"Childish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in her words, and yet not in her voice. In her manner was an uneasiness, mingled with an almost childish eagerness for him to answer, which Philip could not understand. He fancied that once or twice he had caught the faintest sign of ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... incisive, nothing forcible: compared with Occidental faces they seem but 'half- sketched,' so soft their outlines are—indicating neither aggressiveness nor shyness, neither eccentricity nor sympathy, neither curiosity nor indifference. Some, although faces of youths well grown, have a childish freshness and frankness indescribable; some are as uninteresting as others are attractive; a few are beautifully feminine. But all are equally characterized by a singular placidity—expressing ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... council, oft beware, And look into yourself with care. There was a certain father had A homely girl and comely lad. These being at their childish play Within their mother's room one day, A looking-glass was in the chair, And they beheld their faces there. The boy grows prouder as he looks; The girl is in a rage, nor brooks Her boasting brother's jests and sneers, Affronted at each word she hears: Then to her ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... quaint little letters scrawled in a childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and chickens that had been her friends. But after a while the letters ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... division of the commandments adopted by the Church of England, it is the seventh that is here referred to.] They replied, "What is the Decalogue? Is not it the catechism? What have we men to do with that childish pamphlet?" I asked them, whether they had ever thought at all about hell. They replied, "Who ever came up thence to give us information?" I asked, whether they had ever thought at all in the world about a life after death. They said, "Just as much as about the future life ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... to the wooden scaffolding and organised a game of their own, an utterly childish game, which consisted of one boy throwing some dried horse chestnuts from the top of the scaffolding into the mouth of the boy at the bottom. They soon became engrossed in their occupation, and were thoroughly enjoying themselves, when one of the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... out her hands to me, her lips smiling, her blue eyes just on the verge of tears. I drew her towards me and gently stroked her hair, as I used to do in the old days in Chelsea when she had come to me with some of her childish troubles. I felt an utter brute to think that I could ever have doubted her loyalty, ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... back into her bright, earnest face with kindling eyes, while Nita turned from one to the other with the old childish wonder again in her face. These mountain folk were a new species to her, interesting and amusing perhaps, but from whom she instinctively shrank. Not that she was in the least disdainful, she was of too sweet a nature for that, ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... are recorded things unknown to science; discoveries never divulged, secrets more deep than the Elusinian, passed on from initiate to initiate for countless generations. Nature has told them only to children, and when grown to manhood, seals their lips with that impious injunction to put away childish things. ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... determined to do something if they could. But they were excited and wild, and the captain could do little to hold them in. Several times they got confused on the signals, and once one of the new ends lost the ball on a fumble that looked almost childish. Inside of ten minutes, amid a mad yelling from the Lemington supporters, the ball was forced over the Oak Hall line for another touchdown, and another goal was kicked. Then, five minutes later, came a goal ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... a serious lecture about it all the other day. I said: 'Do, my dear ladies, get rid of these childish notions, these uncivilised hankerings after marvels and magic, which make you the dupe of one charlatan after another. Take up science, for a change; study natural philosophy; try and acquire accurate notions of the system under which we live; realise that we are not moving on the stage of ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the things I have learned about this place, having come here with an earlier caravan. My first years here were of rapid learning, as yours will be. Presently the doors will shut upon my new impressions, but you will go on. When you reach your best, you may smile at your childish fancies of how much I knew. You will always be kind in your thoughts of these early days, for that is the deep law of good men and women; indeed one must reverence one's teacher, for the teacher is the symbol ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... curse of being twins linked like galley-slaves, were Heather-bells in a childish chorus which piped forth the information "We are the Heather-bells: list to our song," but which was almost ruined by their common desire to get away from each other and lead in two ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... S——. These facts can be authenticated. Another case in point: The evening I left my house to come here, the young daughter of one of my neighbors in the same block, was in a house not a square off, and in a childish manner was regretting that I could not retain my house. The man in the house said: 'Why waste your tears and regrets on Mrs. Lincoln?' An hour afterward the husband and wife went out to make a call, doubtless to gossip about me; on their return they found their young boy had almost blinded ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Brenton, carrying some bundles of clothing, and a few little things besides, and wrapped in a great riding cloak; and at her side walked Polly, very sleepy, and looking wonderingly in the faces of the others, and asking all manner of childish questions. