Liverpool Street, and—that's all. He was never viewed ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... because you are not listening for His voice. If we kept down the noise of that 'household jar within'; if we silenced passion, ambition, selfishness, worldliness; if we withdrew ourselves, as we ought to do, from the Babel of this world, and 'hid ourselves in His pavilion from the strife of tongues'; if we took less of our religion out of books and from other people, and were more accustomed to 'dwell in the secret place of the Most High,' and to say, 'Speak, Friend! for Thy friend heareth,' we should more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... a grievous aggravation of the tax upon salt, called Babel, caused a violent insurrection in the town of Rochelle, which was exempted, it was said, by its traditional privileges from that impost. Not only was payment refused, but the commissioners were maltreated and driven away. Francis I. considered the matter grave enough ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... following statement of Mr. Layard, as to the multitudes which are found on the western coast. "At Chilaw I have seen such vast flights of parroquets coming to roost in the coco-nut trees which overhang the bazaar, that their noise drowned the Babel of tongues bargaining for the evening provisions. Hearing of the swarms which resorted to this spot, I posted myself on a bridge some half mile distant, and attempted to count the flocks which came from ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... them. About sixty miles in a south-easterly direction from Mexico is the modern town of Cholula. This has grown at the expense of the ancient city of Cholula, grouped around the famous pyramid of that name. This was the Mexican "Tower of Babel." The traditions in regard to it smack so strongly of outside influence that but little reliance can be placed on them. They are evidently a mixture of native traditions and Biblical stories. Like Teotihuacan and Tulla, this is regarded ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... of the Deutschland?" he finally exclaimed. "Ah! It will be great and wonderful. But where it will end—who knows! Will it be like the Tower of Babel, great in conception, great in execution, but overreaching in its greatness? Will our destiny be like the snowball, accumulating as it rolls till it becomes immovable in its immensity? Then—stagnation! And yet the start of that snowball was ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... time to introduce his "most discreet sister Griselda" as he called her, who came arrayed in all the finery of half a century before, and wearing a mysterious erection on her head, something between a wedding-cake and the Tower of Babel in a picture Bible, while his niece, Miss MacIntyre, a pretty young woman with something of bright wit about her, which came undoubtedly from her uncle's family, was arrayed more in the fashion ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... nostril of the first Englishmen who came to conjugal ties of Hindustan. The place sent up to the stars a vast noise of argument and anger and laughter, of the rattling of hoofs and wheels; but the babel was ordered in its exaggeration, the red turban of a policeman here and there denoted little more than a unit in the crowd. There were gas-lamps, and they sent a ripple of light like a sword-thrust along the gutter ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... frank-faced Felix, who with elaborate slowness dealt with the envelope, tasting slowly of the excitement it created, and edging away from the baluster, on which, causing it to contribute frightful creaks to the general Babel, were perched numbers 4, 6, 7, and 8, to wit, Edgar, Clement, Fulbert, and Lancelot, all three handsome, blue-eyed, fair-faced lads. Indeed Edgar was remarkable, even among this decidedly fine-looking family. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... qualifications. To leave the everyday circle of society, in which the literary and scientific rarely— the rest never—break through the spell of personality;—where Anecdote reigns everlastingly paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to generalize the Babel of facts, and to control temporary and individual phenomena by the application of eternal and overruling principles, is unintelligible to many, and disagreeable to more;—to leave this species of converse—if converse ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge |
