"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answered sadly. "A great deal of trouble just for a little empty babble. Often not one word worth remembering, and a general sense of having been full ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distaste, wherewith is no justice, but from covetous men it cometh, and is fain to babble against and darken ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... O land, if a marvel it seemeth that men ever sought Thy wastes for a field and a garden fulfilled of all wonder and doubt, And feasted amidst of the winter when the fight of the year had been fought, Whose plunder all gathered together was little to babble about; Cry aloud from thy wastes, O thou land, "Not for this nor for that was I wrought Amid waning of realms and of riches and death of things worshipped and sure, I abide here the spouse of a God, and I made and I ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... and harsh as those of decrepit age, though, unfortunately, without its weakness. The whole pandemonium of fairy devils, of all varieties of fantastic ugliness, both in form and feature, and of all sizes from one to four feet, seemed to have suddenly assembled about me. At length, after a great babble of talk among themselves, in a language unknown to me, and after seemingly endless gesticulation, consultation, elbow-nudging, and unmitigated peals of laughter, they formed into a circle about one of their number, who scrambled upon a stone, and, much to my surprise, and somewhat ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... a bright letter of New York gossip published in the New York Star, called "Bab's Babble." Edward had read it, and saw the possibility of syndicating this item as a woman's letter from New York. He instinctively realized that women all over the country would read it. He sought out the author, made arrangements with her and with former ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... that dwelt therein. Are its fruits good for food, or does the land we have explored bring forth only poisonous reptiles and the deadly upas? Is it a land in which the very principles of art and of human nature are turned upside down? Its language the babble of Bander-log? ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... said Noma with admiration, "but in it I see a flaw. The woman will say that she had the drug from you, or, at the least, will babble ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover, Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... over the poor is a strange mixture of good and evil, of real benevolence with an interference that saps all sense of self-respect, of real sympathy and womanly feeling with a good deal of womanly meddling, curiosity, and babble. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... comfortable woman. A woman told me candidly and honestly not long ago that she was too comfortable to be interested in other people, and I have admired her for her truthfulness; she had diagnosed her own case accurately, and she did not babble of woman's sphere being her own home—she frankly admitted that she was selfish, and her comfort had caused it. I believe God intended us all to be happy and comfortable, clothed, fed, and housed, and there is no sin in comfort, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... an' nai'bours did zay ov her chile, (Under the high elem tree), That a prettier never did babble or smile Up o' top ov a proud mother's knee; An' his mother did toss en, an' kiss en, an' call En her darlen, an' life, an' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held the stage" that in his company you could see nobody else) half way across the room. I associate a little uncertainly with the same night the sight of Charles ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... hand Were song and dance, laughter and cries confused Of banqueters beside the meats and wine. They, lifting in their hands the beakers brimmed, Recklessly drank, till heavy of brain they grew, Till rolled their fluctuant eyes. Now and again Some mouth would babble the drunkard's broken words. The household gear, the very roof and walls Seemed as they rocked: all things they looked on seemed Whirled in wild dance. About their eyes a veil Of mist dropped, for the drunkard's sight is dimmed, And the wit dulled, when rise the fumes to ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... become accustomed to his new food (whether he likes it or not) or begins to babble a word or two, he is given a name that usually recalls the place where he was born, some particular event of the moment or the way he may have of making use of a word often, or of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... of jugglery. Of course I will admit you have to swallow the robust assumption that into a household over which the shadow of death in its ugliest form hovers so threateningly two fatuous people, to wit the scientist and his wife, can come and babble about their own trivial domestic troubles or their latest philosophy of life. But then mystery plays always are like that, and this is a jolly good one of its kind—a kind which it pains me, as a superior person, to confess that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... to meddle with none but the prince's subjects. You shall also make no noise in the streets: for, for the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable and ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... I and the gillie waited the woman's coming, MacLachlan tossed in a fever, his mind absent and his tongue running on without stoppage, upon affairs of a hundred different hues, but all leading sooner or later to some babble about a child. It was ever "the dear child," the "m'eudailgheal" "the white treasure," "the orphan "; it was always an accent of the most fond and lingering character. I paid no great heed to this constant wail; but M'Iver pondered and studied, repeating at ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... babble as this to myself when, near Woodbridge, I came upon a big, shiny motor car stranded by the roadside. Several people, evidently intelligent and well-to-do, sat under a tree while their chauffeur fussed with a tire. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... birth-throes. It is the center of a region rich in native lore and legend, as it sleeps through the dusty noons when the cacao leaves droop with the heat and dreams through the silvery nights, waking twice or thrice a week to the endless babble and ceaseless chatter of an Oriental market where the noisy throngs make of their trading as much a matter of pleasure ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... or the piece, and her swains were no longer contented to sit behind her chair all the evening, seeing an empty corner of the stage across Georgia's ivory shoulder, and hearing the voices of invisible actors in the brief pauses of Georgie's subdued babble. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the next letter from his father contained a revocation of all that had pleased him in the former one. Beecot senior wrote many pages of abuse—he always did babble like a complaining woman when angered. He declined to sanction the marriage and ordered his son at once—underlined—to give up all thought of making Sylvia Norman his wife. It would have been hard enough, wrote Beecot, to have received her ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... once was shown, In which one man, alone, Upon the ground had thrown A lion fully grown. Much gloried at the sight the rabble. A lion thus rebuked their babble:— "That you have got the victory there, There is no contradiction. But, gentles, possibly you are The dupes of easy fiction: Had we the art of making pictures, Perhaps ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... it over afterward the hero of his sudden adoration had not uttered one syllable about jails, criminals, robberies, or crimes of any sort. In fact he had talked really very little. What he had done had been to smile, nod, and let the other fellow babble. It had, to be sure, been a delightful experience to find yourself a lion, and everything you did of interest to your listener; but you did not learn much about the business of being a detective, reflected Walter, a bit mortified by his discovery. Well, the next ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... kinds of little tricks; yet she was delighted to find herself among them all again, for her life had been dull and tedious since she left the convent; and this sudden change, taking her back to art and to her old friends, was very welcome; and the babble of all these people about her inveigled her out of her new self; and she liked to hear about so many people, their adventures, their ideas, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... in ruins, is his, he will in person go thither; confident that there will be victual and equipment discoverable for self and Army were he there. Remonstrances avail not: 'Ask me to die with honor, ask me not to lie rotting here;' [Ib. iv. 241.]—and quits Frankfurt, and the Reich's-Diet and its babble, 17th October, 1744 (small sorrow, were it for the last time),—and enters his Munchen in the course of a week. [17th October, 1744, leaves Frankfurt; arrives in Munchen 23d (Adelung, iv. 241-244).] Munchen is transported with joy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... maintained he had died a natural death, and began to declaim against the stories which he said had been spread abroad about him. I smiled, saying, I admitted it was not true that his veins had been opened. This observation completed the irritation of the monk, who began to babble in a sort of fury. I diverted myself with it at first in silence; then I said to him, that the King, shortly after arriving in Spain; had had the curiosity to open the coffin of Don Carlos, and that I knew from a man who was present ('twas Louville), that his head had been found ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "O, don't babble in that hypocritical tone!" said the man. "I did not leave you so destitute; and I took the child off your hands that no incumbrance might ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the little restaurants and cafes around us were wide open, with customers drinking coffee and chatting merrily at the small tables outside. The sound of a guitar strumming softly in the distance mingled with the clatter of chinaware and the babble of voices. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... and one great buttercup nodded in the doorway like a sleepy sentinel. Nelly stared and smiled, listened, and looked about on every side. Nothing was seen but the quiet meadow and the shady grove, nothing was heard but the babble of the brook and the cheery music of ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... There is no immorality in the proper play of self-interest. It is the conflict of interests which creates morality. But the spectators, even the maddest baseball "fans," do not play the game nor train for it. It is high time we ceased wasting our energies in emotions and vain babble. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner. If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on. A widow, or mother, in the newness of her long veil, has her hard path ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... I am on my defence. You at least shall not misunderstand me, Lyra. One intense regret I have; that I did not live in the time of the Amazons. They were free from this question of marriage; this babble of love. Why am I so persecuted? He will not take a refusal. There are sacred reasons. I am supported by every woman having the sense of her dignity. I am perverted, burlesqued by the fury of wrath I feel at their incessant pursuit. And I despise Mr. Osier and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the foot of a little incline before the hotel. Somewhere in the distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast from the whistle of a passenger engine. A dog that had been sleeping in the roadway arose and barked. The stranger began to babble and made a prophecy concerning the child that lay in ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... its Moorish court-yards, its fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the singular lightness and brightness of the climate—made, altogether, such a combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, being tempted by ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... "Enough: you owed me one blow, though I died; But be you man or beast or devil abhorred, I yield no further; with my mortal sword I do defy you; and if mortal man May hope against" ... But the Green Knight began A low melodious laugh, like running brooks Whose pebbly babble fills the shadowy nooks Of green-aisled woodlands, when the winds are still. "My friend, we bear each other no ill will. When first I swung my axe, you showed some fear; I owed you that much for your blow last year. The second time I swung,—yet spared your life,— ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... be going out of my way to find something to babble," she declared now. "There's plenty of things goes on I could be running to you with every day in the week, did I so mind; but I believe in letting folks have their own heads, as long as they ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Courts of Justice (Chancery and King's Bench) were held here, and as the hall was also lined with shops, and the babble and walking to and fro were incessant, it is not wonderful that justice was sometimes left undone. It would be difficult—nay, impossible—to tell in detail all the strange historic scenes enacted in Westminster Hall in the limited ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... sent back into the silence, and to her own thoughts, which must have grown heavier and heavier as the weary days went on, and no sound of approaching deliverance came, no rumour of help at hand. All was quiet and safe at Rouen; amid the babble of the courtyard which she might hear fitfully when her guardians were quieter than usual, there was not one word which brought the hope of a French army at hand, or of any movement to rescue her. All was silent in the world around, not a breath of hope, not ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of gloom uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... my heart is cold, Because of a silent tongue! The lute of faultless mould In silence oft hath hung. The fountain soonest spent Doth babble down the steep; But the stream that ever went ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... with a book of rules. He went back to the very beginning—even to the station at Upper Asquewan Falls where the undeniable charm of the first of these girls had won him completely. He reviewed the arrival of Bland and his babble of haberdashery, of Professor Bolton and his weird tale of peroxide blondes and suffragettes, of Miss Norton and her impossible mother, of Cargan, hater of reformers, and Lou Max, foe of suspicion. He thought of the figure in the dark ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... it is!" said Phillis, in an awe-struck voice. "When we are tired we must come here to rest ourselves. How prettily those baby waves seem to babble! it is just like the gurgle of baby laughter. And look at Laddie splashing in that pool: he is after that poor little crab. Come here, you rogue!" But Laddie, intent upon his sport, only cocked his ear restlessly ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... which rather shocked Mrs. Grier; but though the guest scarcely listened, the little sharp babble of talk was kept up, until they went ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... from Winchester. To-morrow evening I shall be sitting on a form in a big bare class-room, listening to the babble of a lot of girls pretending to learn ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... matter now?" cried Dorothy, as the copper man continued to babble these unmeaning words, which no one could understand at all because they had ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires, and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground, kept up an incessant babble—at intervals varying their talk with savage whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... grouchy and that you are going to answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything makes a difference, and we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality, and imbecile babble. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, &c.; and most satisfying and agreeable to Mr. M'Ward, Mr. Brown and others, who were sadly misinformed by the indulged, and those of their persuasion, that he could preach nothing but babble against the indulgence, cess-paying, &c. But here he touched upon none of these things, except in prayer, when lamenting over the deplorable case of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... its passengers at King's Cross on time. All the station approaches were crowded with hurrying passengers. Taxicabs and "growlers" were mixed in apparently inextricable confusion. There was a roaring babble of instruction and counter-instruction from police-men, from cab drivers, and from excited porters. Some of the passengers hurried swiftly across the broad asphalt space and disappeared down the stairs toward the underground station. Others waited for unpunctual friends with protesting ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... buzzing of the wild bees, the song of the meadow-lark, the whistle of bob-white, and the gurgling of the creek—all blended into one sweet refrain like the mingling tones of a perfect orchestra by the soft-voiced babble of my wee girl-baby friend. I close my eyes, and see the house amid the hollyhocks and trees, a thin line of blue smoke curling lazily from the kitchen chimney and floating away over the deep, black forest to the north and east. I see the maples languidly turning the white ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... to listen to the landlady's babble about the Cronins, for he was going to spend the evening with them; he had been introduced to her father, a tall, thin, taciturn man, who had somewhat gruffly, but not unkindly, asked him to come to spend the evening ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... and certainly, to Prussian men, not without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,—if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... It was a rule of the diplomatic game never to reveal, even to an ally, what you know; tomorrow the ally may be the enemy. Harleston might yield the letter to superior force or to trickery, but he would never babble ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... the other prisoners had pleaded, Campion delivered a final defence to the jury, with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a judge rather than a criminal. The babble of tongues that had continued most of the day was hushed to a profound silence in court as he stood and spoke, for the sincerity and simplicity of the priest were evident to all, and combined with his eloquence and his strange attractive personality, dominated all but ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... smell of peaches and grapes piled in barrows and barrels scented the air, as it scents the memory still. The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-lantern impressions of a stranger—memories of dazzling, dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them, became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as snails. But far sweeter to me than the fragrance of peaches were the humid whiffs I breathed from the noisy ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the distance clears! O, but the daylight grows! Soon shall the pied wind-flowers Babble of greening hours, Primrose and daffodil Yearn to a fathering sun, The lark have all his will, The thrush be never done, And April, May, and June Go to the same blythe tune As this blythe dream ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... him so—far from it. The secret seemed so strange, so wonderful, so exquisite in its blending of pain and pleasure, that she did not tell any one. Hers was not the nature that could babble of the heart's deepest mysteries to half a score of confidants. To him first she would make the supreme avowal that she had become his by a sweet compulsion that had at last proved irresistible, and even he must again seek that acknowledgment directly, earnestly. He was left to gather ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... navy." It is said that the other states of Germany have borne taxation to build the fleet, and that it is no more the Emperor's than that of the King of Bavaria, or of Wuertemberg, or of Saxony. This is the petty, pin-pricking babble of boarding-school girls, or of those official supernumeraries who have turned sour in their retirement. Even the honest democrat is made indignant. If the German navy is not the work of William the Second, then its parentage ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of panels, the cracking of hinges. The door was giving; now only the pike-shafts held it. Then came a pause. From far down the staircase a murmur of amazement swept upward; a babble of talk ensued. Silence fell. Cercamorte ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... youth of Byzantium, you must know, are not complaining of neglect; far from it—they esteem it a great privilege to be permitted to think in freedom. Let me give you of their conclusions. There is no God, they say, since a self-respecting God would not tolerate the strife and babble carried on in his name to the discredit of his laws. Religion, if not a deceit, is but the tinkling of brazen cymbals. A priest is a professor eking out an allowance of fine clothes and bread and wine; with respect to the multitude, he is a belled donkey ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... if she must suffocate if she did not get out into the air, and rising quickly she stole from the room, and out of the house unobserved. But the babble of voices seemed to pursue her. She stood for a moment on the steps and felt as if the people were all preparing to stream out of the drawing room after her, to surround her, and keep up the distracting buzz ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... appears, is nice in his victuals. Another is indeed wise, but apt to slight inferiors; hardly at the pains to answer, if they argue with him too foolishly. And so each aliquis concerning his aliquo,—through whole pages of electioneering babble. 'For,' says Jocelin, 'So many men, as many minds.' Our Monks 'at time of blood-letting, tempore minutionis,' holding their sanhedrim of babble, would talk in this manner: Brother Samson, I remarked, never said anything; sat silent, sometimes smiling; but ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the place (K K) cleared out, thinking that this might answer for the present; and the gurgle of the little streamlet along the bottom of the ditch seemed a low laugh at the idea of its ever filling the three square feet of space above it. Deceitful little brook! Its innocent babble contained no suggestion of its hoarse roar on a March day, the following spring, as it tore its way along, scooping the stones and gravel from its upper bed and scattering them far and wide over the alluvial meadow. Instead of a tiny rill, I found that I would have ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... And then a "Tush," As tree to scarlet tree responds, "Babble away! He'll not betray The secrets of ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... into the vestibule and the company burst into an incongruous babble. Dorn listened to their voices, again firm and self-sufficient, chattering formalities. He watched Rachel adjusting her hat with over-eager gestures. Her eyes were avoiding him. She seemed breathless, her head squirming under the necessity of having to remain for another moment before the eyes ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the Hotel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The profoundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular explanations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude that have swarmed into the Temples,—being fully up to the level of their capacity. Catholicism was a vital truth in its earliest ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and shores were firmer, And the blue sea over the white sand rolled— Babble and prattle, and prattle ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... questions only with shrugged shoulders and lifted eyebrows; but when we made them realize that we were Americans they changed. All were ready enough to talk then; they crowded about us, gesticulating and interrupting one another. From the babble we gathered that the German skirmishers, coming in the strength of one company, had found an English cavalry squad in the town. The English had swapped a few volleys with them, then had fallen back toward the river in good ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... kinship between the voices of the marsh dwellers. Most of them seem to have a muddy, aquatic note. The boom of the frog sounds like some great stone dropped into the water; the little marsh wren's song is the "babble and tinkle of water running out of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... said the cabman admiringly. "Pair of lads, that's what you are! By cripes, you are! Where are you making for, missus?" His eyes, full of curiosity, were on the ship as a babble of voices rose. "Listen, they've got ole monkey-face! That's him singing out now. We'd better put our best leg forward for fear he comes ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... asking what I write, or to whom, but ready to throw aside her work and talk the moment the pen is out of my hand. Talk—and what about? Heaven knows! But I would rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavelli and Thucydides? Then, by and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a lecture for the cook. The motor shot up the drive into a babble and halted at the steps. Someone immense rose from a chair and leaped down the space in ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... against the wall, stood still, waiting for other voices, for Galloway's, for Vidal Nunez's. But after Kid Rickard's jarring mirth it was strangely still in the Casa Blanca; no noise of clicking chips bespeaking a poker game, no loud-voiced babble, no sound of a man ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... eager birds In the sad woods crowd their thick melodies; But yet, to common eyes, life's poetry Something has faded, and the cause of this May be that Man, no longer at the shrine Of Woman, kneeling with true reverence, In spite of field, wood, river, stars and sea, Goes most disconsolate. A babble now, A huge and wind-swelled babble, fills the place Of that great adoration which of old Man had for Woman. In these days no more Is love the pith and marrow of Man's fate. Thou who in early years ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... female helplessness, Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 40 Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven In honour of His name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, 45 Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour, mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like grey mould, and burning black eyes. But ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... door had been opened, somewhere. The next moment brought a new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence again, sudden and profound, from the street-side. A deep, almost dramatic voice silenced the confused babble. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... to his type. He basked in the sun: with every nerve of his thinly-clad body he relinquished himself to the contact of the warm grass: deliberately and consciously he was savouring the honied air, the babble of running water, the caress of the tiny green blades fresh against his cheek and hand, the swell of earth that supported his broad, powerful limbs. This sensuous acceptance of the physical joy of life pleased ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph—drunk on Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives, and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I could not hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to breaking point by reciting poetry—not ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... over—'Rachel, are you mad?—Fly, fly, fly!' was always sounding in her ears. The little street of Gylingden, through which they were passing, looked strange and dream-like. And as she listened to Mrs. Crinkle's babble over the counter, and chose his toys for poor little 'Fairy,' she felt like one trifling ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with carefulness on the littered settee, and Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths. Kettle shut and locked ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... only babble protestingly. "She she" he began in a flustered indignation. Captain Hahn laughed again. He had the advantage of the single mind over the mind ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... learned its alphabet. The objections of Lucretius, which appeared so formidable in his day, as well as many others that have since been raised on equally plausible grounds, have passed away before the progress of science, and now seem like the silly prattle of children, or the insane babble of madmen. But although such difficulties have been swept away, and our field of vision cleared of all that is painful and perplexing, nay, brightened with all that is grand and beautiful, we seem ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I did utter something—my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On the next day when I woke, I was lying on my back in my little boat, placed there by God knows whose hands. At all events, one thing ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... tenderness, a deep yearning, something new to him, and born as it were in his breast at that instant. He had an impulse, never felt before, to go down on his knees where the child lay, to take it in his arms, to draw it to him, to fondle it, to call it his own, and to pour over it the inarticulate babble of pain and love that was bursting from his tongue. But some one was kneeling there already, and in his jealous longing he realised that his passionate sorrow could ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... my son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting. Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before the leader, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... hats a score of tricolour flags fluttered in the dusty air, and wild strains of the Marseillaise dominated the roar and babble of a thousand tongues wagging together. The steps of the great building were thronged with men, and on the bases of the statuary orators harangued high heaven, for no man had the patience ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Lord. It'll bring him bad luck. Mostly it was in the Gospels—just a bank-note here and there—sixty-one dollars and seventy-three cents it was." She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to the man and woman at her side. She went on—sometimes a babble they could not comprehend, as in pity and wonder they stood over her. Then again her voice rose, "He took it from the book of God. Oh, my son, my son! ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... babble one sonorous voice rose insistently. Laughter and applause broke in upon it occasionally. There was a din in that corner of the lobby that attracted many of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Rita? Come closer and let me see. What a curious sensation! To caress the figures of my madness! Then there is no longer any sanity in me. For my fingers are aware of hair. Ah, dear child, Mallare is completely mad since at last his senses betray him. But they betray him sweetly. For though I babble to myself you have no existence, though I smile at the thought of caressing a phantom, my senses derive a mysterious pleasure from this contact with nothingness. Curious ... curious ... come closer, Rita. Now smile at me. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise. Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... showed. When we were not doing sums or writing copies, we were always learning or saying lessons. In the early morning Mr. Sandsome sat erect and bright, his face animated, his ruddy eyes keen and observant, the cane hanging but uncertainly upon its hook. There was a standing up of classes, a babble of repetition, now and then a crisis. How long the days were then! I have heard that scientific people—Professor C. Darwin is their leader, unless I err—which probably I do, for names and dates I have hated from ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates: only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium, and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shown, In which one man, alone, Upon the ground had thrown A lion fully grown. Much gloried at the sight the rabble. A lion thus rebuked their babble:— 'That you have got the victory there, There is no contradiction. But, gentles, possibly you are The dupes of easy fiction: Had we the art of making pictures, Perhaps our champion ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... impositions, and shows what Nature's justice is.... I confess, Socrates, philosophy is a highly amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Archie; and there was a sound as if his companion had given his mouth a pat, for from pretty close at hand there was the low babble of voices. ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... dusk. And therefore the air was silent save for one soft hiss that fell. And therefore the tongues about him had ceased their babble. Darkness was falling. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Stunned with his importunate babble, and anxious only for rest and quiet, poor Shaw-nee-aw-kee eagerly assented, and the chief took ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... experimental. Guard jealously against all wanton cruelty to animals; but to deprive the higher creation of life and health lest one of the lower creatures should suffer was the very refinement of cruelty. "Are ye not of much more value then they?" spoke a still small voice amid the noisy babble ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... I send you X.'s babble, together with the sketch of my very simple answer. Probably the cart will stick in the mud for some time, and then the transactions will begin again. Well, I have learned to understand people, although the real kernel of their phrases has not been, and cannot be, clearly expressed. I have ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... brook did not babble just precisely as Miss Letitia's did. There was something far more fantastic and wild about the runs the younger musician made on the tinkling square piano; runs which Miss Letitia considered were not at ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... diabolical racket; men call each other out, hang on each other's necks, or fall to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed, others babble, one will turn monomaniac, repeating the same word over and over again like a bell set jangling; another tries to keep the tumult within bounds; the steadiest will propose an orgy. If any one in possession of his ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... weak and vain, Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown of Art with greatest honour wore, How have I seen thy coward cheek turn pale, And blank confusion seize thy mangled ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... like a man in two minds about returning and demanding compensation. Then he seemed to think better of it, and we moved forward; but twice again before we reached dry land he turned and addressed the soldiers in furious Spanish across the babble of ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch |
