"Jabber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Englishman, or any one speaking English, could take with him a translatophone and travel around the world, understanding the language of every nation, of every people—the polished tongues of civilization, the speech of the scholars of the Orient, and even the jabber of the wild savages of Africa. To be sure, he could not expect to answer those who spoke to him, but what of that? He would not wish to speak; he would merely desire to hear. All he would have to do would be to pretend that he was deaf and dumb, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of monkeys was coming. I could not hear the faintest rustle, but sure enough in a minute or two a troop of over twenty monkeys came hopping and shambling along, stopping every now and then to sit on their hams, look back, grin, jabber, and show their formidable teeth, until Mehrman rose up, waved his cloth at them, and turned them off from the direction of the nets toward the bank of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... into camp, assisting the white hunter, several squaws began an excited jabber that brought out a ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... yesterday! If one were to squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there but returned convicts ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... even if she wasn't, it's important for all her inhabitants that she should be on the winning side.... Oh, she will be, no doubt, we've the advantage in numbers and wealth, if not in military organisation or talent.... If only the Potterites wouldn't jabber so. It's a unique opportunity for them, and they're taking it. What makes me angriest is the reasons they vamp up why we're fighting. For the sake of democracy, they say. Democracy be hanged. It's a rotten system, anyhow, and how this war is going ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... anything at all. Look at Oke there, now, what a depth of stupidity lies behind his brown visage; what bucketsful of ignorance swell out his black pate, but he expresses it all in the single word 'Waugh!' because he's a philosopher. If he was like La Certe, he'd jabber away to us by the hour of things he knows nothin' about, and tell us long stories that are nothin' less than big lies. I'm glad you think me a philosopher, Little Bill, for it takes all the philosophy ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Skeleton, fearing more and more that time would be wanting, cried, furious at these interruptions, which seemed to indicate that several of the prisoners were becoming softened, "Silence in the crowd! He will never finish, if you jabber as much as ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... on is for me to sing him one of my French songs. That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and finally begin—jabber, jabber, jabber—trying to talk me down, as if I were ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... his idol's fame. That seems to me simply degrading: and then the portentous ass, whose review I read, says that if the editor had done nothing else, he is sure of an honoured place for ever in the hierarchy of impeccable critics! And what is all this jabber about—a few rhymes which a man made when he was feeling a little off colour, and which he did not think it worth while ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book goistering is explained as guffawing. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere needless jabber of the daw. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... ye here to-night to tell ye how I went along the Damascus road and cast my burden on the Lord.... He is not hard to deal with.... There's beasts in us, all of us. They lift their heads out of us and jabber and clamour at us; they tear at us with their claws, but if we throw ourselves on God's strength He crushes the life out of the beasts. We can do nothing till we stop fighting and lean on Him. He is kinder than all our hopes, kinder ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... tried to make them understand I came as a friend, and endeavoured to retrace my steps to the open, where I hoped my shipmates might see me and effect a rescue, but I now perceived that whichever way I turned my path was barred by these wild men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some of the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... eyelids, I don't like the language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent, which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass, nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the yacht in a craft made of planks rudely tied together with the sinews of animals, and give otter skins for "tobaco and galleta" (biscuit), for which they call. When Lady Brassey gives the lad and his mother some strings of blue, red, and green glass beads, they laugh and jabber most enthusiastically. Their paddles are "split branches of trees, with wider pieces tied on at one end, with the sinews of birds or beasts." At the various places where they land, all go armed, Lady Brassey herself being well skilled in ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... ever heard, the wail of a woman in horror and dismay. Then dull, heavy blows; oaths, curses, stifled exclamations; a fall that shook the windows; Gleason's voice commanding, entreating; a shrill Chinese jabber; a rush through the hall; more blows; gasps; curses; more unavailing orders in Gleason's well-known voice; then a sudden pistol shot, a scream of "Oh, my God!" then moans, and then silence. The casement on the second floor was thrown open, and a fair young face and form were outlined upon the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... children. He declined to sit up half the night to find out "how things were going." So he went to bed, knowing perfectly well that his three bunkies would come piling in at some outlandish hour and jabber about the "kid," and he wouldn't be able to get back to ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... fault. They had had no credit to pledge for the season's stores. They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ever more in earnest, ever more soul-tied ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the so-called battle-field before leaving for the South. We started in a covered waggonette with no springs to speak of, drawn by six mules, and a pair of horses as leaders. Two Kaffirs acted as charioteers, and kept up an incessant jabber in Dutch. The one who held the reins looked good-natured enough, but the other, whose duty it was to wield the enormously long whip, had a most diabolical cast of countenance, in which cruelty and doggedness ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... his most bullying tones. "Take no notice of the fellow's jabber. I order you not to let these horses go without the permission of the chamberlain or the King's Master ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... see, Sir Jabber," remarked the King to the can-opener, "that you have such a prying disposition. As a matter of fact, all the things you mention ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a sign to Miss Ponsonby; she rose, and followed him into the garden. 'I cannot endure the jabber of these men,' ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF. If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say 'Well, I must be going now—hope I'll see you again'—and then I take a walk. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... further entreated all the magistrates and men of authority in the land to wait on Mr. and Mrs. de Loutherbourg, to consult with them on the immediate erection of a large hospital, with a pool of Bethesda attached to it. All the magnetisers were scandalised at the preposterous jabber of this old woman, and De Loutherbourg appears to have left London to avoid her; continuing, however, in conjunction with his wife, the fantastic tricks which had turned the brain of this poor fanatic, and deluded many others who pretended to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... ask what he meant by these ominous prognostications; but he began to jabber in Dutch to our staring water-neighbors. Any stranger would have thought him in the pleasantest mood in the world. He had a friendly nod for the brown-faced skipper of a smoking tug, a few words for another, and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... eating or silent. They talk like madmen, and drink like madmen. In drinking they use small phials, the contents of which they pour down their throats. When I first went amongst them I thought the whole nation was under a course of physic, but the terrible jabber of their tongues soon undeceived me. Drak was the first word I heard on entering Dacia, and the last when I left it. The Moldaves, if possible, drink more, and ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Roscoe's uncle, failed to appreciate pwes, which were now held within stated bounds; he preferred out-of-door entertainments, as the heat, the smoke, the smell of raw plantain skins, the band, and the jabber ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... I shall never forget them. The one was as tall as a giant, with much tawny moustache, like the coat of a badger, growing about his mouth. He had a huge ruddy face, and looked dull and stupid, as he no doubt was, for when I spoke to him, he did not seem to understand, and answered in a jabber, valgame Dios! so wild and strange, that I remained staring at him with mouth and eyes open. The other was neither tall nor red-faced, nor had he hair about his mouth, and, indeed, he had very little upon his head. He was very diminutive, and looked like a jorobado (hunchback); ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... love story, you know, and this man has the same idea! He talked to me, the stiffest conversation lessons you ever heard. It was like the dialogues in Ruskin. I wonder what he would think if he should hear Karl and me sometimes. We jabber it all the time, he and Mamma and I. Dad won't let us when he's around, so we talk English then, and that instructs Karl. He's good except for his pronunciation. You should hear him do the Harvard yell! He rolls the 'r's' so far he almost loses them. They are even ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... jabber away, and ask us all sorts of questions, none of which we could answer, from not being able to muster a word of French amongst us. The other boats came up, and then there was still more jabbering; and then the Frenchmen made us all get into one boat, and pulled with us towards a point of ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... ignorance prevails—I am inclined to doubt the simplicity and homogeneity even of this quality of "energy" or "go." A person without restraint, without intellectual conscience, without critical faculty, may write and jabber and go to and fro and be here and there, simply because every impulse is obeyed so soon as it arises. Another person may be built upon an altogether larger scale of energy, but may be deliberate, concentrated, and fastidious, bent rather upon truth ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... are to blunder in And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame— No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war, When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you; And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts That drive them out to jabber among the trees. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... more every day is how such a chap as him should come to be a common soldier. He's a gentleman, every inch of him. Why, didn't they get him to talk to the French officers when we landed at Ceylon, and the French frigate was there? and my word, how he did jabber away! He might have been a real mounseer. Well, 'taint no business of mine; so long as he gets his accoutrements clean, and a good coating of pipeclay on his belts, that's enough for me. I only wish there was more Grays and not so ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... to jabber to each other, in a low voice; but we could not, of course, make out what they said, and I don't think they were able to imagine what we intended to do. We were standing near the inner door of the great entrance-way, and into this they now marched ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... respect the young gentleman's force of character. So again I bowed my head, and repeated what Budge had reported as "papa's blessin'," Budge kindly prompting me where my memory failed. The moment I began, Toddie commenced to jabber rapidly and aloud, and the instant the "Amen" was pronounced he raised his head and ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... "Lay off that jabber, old bucks, the two of ye!" commanded Officer Rellihan, swinging across the room. "I'm here to kape ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the silence in the huddled group of men. Then the newspapermen came to life and excited talk became a jabber of words around them. Trent took the arm of Mathieson and turned him. He tried to lead the scientist away from the newspapermen but one of them stepped forward and ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... correctly. And having said this, with a respectful and barely perceptible smile of satisfaction addressed to me, he turned to the woman. And no sooner had he turned to her, than his whole face altered. He said, in a peculiar, scornful, hasty tone, such as is employed towards dogs: "What do you jabber in that careless way for? 'I sit in the taverns.' You do sit in the taverns, and that means, to talk business, that you are a prostitute," and again he uttered the word. "She does not know the name for herself." ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... interested in what you were saying that I lost the thread of my story. We were listening to an excited jabber of nonsense in the hotel—for instance, one of the negro servants said you went away of your own free will—and wondering what on earth we could do, when this genii of an Arab came to me in a mysterious way, and led me straight on your track. Shall ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way; She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew how to play; And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't live ez kin use; And slippers—you see 'em down 'yer—ez would cradle ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... black eyes to her father's; "I ain't no account, and you ain't no account either. You ain't got no college education, ain't got no friends in 'Frisco, and ain't got no high-toned style; I can't play the pianner, jabber French, nor get French dresses. We ain't got no fancy 'Shallet,' as they call it, with a first-class view of nothing; but only a shanty on dry rock. But, afore I'D take advantage of a lazy, gawky boy—for it ain't anything else, though ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Count "Six-strokes". The elderly woman seemed to be astonished at such a name, but the Lambertini gave no explanation. Nevertheless, people seemed to think it rather curious that a man who did not know a word of French should be living in Paris, and that in spite of his ignorance he continued to jabber away in an easy manner, though nobody could understand what he was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... backwards as if she were shot, staring in horror at Freddy's furious little face, then touched her mouth and ears and began to jabber inarticulately and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke, then—"Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the main road to towns an' sich like—this is a bye, an' 'ere it stops. We'll 'ave ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... extra one, and they had better have tea on one of the ordinaries. "Pooh, volcanic!" says the leading tourist, and the ladies say how interesting. The island begins to rock, and so do the minds of its visitors. They start and quarrel and jabber. Fingers burst up through the sand-black fingers of sea devils. The island tilts. The tourists go mad. But just before the catastrophe one man, integer vitae scelerisque purus, sees the truth. Here are no devils. Other muscles, other minds, are pulling the island ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... in trying! A pound's a pound, there's no denying; But think what thousands and thousands of pounds We pay for nothing but hearing sounds: Sounds of Equity, Justice, and Law, Parliamentary jabber and jaw, Pious cant, and moral saw, Hocus-pocus, and Nong-tong-paw, And empty sounds not worth a straw; Why, it costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a public dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... like all the rest of the world, cares not a fig for philosophical jabber. In dearth of other philosophical companionship, I and my chimney have to smoke and philosophize together. And sitting up so late as we do at it, a mighty smoke it is that we two smoky ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Then he stretched out his arms, and yawned in the face of the Council; but he was furious with rage and sorrow, for, wolf-like, the wolves had never told him how they hated him. 'Listen you!' he cried. 'There is no need for this dog's jabber. Ye have told me so often to night that I am a man (and indeed I would have been a wolf with you to my life's end), that I feel your words are true. So I do not call ye my brothers any more, but sag [dogs], as a man should. What ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... most democratic of democracies; and weighs things down;—and you cast about for new methods of reform. Democratic government, somehow, does nothing of what was expected of it; is not the panacea;—you see that, to bring the chaos of affairs into order, you must stop all this jabber and tinkering, and set up some undivided council,—some Man, for God's sake!—a Dictator who can keep his own and other people's mouths shut and hands busy, and get things done unimpeded. So you make one more grand ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of boys surrounded him, pulled at his already disordered queue, snatched pies from him, haggled over the prices, and committed a thousand deviltries. The Chinese yelled, swore, forswore, in all the languages he could jabber, not omitting his own; he whimpered, laughed, pleaded, put on a smiling face when an ugly one would not ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... could speak no language but his own, he was continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he called the Holy Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an opportunity of seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous—a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville and Caius. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... this offer (however little suited to my taste), or remaining a burden upon my mother, it may easily be imagined that I lost no time in signifying my desire to avail myself of his kindness; and, ere a couple of months had elapsed, I had plunged deeply into the mysteries of book-keeping, and could jabber French with tolerable fluency. I was still working away at "Double Entry," and other horrors of a like nature, when one morning I received a large business-like letter, in an unknown hand, the contents of which astonished me not a little, as well they might; for they proved to be of a nature ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... flitting through the woods, and knows by his unusual silence that he is hiding things. Meeko follows after him, stopping all his jabber and stealing from tree to tree, watching patiently, for hours it need be, until he knows that Deedeeaskh is gathering corn from a certain field. Then he watches the line of flight, like a bee hunter, and sees Deedeeaskh disappear twice by an oak on the ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... has a larger sphere of action,—do you take? I don't know whether you have had this feeling of surprise, Doctor, but I have, hearing those little imps talk French, when, to save my soul, I can't jabber it that way myself. In course of nature they must talk that lingo, for they are quilted in French—kissed in French—fed in French—and put to bed in French,—and told to pray to the Virgin in French, for that's the language she loves best. She knows a great many languages, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of the animals who fill the Zoo with their strange noises, early man liked to jabber. That is to say, he endlessly repeated the same unintelligible gibberish because it pleased him to hear the sound of his voice. In due time he learned that he could use this guttural noise to warn his fellow beings whenever danger threatened and he gave ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... who was very ill, and, in compensation, received a boy about seven or eight years old. The boy had traveled four months across the desert from Lake Chad. He knew nothing of his home country, had even forgotten his mother tongue, and could jabber only some fragments of speech picked up from the other slaves of the caravan. As a result of the long journey he was emaciated to a skeleton and so enfeebled that he could scarcely stand up. He crawled ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... summer, Dunmore saw how unalterably opposed to it Mr. Fleming was, and he began wishing him out of the way. Some time later, he decided to do something about it. I suppose Anton Varcek gave him the idea, in the first place, with his jabber about the danger of a firearms accident. Dunmore decided he'd fix one up for Mr. Fleming. First of all, he'd need a firearm, collector's type and in good working order. It couldn't be one of the guns in the collection. He'd have ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper |