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... and Love Ellsworth are together at this moment, and will be all day long! I can see her now in my mind's eye! She is sitting beside him in the car, and the sunshine glints on her curly, golden hair, and brings out the deep pansy-blue, of her big, childish eyes, and the rose-leaf bloom of her flawless skin. She is laughing at everything he says, just to show how deep her dimples are, and how pearly her teeth, and how rosy her lips! It is enough to drive one mad!" cried Ela, not underrating the least of her rival's ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... became hardy and fearless under his foster father's training, and Ingeborg rapidly developed the sweetest traits of character and loveliness. Both were happiest when together; and as they grew older their childish affection daily became deeper and more intense, until Hilding, perceiving this state of affairs, bade the youth remember that he was a subject of the king, and therefore no mate for his ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... taken out, and her face show the shock of the operation. Nellie Logan, a poet's Wife, must join all the lodges in the Ridge to help her husband in politics. Trixie Lee, little Beatrix Lee, daughter of J. Lord and Lady Lee, must have her childish face scarred and her eyes glazed. Mrs. Hally Bemis, a Prodigal, must be swathed in silk. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward and all her sisters must be put in the simple garb of school-teachers. Miss Hendricks, a Mouse, must hide in the dusky places; and Ellen Culpepper, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... faith in God to believe that the world will actually be better and fairer than it is now; as long as men have faith, however weak, to believe in the romance of all romances; in the wonder of all wonders; in that, of which all poets' dreams have been but childish ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... For if the fact be that there is no difference between the appearance that a thing presents to a madman and to a person in his senses, then who can feel quite sure of his own sanity? And to wish to produce such an effect as that is a proof of no ordinary madness. But they follow up in a childish manner the likenesses of twins, or of impressions of rings. For who of us denies that there are such things as likenesses, when they are visible in numbers of things? But if the fact of many things being like many ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... say with more affection, but certainly with more attention. She was interested in me; I had become to her a source of possibilities, dim to vision but gorgeous to imagination. I knew so well the images that floated before a childish mind, able to gape at them, only half able to grasp them. I had been through this stage. It is odd to reflect that I was in an unlike but almost equally great delusion myself. I had ceased to expect immoderate enjoyment from my position, but I had conceived an exaggerated idea of its ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Majy—" That is the penalty one pays for admitting irresponsible modern young people into one's intimacy. They miscall one abominably. I thought she had outgrown this childish, though affectionate appellation of disrespect. "My darling Majy!" she said. "Children! How many do you think I'm ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... certain person, whom you know, was on the point of being married to my aunt; that the clergyman was Mr Barton, and that poor forlorn I, stood weeping in a corner, half naked, and without shoes or stockings. — Now, I know there is nothing so childish as to be moved by those vain illusions; but, nevertheless, in spite of all my reason, this hath made a strong impression upon my mind, which begins to be very gloomy. Indeed, I have another more substantial cause ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... [Footnote: "The author does not, in this instance, attempt to copy any of the higher attributes of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but has succeeded perfectly in the imitation of his mawkish affectations of childish simplicity and nursery stammering. We hope it will make him ashamed of his ALICE FELL, and the greater part of his last volumes—of which it is by no means a parody, but a very fair, and indeed we think a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was necessary they will stretch them out. Should it turn out that the world is not quite as old as some think, they will push them up. The "six days" can now be made to suit any period of time. Nothing can be more childish, frivolous ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to control his rage. He began to plunge around. His actions were violent, random, half insane. He seemed to want to destroy himself and everything. But the weapons were guarded by his men and the room contained little he could smash. There was something magnificent in his fury, yet childish and absurd. Even under its influence and his abandonment he showed a consciousness of its futility. In a few moments the inside of the cabin was in disorder and Kells seemed a disheveled, sweating, panting wretch. The rapidity and violence of his action, coupled with his fury, soon exhausted ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... will, but she knew it would be wrong. After all, there had been in Pelgram's plea as much genuine sincerity as there could be in anything of his, and she felt that her wish to be utterly candid was a childish ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... of Lily's day; quoted the nurse and doctor, and told him who had called to inquire. He had never seen her more serene and unruffled. It struck him, with a curious pang, that she was very happy in being with him, so happy that she found a childish pleasure in rehearsing the trivial incidents of ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... another is far too common in childhood to make it possible to lay very great emphasis on "traumatic lesions" of this character, and he has also realized that an outcrop of fantasies may somewhat later develop on these childish activities, intervening between them and the subsequent morbid symptoms. He is thus led to emphasize anew the significance of heredity, not, however, in Charcot's sense, as general neuropathic disposition but as "sexual constitution." The significance ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is the most complete department of its kind in existence. We print all the letters we possibly can, and would be glad to print every one if our space allowed, for each contains some pretty bit of childish life which we are sure would be delightful to other little folks. Our letters come to us from all parts of the globe—from every corner of the United States and Canada; from England, Germany, France, and Italy; ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dearest feelings; and in which we may "lose ourselves in all delightfulness," and indulge unreproved pleasure. I mean the Virgin and Child, or in other words, the abstract personification of what is loveliest, purest, and dearest, under heaven—maternal tenderness, virgin meekness, and childish innocence, and the beauty ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... but designs, courses, thoughts, and ways, must interfere and jar among themselves. Self-seeking puts all by the ears, as you see children among themselves, if an apple be cast to them. Any bait or advantage of the times yokes them in that childish contention, who shall have it? All come, strive, and fight about it, and it is but a few can have it, and these that get it cannot keep it long. Others will catch it from them. Now what vain things are these, which can neither be ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... is. His great strength is gone, and he submits to be treated as a child—yet he is by no means childish. The manliness of his strong nature is left, but the boastfulness has departed, and he looks death in the face like a true warrior; though I cannot help thinking that if choice had been given him he would have preferred to fall by the sword of Bladud, or some doughty foe who could have given ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... after the family came to Haworth Mrs. Bronte died, when the eldest girl, Maria, was only six years old; and far from there having been any childish laughter about the house, we are told that the children were unusually solemn from their infancy. In their earliest walks, the five little girls with their one brother—all of them under seven years—directed their steps towards the wild moors above their home rather ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... is understood, of course, that their life is not the same, nor to be compared with that of children in Europe or America: and it should be remembered further that the pleasures of child-life are not measured by the gratification of every childish whim. Many of the little street children who spend a large part of their time in efforts to support the family, when allowed to go to a fair or have a public holiday enjoy themselves more in a single day than the child of wealth, in a whole month ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the childish impressions that count. It is the memory of whispered prayers, of bedtime stories, of old ideals held unfalteringly before a boy's gaze; it is half-forgotten songs, and dim visions of heroes that a mother taught her child ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Lumpy, and at times his wife Hetty calls him Lumpy to his face, but, as wives do sometimes call their husbands improper names, the fact proves nothing except the perversity of woman. There is a blind old woman in his establishment, however, who has grown amiably childish in her old age, who invariably calls him Tim. Whatever may be the truth as to this, there is no question that he is a thriving man and an office-bearer in the Congregational church, whose best Sabbath-school teacher ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... others to shallow nooks, whence I could bail them ashore. Now, if you have ever been fishing, you will not wonder that I was led on, forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of the time, but shouting in a childish way whenever I caught a "whacker" (as we called a big fish at Tiverton); and in sooth there were very fine loaches here, having more lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynn stream, though not quite so large as in the Lowman, where I have ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... had never gone by sea anywhere, and all my sailing had been in wherries on the Thames; so I was not free from some childish fear when we came beside the Marie-Royale, and saw her black sides rising high and steep above us; but joy sat on every other face in our little company; and Harry's voice was gay once more as he shouted an answer to Captain Maret, who came and hailed us from above. 'Twas a matter of some ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... believe me, on a day At childish push-pin, for our sport, did play; I put, he pushed, and, heedless of my skin, Love pricked my finger with a golden pin; Since which it festers so that I can prove 'Twas but a trick to poison me with love: Little the wound was, greater was the smart, The finger bled, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... is an Interlude imagined in the manner of the Middle Ages, and typically representing this period of human development in its quaint piety and prejudice, its childish delight in cruelty, and its cumulative legend-making during the course of two centuries as reflected through the Flemish nature. It is supposed to be sung by an abbot, a choir-singer, and a chorus, in celebration of the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last Grand Master of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... of himself again: he felt as he used to feel as a little boy when his mother entered on a shaft of light to console his childish terrors. When he came to the ruined chapel and saw Esther standing with uplifted palms before the image of St. Mary Magdalene long since put back upon the pedestal from which it had been flung by the squire of Rushbrooke Grange, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... turning me round, examined my countenance with critical minuteness, neither moved by my childish indignation nor my tears. "A strong-limbed straight-made fellow, this. I did not think that Edward could be the father of such an energetic-looking boy. He's like his grandfather, and if I mistake not, will be ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... streets betokens rather pride of past deeds than confidence in their power to re-enact them. Although such demonstrations may be readily excused, or even reasonably encouraged, in an infant community struggling for liberty, they are childish and undignified in a powerful nation. What would be more ridiculous than Scotland having grand processions on the anniversary of Bannockburn, or England on that of Waterloo? Moreover, in a political point of view, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... his face on fire and his ears tingling with mingled shame and indignation. 'Whatever happens,' he thought to himself, 'I can't permit Edie to be subjected any longer to such insolence as this! Poor, dear, guileless, sorrowing little maiden! One would have thought her childish innocence and her terrible loss would have softened the heart even of such a cantankerous, virulent old harridan as that, till a few weeks were over, at least. She spoke of the Archdeacon: it must be old Miss Luttrell! Whoever it is, though, Edie shan't ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think themselves lucky if they could climb on to a passing cart, to arrive at last, drenched with rain perhaps, at some wretched hostelry. But this kind of barbarism did not stand in the way of an almost childish gaiety. In Yorkshire, we find the Inchbalds, the Siddonses, and Kemble retiring to the moors, in the intervals of business, to play blindman's buff or puss in the corner. Such were the pastimes of Mrs. Siddons ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... blurred and worn as though Time, having first marked it with the lines of character, had grown discouraged and brushed the hand of forgetfulness over her work. He had peculiar thin, silky hair of no particular colour, with a certain almost childish pathetic waviness around the ears and at the back of the neck. Something, after all, about the man ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... myself, had dislikes even more inexplicable than their likings. Some early, unforgiven, childish prejudice, perhaps. Women do not easily forgive, except those whom they love, and even these only so long as they continue to love them. For many women the phrase in the Lord's Prayer, "as we forgive them ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... much of the old-fashioned flavor of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, especially in the residential districts. Bart Stanton liked to walk along those quiet streets of an evening, just to let the peacefulness seep into him. And, knowing it was rather childish, he still enjoyed the small pleasure of playing hookey from the Neurophysics Institute. Technically, he supposed, he was still a patient there. More, now that he had accepted Colonel Mannheim's assignment, he was presumably under military discipline. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... oddly from the childish lips, that I could not hide a smile as I looked down on my visitor. He stood just outside my cabin-door—a small serious boy of about eight, with long flaxen curls hardly dry from his morning bath. In the pauses of conversation ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... angle was the top of a hill, could only study the girl's clear profile. The youthful voices of the two others rang like bells. He did not scowl at Coke; he merely looked at him as if be gently disdained his mental calibre. In fact all the talk seemed to tire him; it was childish; as for him, he apparently found ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... were quarrelling over the division of Naples and the Campagna barons were quiet, Cesare set out once more in search of conquests. In June he seized Camerino and Urbino, the news of which capture filled the pope with childish joy. But his military force was uncertain, for the condottieri were not to be trusted. His attempt to draw Florence into an alliance failed, but in July Louis of France again invaded Italy and was at once bombarded with complaints from the Borgia's enemies. Alexander's diplomacy, however, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... own peculiar humour combines with his curious reading. [In this he burlesqued the proceedings of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies with some degree of spirit and humour. By turning vulgar lines into Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon, a learned air is given to some papers on childish subjects. One learned doctor communicates to another "an Essay proving, by arguments philosophical, that millers, falsely so reputed, are not thieves, with an interesting argument that taylors likewise are not so." A Welsh schoolmaster sends some "natural ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... morning and the things of the morning. Not less is this Hellenist of the Middle Age master of dreams, of sleep and the desire of sleep—sleep in which no one walks, restorer of childhood to men—dreams, not like Galahad's or Guenevere's, but full of happy, childish wonder as in the earlier world. It is a world in which the centaur and the ram with the fleece of gold are conceivable. The song sung always claims to be sung for the first time. There are hints at a language ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... the half-term he moved. Bathilde was right; for since her black mantle sketched her beautiful shoulders—since her mittens showed the prettiest fingers in the world—since of the Bathilde of former times there was nothing left but her childish feet, every one began to remark that Buvat was young—that the tutor and the pupil were living under the same roof. In fact, the gossips who, when Bathilde was six years old, worshiped Buvat's footsteps, now began to cry out about his criminality ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... much later than I had hoped before I could with decency return to Biloxi. Impatient, childish and excited I recrossed the bay, leaving a little detail of soldiers to watch beside the body of my friend. As soon as I saw Jacques on the other shore I knew something had gone wrong. That senseless knave was pacing uncertainly about the beach, stopping here and there ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... we will do," cried Mrs. Brantley, clapping her hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being submitted to the company, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... from the frills of her baby cap she mocked me; and, grown into the ranks of little girlhood, systematically aggravated me by artful preference of all the little boys I most hated, for whose infant attentions she unceremoniously deserted my elder claim and assured protection. And yet, in all her childish troubles, from torn frocks to Latin lexicons, she flew to me for aid, counsel, sympathy, and protection, repenting of all her sins against me, and walking in a straight path again, till between her sweet eyes, and her pretty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... illusions. He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance—it might be her very childish vanity. He had brought to a question of tender and pathetic interest only his selfish opinion of the world and the weaknesses of mankind. The blood came to his cheeks—with all his experienced self-control, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... it pleased me to think so—it pleases me, sometimes, to think so even now. Just as it pleases me to think that that long snouted engine of war propelled that shell, under my guiding hand, with unwonted accuracy and effectiveness! Perhaps I was childish, to feel as I did; indeed, I have no doubt that that was so. But ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... flushed from her recent meal. The sleeves of her djebba pushed back showed two enormous shapeless arms, loaded with bracelets, with long chains wandering through a heap of little mirrors, of red beads, of scent-boxes, of microscopic pipes, of cigarette cases—the childish toyshop collection of a Moorish ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... prominent scientist. Harriet Bosse has told me that Strindberg seldom said anything about his literary work, never was interested in what other people thought of them, or troubled to read the reviews; but on the other hand he would often, with sparkling eyes and childish pride, show her strips of paper, stained at one end with some golden-brown substance. 'Look,' he said, 'this is pure gold, and I have made it!' In face of the stubborn scepticism of scientific experts ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... She had been told by her mother that the Grey Lady had passed a life of much suffering before she came to Sempringham; for silent as she was concerning the details of that life, Isabel had never tried to conceal the fact that it had been one of suffering. And the child's childish idea was the old notion of poetical justice—of the good being rewarded, and the evil punished, openly and unmistakably, in this world; a state of affairs frequently to be found in novels, but only now and then in reality. Had some ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... in the world did we have to bring him to New York where he could pull such childish tricks? We could have performed the experiment right there ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... But this harmless if childish custom once led to a vendetta. A man once cracked such an enormous quantity of eggs, that in the evening he was challenged to show his marvellous egg, which he persistently refused to do. This led to words and words to revolvers, and the man was shot. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Her entire small head was very charming; even her somewhat thick and round nose did not spoil it. I liked especially the expression of her face; it was so simple and gentle, so sad and so full of childish perplexity before her own sadness. She was apparently waiting for some one. Something cracked faintly in the forest. Immediately she raised her head and looked around; her eyes flashed quickly before me in the transparent shade—they were large, bright, and shy like a deer's. ...
— The Rendezvous - 1907 • Ivan Turgenev
... quickened. Her childish ignorance of what such an adventure would mean was in keeping with her vast inexperience with matters of the outdoors; she had merely begun, in his company, to glimpse the true meanings of the solitudes. She would learn further—with ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... myself again to a public which in days long past has given me a generous welcome. But my readers have been, and are, a very faithful constituency. I think there are many among them who would rather listen to an old voice they are used to than to a new one of better quality, even if the "childish treble" should betray itself now and then in the tones of the overtired organ. But there must be others,—I am afraid many others,—who will exclaim: "He has had his day, and why can't he be content? We don't want literary revenants, superfluous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Il Moro" copied Titian, not to indicate others; and they were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, the result of which was a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish, stiff in design, crude in color, and completely wanting in chiaroscuro, but not, at least, a servile imitation, and becoming, as it were, a faint prelude to the true Dutch art that was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as free from any taint of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly be; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... buckles and plumes, fans and gloves and artificial flowers, were piled up all around her. The hobby-horse was hidden under a drapery of velvet and lace and silk. Still the chest held a number of old party gowns that had never been cut down to fit their childish revels. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Jack drawn close to him, lay back, awe-stricken and with his face wet from mysterious tears. The comfort of the childish self-pity that came with every thought of himself, wandering, a lost spirit along the mountain-tops, was gone like a dream and ready in his heart was the strong new purpose to strike into the world for himself. He even took it as a good omen, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... its strongest faith in their reality. Ha! mine is not yet disabused of this belief. I am older now, but the hour of disenchantment has not yet come upon me—nor ever will. There is a romance in life, that is no illusion. It lives not in the effete forms and childish ceremonies of the fashionable drawing-room—it has no illustration in the tinsel trappings and gaudy puerilities of a Court. Stars, garters, and titles are its antidotes; red cloth and plush the upas-trees of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the time of his retirement to the chateau of Mont St. Jean, during the period of weakness resulting from his wound at Waterloo. The owner of the mansion had a little girl, six years of age, who was a most attentive nurse to him. She hardly ever left his bedside, and by her childish prattling, innocent pleasantries, and tender sympathy, won his regard, and spread a charm over a time of pain and depression; so much so, indeed, that when the time of separation came it greatly ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... letter will undergo a republication in Europe, the remarks here thrown together will serve to show the extreme folly of Britain, in resting her hopes of success on the extinction of our paper currency. The expectation is at once so childish and forlorn, that it places her in the laughable condition of a famished lion watching for prey ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... The well-known childish curiosity of the monarch would not permit him to go away unsatisfied. The day was hot, and the stone was heavy; but a long and laborious toil brought to light the following ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... information, not only in our childhood, but to a large extent all his life. When exploring the country he scorned "trespass boards." He read them "Trespassers will be persecuted," and then ignored them, much to our childish trepidation. If he was met by indignant gamekeepers or owners, they were often too much awed by his dignified and commanding appearance to offer any objection to his going where he wished. He was fond of calling our attention to insects and to other objects of natural ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been 'talking to her'—Julia!—and then Paul had come to see her every evening, and had been just right—firm and yet not exacting, and ever so gentle and kind—and this afternoon when he came Lydia cried and didn't want to go down, but her mother said she mustn't be childish, and Marietta had just taken her right down to the library and left her there with Paul, and there she was now." The doctor started up and beat his thin, corded hand on the mantel. He could not speak. His sister got up ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... maintain its standards for woman, has taught its children, especially its girls, that anything savoring of the word "sexual" is sinful, disgusting, and impure. To be sure, very many women have modified their childish views, but an astonishingly large number conserve, even in maturity, their warped ideas about the whole subject of sex. Many a mature woman secretly believes that she, at least, is not guilty of harboring anything so "vulgar" as a reproductive instinct, not realizing that if this ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... said with a slight cough; "Mrs. de Tracy's chair! Do you mind taking another?" There was something disagreeable in her voice, and in Mrs. de Tracy's deliberate scrutiny something so nearly insulting that a childish impulse to cry then and there suddenly seized upon Robinette. This was her mother's home—and no kiss had welcomed her to it, no kind word! There were perfunctory questions about her journey, references to the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... solicitude the young men about her, in relation to their success and progress in the vocations and pursuits to which their lives are wedded, and from which their fortunes, characters, and spiritual good are in no small degree to be made? Our young women are too childish and trifling in their thoughts and intercourse with young men. They seek to dissipate rather than benefit them; or, if they do not seek it, their intercourse tends to dissipation. It should not be so. All of woman's influence should tend to elevate man. He is ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... nearer to her and answered softly: "They are indeed fine words," and there was no mockery whatever in his eyes as he looked at her—and took in every detail of her pure childish face. "You wonderful, strange little girl—soon I too am going like Perseus to fight the Gorgons, and I shall remember this night ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Marseillaise, and the lukewarm socialist of the Mot d'Ordre, who could answer to the judge who demanded his name, "I am Henri Rochefort, Comte de Lucey," has been reproached by some with his titles of nobility, and with the childish pleasure that he takes in affecting the plebeian. It is said of him that he aspires but to descend, but who would condemn him for spurning the petrifactions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain? A man must march with ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... know what I mean,' she said, looking at him fixedly, a maze of half-childish, half-artistic curiosity in her ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... Tennyson's poetry, and a scent-bottle. She knew that it behoved her to be very clever at this interview. Her instinct told her that her first greeting should show more of surprise than of gratification. Accordingly, in a pretty, feminine, almost childish way, she was very much surprised. "I'm doing the strangest thing in the world, I know, Lady Eustace," said ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to the railway-carriage window, and the boys and I holding him so tight that he was nearly choked; at last it was all over, all the last tiny endings of good-byes over, and we three were—it seemed to us as far as we could understand it in our childish way—alone in ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... as to make her look several years younger than she really was, though in reality she was not above one-and-twenty. Perhaps it was under the consciousness of this extremely juvenile appearance that she affected, or at least practised, a little childish petulance and wilfulness of manner, not unbefitting, she might suppose, a youthful bride, whose rank and age gave her a right to have her fantasies indulged and attended to. She was by nature perfectly good-humoured, and if her due share of admiration and homage (in her opinion a very ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... advertising. And then? And then I fancy a chorus of profoundly disappointed lovers of the tone art. Remember that the world moves in fifty years. Perhaps there would be no longer our pianoforte, our keyboard. How childish, how simple would sound the timid little Chopin of the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... day was spent by him in lying under a tree, with his dog by his side, thinking over the scenes of his earlier life, which had passed by his childish mind like those of a drama, in which he had no part nor comprehension, but which now, with clearer perceptions, he strove to recall and explain to himself. Ever his father's stately figure was the centre of his recollections, whether receiving tidings of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like Titian, the boy Raphael used the juice of flowers with which to paint pictures of his childish fancies, but we do know that very early he became greatly interested in his father's studio and went in regularly to assist. Now, it must be remembered that, at this time, when a boy, wishing to learn to paint, went to ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall, with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... attentive listener, but a diffident speaker. Though her knowledge was even masculine for its variety and extent, she was averse to displaying it; the childish, the lively, the tender, were the outward traits of her character—the flowers were above, but the mine was beneath; one noted the beauty of the former—one seldom dreamt of the value ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a nice little toy, and she clapped her hands in childish glee, so that the echo sounded among the mountains; then picking up man, horse, and plough, she placed them in her apron and hurried back gaily to the castle. There she showed her father the nice little toy, greatly pleased at what ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... one was willing to make it his business to interfere, Patsy went on his way unmolested. A strange look of determination battled with the pain on the sickly, childish face as he made his way bravely against the biting wind that sought to drive him back. He had learned the mystery of the house on the hill; he knew now why David hated so bitterly that house and all connected with it; he knew why ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... I had as soon as I was married begun a new poem, and in the evening I read to her the verses of the day. I wished to make her enter completely into my existence. The first time or two, she said to me: "Very pretty," and I was grateful to her for this childish approbation, hoping that in time she would comprehend better what was the very breath ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... talent, as by accident he may be above them in rank? No, Sir, the day is past. The form of provincial government is changed, and with it provincial dependence also. When we become men, we must put away childish thing's. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... his age was visibly upon him. His head was heavy and hot, and the thoughts that rolled in it were confused and depressing. Could it be that he had made a mistake in the principles of his existence? There was no argument in what Harold had said—it was almost childish—and yet it had shaken the elder man more deeply than he cared to show. It held a silent attack which touched ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... when, in the afternoon, his father put him on a horse and rode with him to a corner of the vast home domain, a corner fenced off by sentinel cottonwoods and watered by the single small irrigation ditch of his childish recollections; rode with him through the screening cottonwoods and showed him, lying beyond them, the old ranch buildings of the "Circle-Bar," untouched and undisturbed; his heart was full and a sudden mist came before his ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... fully aware of your intentions, and I congratulate you on the pleasant task you have prepared for yourself, of choosing an heir amongst half-a-dozen needy relations; and, now, if you have any doubt as to my plans, I will tell you them, once for all, and let there be an end to this childish struggling between us. I married you in order to procure a home for my son, and for myself the luxury in which my nature delights; both of these you are bound to give us in your lifetime, and you are decided to dispossess us of them hereafter. If, then, your belief that you have an incurable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... dear. Don't fret. Everyone is just jealous because you're so lovely and comfy looking," appeased Nettie Brocton, the dimple girl. "But I really do think this 'whisper' is awfully childish. Rather makes the strangers feel we are ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... his knees up close under his chin. The hood of his woodsman's jacket was pushed back in spite of the chill of the morning, and he wiped the back of his hand across his lips and chin in an oddly childish gesture. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness. So ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... said—"Thou see'st 'twas wise from thee To keep the fuller, greater revelation: Scarce art thou from grotesque delusions free, Scarce master of thy childish first sensation; Yet deem'st thyself so far above thy brothers, That thou hast won the right to scorn them! Cease. Who made the yawning gulf 'twixt thee and others? Know—know thyself—live with the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr. Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects, while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... in those early days to have had few playmates beyond his sister, two years younger than himself, and whom his irrepressible spirit must sometimes have frightened or repelled. Nor do we hear anything of childish loves; and though an entry appeared in his diary one Sunday in about the seventh or eighth year of his age, 'married two wives this morning,' it only referred to a vague imaginary appropriation of two girls whom ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Anneli. Have you not a whole house to look after? There, take these keys; you will have to show that you can be a good house-mistress, and sensible, and not childish." ...
— Sunrise • William Black |
