"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... encouraged this flow of impressions; he thought it extremely interesting in a cultivated and intelligent man who was far from untravelled, for he had been in Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Algeria, and who still evinced a childlike wonder at every unfamiliar object. For instance, he would say: "Now, Mr. Hamerton, I am sure you can't justify this queer custom in English hotels, of putting on the table a roast of eight pounds' weight, at least, or a whole cheese. I can't eat all that, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... child she used to call her English governess that. All the time she examined me curiously and when I looked at the photograph-album she explained: "This is my uncle.... That is my godfather," and fingered the portraits, and at the same time touched me with her shoulder in a childlike way, and I could see her small, undeveloped bosom, her thin shoulders, her long, slim waist tightly ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... and as she slid off the low hassock and knelt beside his chair, he gathered her hungrily to him and held her there for a long time before he spoke again. When he did it was to say, with an air of wonder that was almost childlike: ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... girlish gesture, The sportive and childlike grace, With which she crumpled and pressed your Rose leaves to her rose-hued face. Shall I think on her ways hereafter— On those flashes of mirth and grief, On that April of tears and laughter, On our parting, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... accepted the responsibility, though it painted olive hollows under her eyes and forced her to her oldest dresses. Mrs. Bent clung to her with more than childlike faith. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... woke, and his knee he bent In grateful, childlike prayer, And he prayed till an answer of peace was sent, And Faith and Hope as a rainbow bent O'er the clouds of his ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... discernment, wisdom and light. The Lord strengthen all that is good in thee, that it may live and grow, and cast out and uproot all that may become a stumbling block or root of bitterness within thee. The Lord give to thee the understanding mind, the childlike heart, the pure spirit of the children of light, and lead and guide thee into ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... keen joy in nature and in the innocent, childlike pleasures of everyday things, and at the same ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... for assistance. She must answer it effectually. She must. But how? And then she sprang up and began to pace the room. How to help him. Slowly, and with a minute examination, she went in memory through his story, with its egoism, its cruelty, its ambition, its punishment, its childlike helplessness of to-night, and of many nights. She recalled each word that he had spoken until she came to almost the last, "I have prayed. But God forgives only those who reverse their evil acts. Mine can ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... considerable dependency on her in all domestic affairs, just as she is dependent on him for bodily protection. In the course of ages this has gone so far as to foster a peculiar helplessness on the part of the man, which manifests itself in a somewhat childlike reliance of the husband on the wife. In fact it may be said that the husband is, to all intents and purposes, incapable of maintaining himself without the aid of a woman." This passage will probably seem to many readers to apply quite fairly well to men as they ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... to foot with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white man might well be proud. "You is a good man, capt'n — we knows dat," they said; and when I asked why, the answer showed their childlike faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped you. He dono help ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... deck as together we waved farewell to the friends that were gathered now to welcome George and me back. I thought of how, when we were fighting our way across the desolate wilderness, he had talked of, and planned for, this hour; and thought of his childlike faith that God would take care of us and lead us safely out. And then I asked myself why George and I, whose faith was so much the weaker, had been spared, while Hubbard, who never lost sight of the religion of his youth, was left ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... stay here, my dear children," he replied in a tone of childlike blandness. "You like it here, and are afraid to go elsewhere. Why, my dear children, just think it over ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... the externals of life which are dear to the lovers of executive power. They know less but they understand more than their scholastic brethren. As a class they are sometimes disreputable but nearly always unworldly; more distinguished by an intuitive and childlike than by an ingenious or sophisticated quality of mind. Ideas and facts are perceived by them not abstractly nor practically, but in their typical or symbolic, hence their pictorial and transmissible, aspects. They read dogma, whether ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... In a manner almost childlike, the novelist obeyed the will of the stronger man, throwing himself into an armchair, and burying ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... "It's preposterous, childlike!"—he brought the frail trifle down to the table with an emphasis which was all but its destruction—"imbecile! I tell you ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... how this man, who so far was using, and through long years had always used, only the tone of mentor, now suddenly began to try to justify himself with almost childlike timidity. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... her; I only wish that this suffering soul should find rest," said Simonson, with such childlike tenderness as no one could have expected ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... course. But, do you know? I won't stand up for my view," answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. "Whatever was it I was disputing about?" he wondered. "Of course, I'm right, and he's right, and it's all first-rate. Only I must go round to the counting house and see to things." He got up, stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... suddenly.) Are you happy, lady? (LADY MILFORD turns from her hastily, and overpowered. LOUISA follows her, and lays her hand upon her bosom.) Does this heart wear the smile of its station? Could we now exchange breast for breast, and fate for fate—were I, in childlike innocence, to ask you on your conscience—were I to ask you as a mother— would you really counsel me ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... she heard her mother call her in an eager, trembling voice. She ran into the cottage to see, seated in the neat kitchen, a young soldier, in a faded and tattered uniform,—a pale, emaciated figure, childlike in ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... two books. The Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man was published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials named in this essay—John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is probably the "childlike, pastoral M——" of a later paragraph. Small politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... old-fashioned and queer," said Geraldine, pulling the wrap over the grass stains and looking up into his eyes with a childlike appeal that made him set his teeth. "It was my mother's and you said 'white.' It was ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... spirit of a know-er and with a kindly sympathy begotten of that knowledge. For To Know—to Understand—means to give to each its rights! And, in this matter, have we to concede so much to our higher animals? The simplest form of thought contents them; the childlike adapting itself to animal uses; and, from such "small beginnings" has not our own primeval soul—the best that is within us—risen to higher glory, to become a moulder and organizer of thought—even of creative ideas? Therefore, from all that wealth with which we are dowered we may well ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... ignorance, and want, we should understand how fair and beneficent our own age is. Enthusiasm for the past cannot inspire the best intellectual work. The heart turns to the past; but the mind looks to the future, and is forever untwisting the cords which bind us to the things that pleased a childlike fancy. To grow is to outgrow; and whatever of the past survives, survives, as the very word implies, because it is still living and applicable here and now. Let not the young believe that the age of the heroic and godlike is gone. Good and the means of ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... would take on a look so ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... use of metaphor and chary of definition. The teaching of the Buddha on the other hand is essentially intellectual. The nature and tastes of his audience were a sufficient justification for his style, but it indicates a temper far removed from the unquestioning and childlike faith of Christ. We can hardly conceive him using such a phrase as Our Father, but we may be sure that if he had done so he would have explained why and how and to what extent such words can be ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... day than this. Beards were to the wearers' fancy, and things as strange as the Kaiserliche boar-tusk moustache were commonplace. "Side-burns" found nourishment upon childlike profiles; great Dundreary whiskers blew like tippets over young shoulders; moustaches were trained as lambrequins over forgotten mouths; and it was possible for a Senator of the United States to wear a mist of white whisker upon his throat only, not a newspaper in the land finding ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... and that Psalms x., xxvii., xxxiv., xxxvii., cvii., cxii., cxxiii., cxxvi., cxlvi., are as practically true for us as they were for the Jews of old, and that it is the faithlessness of this day which prevents men from accepting God's promises in their literal sense with simple childlike faith. ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... and lay so still that Charley regarded him intently. His eyes were blue and staring like a newborn babe's, but behind their look of childlike innocence there ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... looking rested and less faded for the week passed in the society of a simple, noble man; the father's gay and debonair, as Amy remembered it—how long ago, was it? And last of all Friend Adam, in gray attire, his broadbrim crowning his snowy hair, his expression one of childlike happiness ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... utterly innocent and artless in this reply, that each of the three persons present felt sensibly affected by its extreme and childlike simplicity. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... open-hearted simplicity which, so it seems to me, makes Christmas essentially German, or at any rate explains why it is that nowhere else in the world does it find so pure an expression. The German is himself simple, warm-hearted, unpretentious, with something at the bottom of him which is childlike in the best sense. He is the last 'Naturmensch' in civilization." Christmas suits him "as well as a play suits an actor for whose character and temperament it has been ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... lips, rather too full, showed almost blood-like over the strong white teeth. There was here, like a flash of passion, something that spoke of awakening womanhood, still unconscious of itself amidst those other traits of childlike softness. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... friends, let us be thankful that we have yet hearts so childlike as to be capable of enjoying this simple pleasure; for we are told that unless we become as little children, we are not fit ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Rocroy. There can be no doubt that she was exquisitely beautiful. Fair-haired, with a complexion of dazzling purity, large expressive eyes, delicate but commanding features, she had a singular fascination of look and gesture, and a winning, almost childlike, simplicity of manner. Without feminine artifice or commonplace coquetry, she seemed to bewitch and subdue at a glance men of all ranks, ages, and pursuits; kings and cardinals, great generals, ambassadors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was generous. Edwin stamped and clapped with childlike violence and fury. Mr Peake slowly and regularly thumped one fist on the bench, puffing the while. Glasses and mugs could be seen, but not heard, dancing. Mr Arthur Smallrice, Mr Abraham Harracles, Mr Jos Rawnpike, and Mr James Yarlett, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... on the Shepherds' Journey. Although it is possible to define an epoch in mythological [126] development in which literary and artificial influences began to remodel the primitive, popular legend, yet still, among children, and unchanging childlike people, we may suppose that that primitive stage always survived, and the old, instinctive influences were still at work. As the subject of popular religious celebrations also, the myth was still the property of the people, and surrendered to its capricious action. ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... opened the door of the room opposite, she found Mildred Caniper sleeping in her narrow bed with the steadiness of complete fatigue, with something, too, touchingly childlike in her pose. She might have been a child who had cried bitterly for hours before she at last found rest, but Notya's grief, Helen divined, had not the simplicity which allowed of tears nor the beauty ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... Commons has a childlike sense of humour. There is nothing that it enjoys more than to have a Minister struggling with the pronunciation of some outlandish place-name. When, therefore, Mr. ILLINGWORTH, posed with the deficiencies of the mail service to Bryngwran and Gwalchmai, made a gallant but ineffectual effort ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... with cold water, and brought her back to consciousness. In a childlike voice she whimpered that every joint in her body was broken. Feeling a burning sensation in the hollow of her hand, she looked, and saw that the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... out the big foolish giant's eye, and the cap of darkness, and the shoes of swiftness, that were worn later by Jack the Giant-Killer. These fairy tales are the oldest stories in the world, and as they were first made by men who were childlike for their own amusement, so they amuse children still, and also grown-up people who have not forgotten ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... more of monotonous patience, and Miss Hyde was thirty-six. Her hair had thinned, and was full of silver threads; a wrinkle invaded either cheek, and she was angular and bony; but something painfully sweet lingered in her face, and a certain childlike innocence of expression gave her the air of a nun; the world had never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... slender body showing through, the hair, platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice look childlike and pathetic. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... Sows with a tranquil hand From clouds, as they roll, Bliss-spreading lightnings Over the earth, Then do I kiss the last Hem of his garment, While by a childlike awe ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... spirits, they say, never outgrow this sense of dependence, but transfer that on which they rely from the seen to the unseen. While, however, other childish things, like ghosts and fairies, can be put away, man seems to be "incurably religious," and the most completely devout natures, although childlike in their attitude towards God, give no impression of immaturity. When one compares Jesus of Nazareth with the leaders in State and Church in the Jerusalem of His day, He seems the adult and they the ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... hearts must childlike be Where such heavenly guests abide: Unto children, in their glee, All ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... hearers. After much criticism of the scientific type by followers of Arnold and Brunetiere, after many class-room lectures and recitations, in which the spiritual value of literature has been lost sight of, it is altogether refreshing to read the almost childlike expressions of Lanier. One feels often that the worship of what he calls his "sweet masters" is overdone, and that he praises far too highly some obscure sonneteer; but there is in his work the spirit of the romantic critic — the zest of Charles Lamb and Hazlitt for the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... you may call it a battlefield, if you will, since famine and desire have striven there together. Or, if you choose to read fine meanings into threadbare things, you may see in it a field of the cloth of gold, where simple love of life and childlike pleasure met and sparkled for no eye to see. It was a croquet ground, laid out in the days when croquet first inundated the land, and laid out by a woman. This was Della Smith, the mother of two grave children, and the wife of a farmer ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... characteristics. He left me nothing but his example and the memory of his many virtues, for all that he ever earned was given to the poor. He was {17} too good for this world; but the remembrance of his high principles, his cheerfulness, his childlike simplicity and truly Christian character, is never absent from my mind.' It was John Howe's practice for years 'to take his Bible under his arm every Sunday afternoon, and, assembling around him ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Cameron, stopping short in his walk, "you—I—!" That frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words. But there was no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips. A look of fear leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her cheeks; then she stood, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... reflect the childlike superstitions and lively imagination of his country. He loves the fairies, the dreams of eternal youth, the symbolizing of things of the spirit by lovely things of earth. His plays are poetical, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Twelfth-Night, is to the children of Rome what Christmas Eve is to us. It is then that the Bifana comes with her presents. This personage is neither merry nor male, like Santa Claus, nor beautiful and childlike, like Christ-kindchen,—but is described as a very tall, dark woman, ugly, and rather terrible, "d' una fisionomia piuttosto imponente" who comes down the chimney, on the Eve of Epiphany, armed with a long canna and shaking a bell, to put playthings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... covert glances at his companion supplied no clue; P. Sybarite's face remained as uncommunicative as well-to-do relations by marriage; his shadowy, pale and wistful smile denoted, if anything, only an almost childlike pleasure in anticipation of the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... weak, unworthy a woman of spirit; but Christian was, in one sense—not Miss Gascoigne's—still a very child. And most childlike in their passionate bitterness, their keen sense of injustice, were the tears she shed in her own room, alone. For she did not go to Dr. Grey: why should she? Her complaints could only wound him: and somehow ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... She leaned back on the moss for a moment's rest, and then springing up recommenced to sing. She stood very straight and tall, her hands locked together behind her, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson; somehow this childlike attitude added by its simplicity to the woman's dignity. Her head was held a little back, chin tilted upwards, and the eyes looked far away as though they beheld a whole world of dreams and lovely ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that drug store and ask," concluded Edna, wisely; and with childlike confidence she turned ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... few remote districts, where the schools are not yet well established, the good people are still found, and their doings are narrated with a childlike faith in the power of these first inhabitants of Ireland, for it seems to be agreed that they were in the country long before the coming either of the Irishman or of ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... again; it would take only a moment or so, even at Larry the Bat's habitual, characteristic, slouching, gait—but it seemed that was all too slow, that he must throw discretion to the winds and run the distance. His blood was tingling; there was elation upon him, coupled with an almost childlike dread that she might ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a sharp glance. In the giant's face there was only a simple good-humor, however, mingled with a childlike confidence in all things. "And I told you that you were not bound ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... emissary of fate sent him bubbling and gasping down into the depths. He was up again in a moment, striving, battling, buffeting. Nothing could make JOHNNIE despair, no disappointment could warp the simple straightforward sincerity, the loyal and almost childlike honesty of his nature. And if here and there, for a short time, fortune seemed to shine upon him, you may be sure that there was no single friend whom he did not call upon to bask with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... Was the gentle Chibiabos, He the best of all musicians, He the sweetest of all singers. Beautiful and childlike was he, Brave as man is, soft as woman, Pliant as a wand of willow, Stately as ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... after a moment, with the childlike innocence a sick person has upon first coming back to sanity: "There couldn't be two girls as pretty as you in this end of the ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike, coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... others between twenty-five and thirty. The youngest, whom they called Sylvestre or "Lurlu," was only seventeen, yet already a man for height and strength; a fine curly black beard covered his cheeks; still he had childlike eyes, bluish-grey in hue, and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... ago, that garden bright and pure, Lost, that calm day too perfect to endure, And lost the childlike love that worshipped and was sure! For men have dulled their eyes with sin, And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt, And built their temple walls to shut thee in, And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out. But not for thee the closing of the door, O Spirit unconfined! ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke
... Femmes, and Mlle. de Brabender explained Agnes to me. The dear, good lady did not see much in it, for the whole story appeared to her of childlike simplicity, and when I said the lines, "He has taken from me, he has taken from me the ribbon you gave me," she smiled in all confidence when Meydieu and my godfather ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... had not known for a long time, childlike, devout, quite artless feelings crowded in upon her; everything the years and her worldly life had brought with them fell from her. To-day she was young again, as young as those kneeling at the altar, full ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... within the lute. The Russian officers are Royalist almost to a man, and will remain so, for they are all most childlike in their adherence to this principle. Some gossip informs one of them that Prince Kuropotkin is still alive and has been seen on the Russian frontier. "Oh!" he exclaims. "Then the admiral will be handing over his power to Kuropotkin directly he hears the ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... red rose at one side simply emphasized her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. . . . She moved listlessly and smiled mysteriously to herself as though unconscious that every one was silent and watchful; then the surprised smile transfigured her, she kissed the other women with childlike abandon, leaving the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the properties of excellence which belong to a Primer for a childlike people, as well ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... little nun whom she had not seen before. Over her slim figure the white serge habit fell in such graceful, mediaeval lines as Evelyn had seen in German cathedrals; and her face was delicate and childlike beneath the white forehead band. She came forward ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... cracks in the floor, and he crept to the hatchway and listened. And then he distinguished Praying Donald's low, deep voice raised in supplication; then Grandaddy had been fighting again and they had come to pray for him. The boy crept miserably back to his bed and, childlike, soon fell asleep. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... and took my hand again with a childlike innocence of possession, and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a grassy lawn which was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered fifteen or twenty stumps of trees—partially imbedded in the grass—and upon all of these ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... I was in two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my solitary way of travel. But the Colonel stood in the path. I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him to be a man of childlike nature—with that sort of innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests—and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on his distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who snored on the next mattress. "Champdivers, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was of a passionate piety, and became in the school of the Jesuits so complete a fanatic and bigot that he thundered out his fierce tirades against all earthly joys and pastimes, no matter how innocent they were. To resemble the holy Xavier and the sanctified and childlike Alois Gonzago, was his highest ideal. In the extremity of his piety and prudery he slipped into the art-gallery of our eldest brother and destroyed Titian's most splendid paintings and the glorious statues of the olden time. He gloried ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... chalk sketch he had awakened an amount of gratitude that almost surprised him in the most beautiful and tender soul in the world; and had not this princess among women taken his hand for a moment as a childlike way of expressing her thanks, while her eyes spoke more than her lips? And the more he looked at those eyes, the more he grew to despair of ever being able to put down the magic of them in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... day a farmer standing by the stove in the store in his village has his mind filled to overflowing with the words of other men. The newspapers and the magazines have pumped him full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city man of ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... ill-considered words, for at the thought of the peril she might have been in, she rose to her feet with an evident return of her panic. Without waiting to put on her gloves, she thrust them into his hands with an impulsive movement, almost childlike in its unconscious betrayal of emotion. He put the gloves in his pocket and took her hand to lead her down the slope. "It's slippery here," he explained. But there was no need to apologize for what she by no means considered a liberty. Indeed, though he was conscious of nothing ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... hand out from beneath the cover and snuggled it in his, and he leaned forward, closing her lids down with his lips. Her utter weariness was manifest, for she fell asleep almost instantly, her fingers twined about his in a childlike grip. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... are, of course, beneath the serious concern of any true student of occultism, nevertheless the mental attitude of such persons are worthy of our passing consideration, inasmuch as it serves to give us an object lesson regarding the childlike attitude of the average so-called "practical" persons regarding the matter of the evidence ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... Ford. Don't go harping on that. You are pure New England stock. Joe Garland is half Kanaka. Your blood is thin. His is warm. Life is one thing to you, another thing to him. He laughs and sings and dances through life, genial, unselfish, childlike, everybody's friend. You go through life like a perambulating prayer-wheel, a friend of nobody but the righteous, and the righteous are those who agree with you as to what is right. And after all, who shall say? You live ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... answered, And with tender meaning smiled: "Ere your childlike, loving spirit, Sin and the hard world defiled, God has given me leave to seek you— I was once ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... and crude than now. The original American genius and the true dramatic pleasure of the people is, I believe, in such plays, where very complete observation of certain phases of American life and very real pictures of manners are combined with comedy almost childlike in its naivete. The sovereignty of the young girl which is such a marked feature in social life is reflected in American plays. This is by the way. What I want to make clear is that in 1883 there was no living American drama as there is now, that such productions ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Baedeker or a Murray could write an account of our doings the next two days. Feeling that we might at any hour be recalled to Benella's bedside, we took a childlike pleasure in crowding as much as possible into the time. This zeal was responsible for our leaving the Urbs Intacta, and pushing on to pass the night in something smaller and ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... read it to the end, getting paler and paler as its meaning became clear, and then, with a certain pathos in his voice that was childlike, it was so ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands are full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,—insatiable with beauty. This is delightful,—but childlike, nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... reddening ear Miss Pratt's voice came clearly as the chiming of tiny bells, for she spoke whimsically to her little dog in that tinkling childlike fashion which was part ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... felt with wondering fingers, was stroked softly, first downwards, then upwards, while the dark and heavy eyes solemnly noted the thin shine of the shifting skin. The curiosity of Mrs. Armine was met by another but childlike curiosity, and suddenly, out of the cloud of mystery broke a ray of light that ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... life-experience. She might have passed for any amiable giantess, or one of those much—developed maids of honor who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her wide blue eyes still ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sometimes aware that deep down in him hid some nameless, indefinable quality that proclaimed him fitted to live in conditions that had never known the restraints of modern conventions—a very different thing to doing without them once known. A kind of childlike, transcendental innocence he certainly possessed, naif, most engaging, and—utterly impossible. It showed itself indirectly, I think, in this distress under modern conditions. The multifarious apparatus ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... "The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dressed as a gentleman should be dressed,—black frock coat, black vest, dark grey trousers, stand-up collar, smartly- tied bow, gloves of the proper shade, neatly brushed hair, and a smile, which if was not childlike, at any rate ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... only felt the cold, but was unhappy and utterly unprepared by any previous experience for the mode of travel, the crowded car and the rough kindness of the people, who liking his curly hair and refined young childlike face would have been of service if he had accepted their advances with any pleasure. Presently, after four in the afternoon, the brakeman called "All out for ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... love is composed of maternal tenderness, childlike inconsistency, torturing jealousy and sublime unselfishness—and how is a man ever going to comprehend ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... lashes. Fine, lustreless, silky hair was pushed back into a net glittering with shining specks under the narrow-brimmed straw hat. A face full of a waiting look, not hopeful nor expectant, simply unsettled and watchful, yet fresh, and rounded with the dimples and childlike curves of eighteen. Whatever of yearning and unrest the years had brought lingered only about the shadowy eyes and fine mouth. There were no haggard nor worn outlines, and a baby's skin could not have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change of attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost. It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. He certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engage by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a Brhmana after he has done with learning wish to stand by a childlike state; and after having done with the childlike state and learning (he is) a Muni' (Bri. Up. III, 5). A doubt arises whether this text enjoins Muni-hood in the same way as it enjoins learning and the childlike state, or merely refers to it as something already established.— ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... enthusiastic, young in heart and mind, a thoroughly open nature. Her husband, on the other hand, was of a morose, sombre, melancholy, reserved nature. In spite of her superior intelligence Hortense had a sort of childlike air; but Louis, though young in years, had the character and appearance of an old man. As much as Hortense loved liberty, her suspicious husband wished to hold firmly the reins of conjugal authority. He was prematurely ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... supper, the doctor's gestures were made with knife and fork in hand, and it was spoken in a rich brogue and tones sometimes of thrilling pathos, anon of sharp and vehement indignation, and again of childlike endearment, amidst pounding and jingling of glasses, and screams of laughter from the company. Indeed the lord mayor, a fat slob of a fellow, though not much given to undue merriment, laughed his ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rightly understands itself, and remains true to its nature, is childlike and manlike, at once tender and strong, full of genuinely human simplicity, and therefore of irreplaceable value to Kultur.—F. LANGE, R.D., p. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... down together; it was growing very dark, and the turf on the bank was soft and uneven. Lucia put her hand through Maurice's arm with her old childlike familiarity, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... periods of my life, brings about a sort of contrast between the anecdotes of Brittany and those of the Seminary, the latter being the details of a darksome struggle, full of reasonings and hard scholasticism, while the recollections of my earlier years are instinct with the impressions of childlike sensitiveness, of candour, of innocence, and of affection. There is nothing surprising about this contrast. Nearly all of us are double. The more a man develops intellectually, the stronger is his attraction to the opposite pole: that is to say, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... illusions which long adhere to religion are undeniably dying out, it is asserted, or suggested, that religion itself is dying. Religion is identified with mythology. But mythology is merely the primaeval matrix of religion. Mythology is the embodiment of man's childlike notions as to the universe in which he finds himself, and the powers which for good or evil influence his lot; and, when analysed, it is found beneath all its national variations to be merely based upon a worship of the sun, the moon, and the forces of Nature. Religion is the worship and service ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... she could find only in this particular person. It might be the merest trifle. Harry knew what it was in Val that had a specially compelling charm to him—it was the way her hair grew on her forehead. And there was something childlike in her expression that made a peculiar appeal to him. The power her face had over him was undiminished—it had begun seriously when he painted her portrait, and had grown gradually since then. And she ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... with joy; and the more the clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon Washington a face that beamed with a childlike ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... in what you say, Hitty. If I had time I would go into the matter with you, but this is my busy day." Nancy sat up in bed, and began sipping her hot water obediently. She looked very childlike in her straight cut, embroidered night-gown, with a long chestnut pig-tail over either shoulder. "I feel as if I were going to be married, ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... resembles her of that long past era! That one was in her shroud, this one —have I made you know it?—has received from you the life of life. Love, pure, and sanctioned, the love my father, now returning rich and prosperous, will authorize, has raised me with its powerful yet childlike hand from the grave in which I slept. You have wakened me as the sun wakens the flowers. The eyes of your beloved are no longer those of the little Modeste so daring in her ignorance,—no, they are dimmed with the sight of happiness, and the lids close over them. To-day I tremble ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... of astonishment in the eyes of the mountaineer became a fixed glare of almost childlike incredulity. So profound was his surprise that he was unable to utter a word. His hand, suddenly quivering as with palsy, went to his tobacco-stained lips and stayed there for a moment. Then his imprisoned ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... each town, has its own particular set of superstitions on a variety of subjects; the above, however, dealing with the most important of all natural phenomena, will be found common to every village and household in the Chinese Empire. The childlike faith with which such quaint notions are accepted by the people at large is only equalled by the untiring care with which they are fostered by the ruling classes, who are well aware of their value in the government of an excitable people. The Emperor himself prays loud and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Biblical account. Christianity must also treat its document historically, and not be disturbed if the temporal vessels of its religious truths are not shaped scientifically. Were they thus shaped, they would fail in their very purpose. It is general, popular, descriptive, childlike language, which is universal and lasting. But Christianity must make certain great reservations over against any theory of evolution. It must demand that the doctrines of a personal God, of the final spiritual character of life and its origin, and of the divine nature of man's spirit be not violated." ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... the man—his lot I prize That far from pomps and turmoil vain, Childlike on nature's bosom lies Amid the stillness of the plain. My heart is sad in the princely hall, When from the towering pride of state, I see with headlong ruin fall, How swift! the good and great! And he—from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wrote down all the observations that he made concerning her, and all that she told him about her life, whether interior or exterior. Her words were characterised alternately by the most childlike simplicity and the most astonishing depth of thought, and they foreshadowed, as it were, the vast and sublime spectacle which later was unfolded, when it became evident that the past, the present, and the future, together with all that pertained to the sanctification, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... with parts of the New Testament for sale, little paper-bound Gospels with covers of bright blue and red. The contents meant nothing to Paru then, but the colors were attractive, and for their sake she and her sister, childlike, bought, and after buying, because they were schoolgirls and the art of reading was ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... acquired something wonderfully attractive in its expression—such a seriousness would come over it sometimes, although she continued as childlike as ever; and such eyes as hers were, at all events in Salve's experience, not common. At any rate, after this, he invariably accompanied ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... the will. Once more, everything depends upon our thought of God; if He is such as Jesus taught us to regard Him, may it not well be that His Fatherly love goes out to us in fullest measure when we call upon it with fullest and most childlike trust? If it is urged that God would surely under all circumstances grant His children whatever may contribute to their happiness, we need only observe that every parent has had occasion to say to a much-loved child, "You shall have this when you know how to ask ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... peers; the stealthy vole Creeps from the covert of its hole; A shimmering moth its pinions furls, Grey in the moonshine of his curls; 'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray, Scattering the fragrance of the may; And with each stirring of the bough Shadow beclouds his childlike brow. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... her in childlike wonder, and then her face lit up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" she ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... slowly determined, to give up the man whom she had owned to love. She had determined that duty and female dignity required her to do so. And in this manner it had been done; not by the childlike forgetfulness which her mother ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... hair, her sable-colored eyebrows and charming gray-blue eyes with their long lashes would have made the most indifferent person, meeting her casually in a crowd in the street, stop at the sight of her face and remember it long after. What struck Alyosha most in that face was its expression of childlike good nature. There was a childlike look in her eyes, a look of childish delight. She came up to the table, beaming with delight and seeming to expect something with childish, impatient, and confiding curiosity. The light in her eyes gladdened the soul—Alyosha felt that. There was something else ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hands without you. I cannot exactly explain my feelings. There is a void that pains me; a certain longing that cannot be satisfied, hence never ceases, continues ever, aye, grows from day to day. When I think how happy and childlike we would be together in Baden and what sad, tedious hours I pass here! I take no pleasure in my work, because I cannot break it off now and then for a few words with you, as I am accustomed to. When I go to the piano and sing something from the opera ["The Magic Flute"], ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... Philadelphia and returned to New York, where he remained for the rest of his life. This is the childlike way he writes to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... attention to a petition addressed to the Supreme Being. Other prayers had disgusted him because of their vulgar familiarity with the Deity, or repelled him by their hypocrisy; but there was something so sincere and simple in the childlike words which issued from the cabin as to quicken his soul and turn his thoughts upon the mysteries of existence. He had received the gift of life as do the eagles and the lions—without surprise. Had any one asked him: ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... me, I sat down to sketch in a little terraced garden, shaded by fig-trees and vines. My sketch was nearly finished, and I was thinking how I should overtake you, when a bright-eyed young maiden came up, and, with the childlike wonder of a race of people living far out of the track of sketching tourists, asked me ‘what I ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... he a real Christian? did he love the same Saviour she loved herself? Oh, these thoughts pressed heavily upon her spirit, but she spread out her cares first before her heavenly Father, and then with full childlike openness before her earthly parent—that loving mother from whom she had ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... remembered, no distinctions; while the redemption which had been promised him in the way of reward—the redemption for which he was waiting—was universal. To him, therefore, the assertion sounded somewhat like an echo of himself. He took a step nearer Ben-Hur, and spoke to him in the childlike way. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need and danger, they are by nature peculiarly exposed to treasons and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... told me of having gone to a dentist in Winchester, Virginia, and having taken her little niece with her. The child watched the dentist put a rubber dam in her aunt's mouth, and then, childlike, began to ask questions. She was a northern child, and she had evidently heard some one in the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... lifting the latch of a door so as to obtain entrance. Finding no one outside at the cottage, they entered the central hall with the soft, quiet tread of the panther. As no one chanced to be there, they continued their explorations with childlike simplicity, and thus most unexpectedly found themselves in the bedroom of Dan Davidson, where Little Bill had just read himself and his brother-invalid into a sound sleep. Both wakened up at once, and the boy sat bolt upright in blazing astonishment, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... great, joyous, trustful, expectant nation. The centuries break away. I almost see it now, lifting itself in its plains and hills and fields and cities, in its smoke and cloud-land, as on some huge altar, to supreme destiny, a nation freed before heaven by the mighty, daily, childlike joy of its own life. I see it as a nation full of personalities, full of self-contained, normally self-centred, self-delighted, self-poised men—men of genius, men who balance off with a world, men who are capable of being at will magnificently ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... gradually came to regard it as one of the best certainties of her life. She soon learned, however, that behind his sunny good-nature was a fiery and impatient spirit, ready to manifest itself if he was chafed beyond a certain point, and so a slight element of fear was mingled with her childlike affection. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... loveliness such as is rarely seen even in a beauty-abounding land. A form of medium height which would, in later years, develop much of stately grace; a complexion of lily-like fairness; and eyes as deep and brown, as tender and childlike, as if their owner were gazing, ever and always, as infants gaze who see only great, grand wonders, and never a ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Warde without loving him, being ambitious of his name and honours, when his future had seemed brilliant in the days of good King Henry. She had borne him an only son, who worshipped her with a chivalric devotion that was almost childlike in its blindness; but the most that she could feel, in return, was a sort of motherly vanity in his outward being; and this he accepted as love, though it was as far from that as devotion to self ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the aisle to the end. It seemed hardly worth while reaching it into the last pew. Just little Maggie sitting there alone, with her one foot dangling above the floor. But with fine courtesy he stopped and passed the plate in. And Maggie in her childlike simplicity lifted her crutches, and tried rather awkwardly to put them on the collection plate. Quick as a flash the man caught her thought, and with a queer lump in his throat reached out and steadied her strange ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... accustomed to exercise a sway over him, owing to her greater decision of character, and, probably, if everything were traced to its cause, to her superior vigour of constitution; but at times she was humbled before his pure, childlike nature, and felt where she was inferior. She was too good and true to conceal this feeling, or to resent its being forced upon her. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was afterward. The party started off from Hampton in high fettle and with a childlike trust in the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... almost made her afraid. But this look was only for an instant; and had in it no doggedness, no vindictiveness; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives of wild or southern countries—a ferocity which enhances the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the impulsive nature thus occasionally betrayed, but there was nothing in it to make her distrust, or recoil in the least, from the new-found brother. On the contrary, all their intercourse was peculiarly ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... antiquity at Hampton Court. I should at this moment be glad to share the youthful spirit of the sunken garden which I passed on my way to the famous vine, and in which with certain shapes of sculpture and blossom, I admired the cockerels snipped out of arbor-vitae in the taste of a world more childlike than ours, and at the same time so much older. The Dutch taste of it all, once removed from a French taste, or twice from the Italian, and mostly naturalized to the English air by the good William and Mary (who were ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... would restore the primitive joys of wonder and childlike delight in simple things. His ideal is the real, not the merely impossible. Unlike most would-be saviours of the race, he seeks not to merge a new humanity into a brand new glittering civilization. He would have us awaken ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... tall, gaunt personage, painfully meagre, and very ragged. His jawbones protruded distressingly, and his poor thin elbows looked so sharp, that one could have fancied they had cut their way through the torn coat that no longer covered them. We pitied, and with childlike sympathy and freedom made acquaintance with him; always pausing to speak to him when we passed the spot on which he labored. Sometimes a little boy, a fair delicate child, was with him, assisting in the work as far as his age allowed; and with this young ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... you could let him know,' said Lorna in her childlike outspokenness, 'that I admire him tremendously. I had no idea he had been such a hero. The way he saved Captain Springfield was just beyond words. Oh, it must have been horrible ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... Dinah are trying to make me vainer than I am by nature," observed Elizabeth with her happy, childlike laugh, as Mr. Carlyon came to her side. "Cedric, it is such a lovely evening that we might have our usual stroll. Would you care to come with ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... youthful women, covering their faces, as if blinded by the splendor of the passing Majesty. At length he stopped before one of the many-curtained recesses, and, drawing aside the hangings, disclosed a lovely, childlike form. He stooped and took her hand, (she naively hiding her face), and placing it in mine, said, "This is my wife, the Lady Talap. She desires to be educated in English. She is as pleasing for her talents as for her ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... occupy their thoughts and energies. For a century the people lived self-concentrated, introspective, their minds filled only with thoughts of themselves. If foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in curiously childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew up a nation of provincials (there is no other word for it), with a provincialism which was somewhat modified, but still provincial, in the cities of the Atlantic coast, and which, after all, had a dignity of its ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... myself a confiding dupe of the "tradition of the dairymaids." While attending medical college I was told that inoculation with cow pox virus was a certain preventive of small-pox, and like most other medical students I accepted with childlike faith and credulity the dictum of my teachers as so much infallible wisdom. After an experience derived from treating a number of cases of post-vaccinal small-pox in patients who gave evidence of having been recently and ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... cries very easily and readily, but her tears are easily dried and her joy is grotesquely childlike. She is readily frightened, worries without restraint and finds a melancholy satisfaction in the worst. At the same time, her fears do not persist and are easily dissipated by encouragement or good fortune. She is readily angered and "raises a row" with great facility and without restraint. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... that grave contingency fell upon them coldly, and the plans they had been making with childlike freedom of fancy drew away and grew dim, as if such plans never had been. So much depended on the crisis in Jerry Boyle's condition, as so much devolves upon the big if in the life of every man and woman at some straining period of ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... not reply. A minute after Mrs. Leyburn called her, and she went to sit on a stool at her mother's feet, her hands resting on the elder woman's lap, the whole attitude of the tall active figure one of beautiful and childlike abandonment. Mrs. Leyburn wanted to confide in her about a new cap, and Catherine took up the subject with a zest which kept ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
