"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them chattering and laughing, Black Jack as merry as the rest, while the object of their mirth began to wonder at the power he seemed to have exercised over the pack of childlike savages, and to ask himself whether there was anything in these people ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... must have been sorely tempted to produce. Indeed he has little to offer us that has not been common property of the Correspondents for long enough, and several of his descriptions (his picture of a glacier, for one), given with a rather irritatingly childlike air of new discovery, cannot escape the charge of commonplace. But his reflections, for once in a way the better half of experience, more than make good this defect. His essay on Paris, for instance—"the city of unshed ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... Nelson's tactical achievements, the more effective and brilliant do they appear. It is the same with his character and disposition. The more exact researches and investigations of recent times have removed from his name the obloquy which it pleased some to cast upon it. We can see now that his 'childlike, delighted vanity'—to use the phrase of his greatest biographer—was but a thin incrustation on noble qualities. As in the material world valueless earthy substances surround a vein of precious metal, so through Nelson's moral nature there ran ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... woman," said Harry, reflectively; and as he spoke he seemed to feel the arms of strong, almost stern, feminity and faithfulness which had encompassed his childlike soul for so many years. He owned to himself that Maria's mother had been a much more suitable wife for him than this other woman. Then he had a little qualm of remorse, for Ida came in sight, richly dressed and elegant, as usual, with Evelyn dancing along beside her. Mrs. Adams was with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... affair interested her more and more, she courted the girl's confidence as well as his. It was not long before her ardent, sagacious, strong-willed soul sympathised with that of Luis, which was so timid, childlike, pitiful, and affectionate. More proficient in the art of love-making than the Estrada-Rosa girl, she soon won the count's confidence and affection and she drew from him a number of confidences, not only about his ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... is very old-fashioned and queer," said Geraldine, pulling the wrap over the grass stains and looking up into his eyes with a childlike appeal that made him set his teeth. "It was my mother's and you said 'white.' ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... glove an impatient twitch as she thought of it, but the next instant she wished she, too, might be as childlike ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... of syntax and prosody. Still less can I impart a notion of the exhaustive raking up of ancient examples and modern instances, mostly worn bright by familiarity with the popular mind, but all converging toward the conclusion striven for, and the shakiest of them accepted in childlike faith. Integrally, that essay conveyed the idea of two mighty glaciers of theory, each impelling its own moraine of facts toward a stated point of confluence—represented by a magnificent postulate—where one ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... justice, mercy to each other, and obedience to the will of Him who made heaven and earth, trees and fruitful fields, rain and sunshine, and gives the blessings of them freely to His children of mankind, in proportion as they look up to Him as a loving Father, and return to him day by day, with childlike repentance, and full desire to amend their lives according to His ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... innumerable echoes 75 Flap like eagles in their eyries;— Listen to these wild traditions, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye who love a nation's legends Love the ballads of a people, 80 That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen, Speak in tones so plain and childlike, Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken;— 85 Listen to this Indian Legend, To this Song of Hiawatha! Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe that in all ages 90 Every human heart ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... before a court martial with having been found with arms in their hands (Bassi had never borne arms at all), and shot on the 8th of August, 1849. Bassi is one of the most beautiful figures of the Italian revolution, a gentle unselfish soul, who, although unusually gifted and accomplished, had an almost childlike nature. His execution excited a feeling of horror all ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Longfellow's most {485} aboriginal and "American" book. The tripping trochaic measure he borrowed from the Finnish epic Kalevala. The vague, childlike mythology of the Indian tribes, with its anthropomorphic sense of the brotherhood between men, animals, and the forms of inanimate nature, he took from Schoolcraft's Algic Researches, 1839. He fixed forever, in a skillfully chosen poetic form, the more inward and imaginative part ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... shoulders appeared. She leaned back on the moss for a moment's rest, and then springing up recommenced to sing. She stood very straight and tall, her hands locked together behind her, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson; somehow this childlike attitude added by its simplicity to the woman's dignity. Her head was held a little back, chin tilted upwards, and the eyes looked far away as though they beheld a whole world of dreams and lovely melody beyond all save the singer's ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... dazed look at the tall clock, and was beginning to put on her cloak when the door opened and Patty entered the kitchen by way of the shed; the usual Patty, rosy, buoyant, alert, with a kind of childlike innocence that could hardly be associated ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hardships and reached Springvale again is a miracle, and I wonder even now, how, waiting patiently for the inevitable, he could go peacefully through the hours, making us forget everything but his cheery laugh, his affectionate appreciation of the good things of the world, and his childlike trust ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Virginia had dreaded, yet sought for, had come. All self-consciousness left her. She went to meet the other in an eager, almost childlike way. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... agreed to sail, and in the boat Mr. Talboys was to ask and win her band. But from the first Mr. Fountain had never a childlike confidence in the scheme, and his understanding kept rebelling ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... then touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... rested and less faded for the week passed in the society of a simple, noble man; the father's gay and debonair, as Amy remembered it—how long ago, was it? And last of all Friend Adam, in gray attire, his broadbrim crowning his snowy hair, his expression one of childlike happiness and freedom ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... even the children, street urchins as well as those well-to-do, found in this great loving soul a friend. Recall similar incidents in the almost daily life of Lincoln and in the lives of all truly great men. All have that beautiful and ever-powerful characteristic, that simple, childlike nature. ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... he had been at the seminary, had a tall, spare figure with an ascetic countenance, framed round with a light-coloured beard and vividly lighted up by burning eyes, He was neither the priest harassed by doubt, nor the priest with childlike faith, but an apostle carried away by his passion, ever ready to fight and vanquish for the pure glory of the Blessed Virgin. In his black cloak with its large hood, and his broad-brimmed flossy hat, he shone resplendently with the perpetual ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... came to see me yesterday—kissed my hand, and seemed in a general verve for embracing. He is very earnest, very simple, very childlike. I like him. Pen says of him, 'He is not really pretty. He is rather like his own ugly duck, but his mind has developed into ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... inadequate instrument. Perhaps it is, until you hear Cecilia play. Then by some secret sympathy you find yourself murmuring, "Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, childlike, pastoral M——; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... personally saw Tavender off at Waterloo station by the steamer-train, en route for Southampton and New York. The old man was in childlike good spirits, looking more ecclesiastical than ever in the new clothes he had been enabled to buy. He visibly purred with content whenever his dim eyes caught sight of the new valise and steamer trunk, which belonged to him, on the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... character and the habits of thought. Though so temperate, and with total abstinence from other animal food than milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are delicate and dainty to an extreme in food and beverage; and in all their sports even the old exhibit a childlike gaiety. Happiness is the end at which they aim, not as the excitement of a moment, but as the prevailing condition of the entire existence; and regard for the happiness of each other is evinced by the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... brave; but they hated the Germans and thought that they must make war on the Germans, and they were a cruel people, guilty of many atrocities. So the Fatherland had fought to conquer the enemies who planned her destruction. A peculiar, childlike naivete accompanied his intelligence, trained to run in certain grooves, which is the product of the German type of popular education; that trust in his superiors which comes from a diligent and efficient paternalism. He knew nothing of the atrocities which Germans ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... she, My mother as she looked at seventeen, When she first met my father. Young incredibly, Younger than spring, without the faintest trace Of disappointment, weariness, or tean Upon the childlike earnestness and grace Of the waiting face. These close-wound ropes of pearl (Or common beads made precious by their use) Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear; But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare And half the glad swell of the breast, for ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... which was not unlike a gnarled oak-stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, withered by autumnal frosts; and his niece immediately began to try the ever-new power of her coquettish arts. Long familiar with the secret of cajoling the old man, she lavished on him the most childlike caresses, the tenderest names; she even went so far as to kiss him to induce him to divulge so important a secret. The old man, who spent his life in playing off these scenes on his niece, often paying ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... of holiday was expiring, I turned to English literature; and Shakspeare, of course, was the first English poet put into my hands. It proves how childlike my mind still was, that my earliest sensation in reading him was that of disappointment. It was not only that, despite my familiarity with English (thanks chiefly to the care of him whom I call my second father), there is much in the metaphorical diction of Shakspeare ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... threw himself backward again, losing the childlike outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... dreams. The spirit of romance was abroad to-night—in the enchantment of the moon—and she was wistful and imaginative as never before. This was just the normal expression of her starved girlhood—the same childlike wistfulness with which a Cinderella might long for her prince—just as natural and as wholesome and as much a part of youth as laughter ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... personal Being or not an omnipotent Being; the God of modern religion is both. For, indeed, civilisation is not opposed to faith. The idea of the Supreme Being in the mind of European society now is more primitive, more childlike, more imaginative than the idea of the ancient Brahman or Alexandrian philosopher; it is an idea which both of these would have derided as the notion of a child—a negotiosus Deus, who interposes in human ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... did not speak at all, but stood motionless, staring in bewildered, pitiable, childlike fashion, and the color had ebbed ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... connection with Blackwood's Magazine, to which he was the chief contributor, De Quincey removed with his family to Edinburgh, where his erratic genius and his singularly childlike ways produced enough amusing anecdotes to fill a volume. He would take a room in some place unknown to his friends and family; would live in it for a few years, until he had filled it, even to the bath tub, with books and with his own chaotic manuscripts, allowing no ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... approaching religion? Does not the example of Jesus offer a simpler and more natural ideal? The moral experience of the Son of Man was not a revolution but an evolution. His own religion was not that of the twice-born, and all that He asked of His disciples was the childlike mind.[15] Paul, the man of cities, feels a kindred turbulence within himself. Jesus, the interpreter of nature, feels the steady persuasiveness of the sunshine of God, and grows from childhood in stature, wisdom, and favour with God and man. It is contended by some that the whole Pauline ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... about the Christianity of such men. Their over-conscientiousness seems to create a wholly wrong sense of proportion, an exaggerated sense of the significance of their own actions and characters which is as far removed as can be from the childlike humility which Christ taught. The truth seems to be that we lay far too much stress on conscience, self-examination, and personal salvation, and that we trust the Holy Spirit far ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... brilliantly lighted rooms; he prowled around the chamber—entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her body. Then the master passed the rest of the night in an armchair, smoking, his eyes staring but his brain ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of age. All the time he passed with his mother he employed in admiring her arms, in giving his opinion upon her cosmetics, and receipts for compounding essences, in which she was very particular; and then, too, he kissed her hands and cheeks in the most childlike and endearing manner, and had always some sweetmeats to offer her, or some new style of dress to recommend. Anne of Austria loved the king, or rather the regal power in her eldest son; Louis XIV. represented legitimacy by right divine. With the king, her character was that of the queen-mother, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... attitude of the poet toward life in all its forms more clearly defined than in his views of nature. That this is an entirely different one from Hoelderlin's goes without saying. Lenau has nothing of that naive and unsophisticated childlike nature-sense which Hoelderlin possessed, and which enabled him to find comfort and consolation in nature as in a mother's embrace. So that while for Hoelderlin intercourse with nature afforded the greatest relief ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... arose, according to the simple and impressive New England rite, to consecrate herself publicly to a religious life, and to join the company of professing Christians, she was regarded with a species of deference amounting even to awe. Had it not been for the childlike, unconscious simplicity of her manners, the young people of her age would have shrunk away from her, as from one entirely out of their line of thought and feeling; but a certain natural and innocent playfulness and amiable self-forgetfulness ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... He has confessed the Giver of his joys, And kissed the hand that took them; and whene'er Bereavement has oppressed his soul with grief, Or sharp misfortune stung his heart with pain, He has bowed down in childlike faith, and said, "Thy will, O God—Thy will be done, not mine!" His gentle wife, a dozen summers since, Passed from his faithful arms and went to heaven; And her best gift—a maiden sweetly named— His daughter Ruth—orders the ancient house, And fills her mother's ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... the background hum of the crowd and now and then a more clearly spoken phrase, so he caught the edge of this communication. It was not for him. A second mind entered ... was it a mind? Yes, and yet very different. It was strong, but limited—perhaps childlike, in some ways. Alive after a fashion, it was receptive of emotion up to a point and even capable of emotion—up to a point. It seemed an embryo mind, in some ways well developed and in others with no ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... from the covert of its hole; A shimmering moth its pinions furls, Grey in the moonshine of his curls; 'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray, Scattering the fragrance of the may; And with each stirring of the bough Shadow beclouds his childlike brow. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... religions hadst thou place: Long, long, O Vision, our pursuit! Yea, monad, fish and childlike brute Through countless ages dreamt ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... the boy was the more completely engrossed. Towards five o'clock Burton made tea, which they took together. Alfred first carefully washed his hands, and his manners at table were irreproachable. Burton began to feel uncomfortable. He felt that the spirit of some older person had come to him in childlike guise. There was so little to connect this boy with the Alfred of his recollections. In looking over his work, too, Burton was conscious of an almost awed sense of a power in this child's fingers ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was not; at times, upon some change of attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a ghost. It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed. He certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to engage by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close before my fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless, wordless, songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an embarrassment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bonnyboy was that he was not only awkward—left-handed in everything he undertook, as his father put it—but he was so very good-natured that it was impossible to get angry with him. His large blue innocent eyes had a childlike wonder in them, when he had done anything particularly stupid, and he was so willing and anxious to learn, that his ill-success seemed a reason for pity rather than for wrath. Grim Norvold, Bonnyboy's father, was by trade a carpenter, and handy as he ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... divided the atrium from the tablinum, the house was open from end to end, so that through the tablinum and the following peristyle and the hall lying beyond it which was called the oecus, the glance extended to the garden, which seemed from a distance like a bright image set in a dark frame. Joyous, childlike laughter came from ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... light touch of his fingers under her chin, caressing and persuading, Diana's face was lifted to view. It was like a pearl, for the childlike purity of all its lines; it was like enough a rose, too; like an opening rose, for the matter of that. Her thoughts went back to the elegance of Mrs. Reverdy and Gertrude Masters, and she wondered in herself at Mr. Knowlton's judgment of her; but there was too much of Diana ever to ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... aback. Here was primitive passion with a vengeance!—passion which admitted its own craving without subterfuge. Manella's eyes were still uplifted in a kind of childlike confidence. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... pounds sterling as price of her honour and content, until she had stood face to face with Sarah, the safely church-wed, if none too reputable, wife. It informed him, further, how the said small Ishmael—whether alarmed by the violence of my lady's men-servants, or wanting merely, childlike, to welcome his returning father—ran to the coach door and clambered on the step; whence, thanks to a vicious thrust—so declares the chap-book—from "the painted Jezebel within," he fell, while the horses plunging forward caused the near hind wheel of the heavy, lumbering vehicle ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... filling her basket and her apron with them, when Pluto saw her from his chariot, loved her, and carried her off. She screamed for help to her mother and her companions; and when in her fright she dropped the corners of her apron and let the flowers fall, childlike, she felt the loss of them as an addition to her grief. The ravisher urged on his steeds, calling them each by name, and throwing loose over their heads and necks his iron-colored reins. When he reached the River Cyane, and it opposed his passage, he struck the river bank with his trident, and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... room? If it weren't for your prettiness—well, as yet that may have saved you from being a bore." After that he laughed whenever he caught himself trying to piece together the image which his memory persistently presented to him in fragments: now an oval face tinged with a childlike bloom, now grey eyes ringed with black, under dark eyebrows and lashes; or a little Roman nose with a sensitive tip, or a mouth that to the best of his recollection curled up at the corners, making a perpetual dimple in each cheek. They were frivolous ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... fear of them, neither the bristling teeth of danger nor the very jaws of death itself, prevent you from doing a good deed," said an old chief to a scout who was about to seek the buffalo in midwinter for the relief of a starving people. This was his childlike conception of courage. ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... seemed the shadows then, and something else it's hard to name announced itself as the substance.... I wanted to clear out and live with Nature, to know simplicity, unselfish purposes, a golden state of childlike existence close to dawns and dew and running water, cared for by woods and blessed by all the winds...." He paused again for ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... aristocratic family, was born in his ancestral castle in Silesia, March 10, 1788, and died November 26, 1856. Three things especially have left an impression on his poetry: his deeply loved Silesian home with its castle-crowned wooded hills and its beautiful valleys and streams; a simple childlike piety; and an early acquaintance with the Volksbcher and the Volkslied. The only things in Eichendorff's life that have a romantic glamor are his happy, carefree student days and his participation in the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815). ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... how very far astray your childlike simplicity has led you! These attitudes of prayer conceal the most atrocious habits; these supplicating arms are lethal weapons; these fingers tell no rosaries, but help to exterminate the unfortunate passer-by. It is an exception that we should never look ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... have not the square figure, the slow, heavy walk of the people of Basle and Lucerne; they are brisk, vigorous, easy; and the women have something of the wavy suppleness of vine branches twining among the trees. These people have the happy, childlike joyousness, the frank good-nature, of those who live in the open air, who do not shut themselves up in their houses, but grow freely like the flowers under the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... upon her head. The child's face was rather pale than very fair, of a beautiful transparent paleness, with the least tinge of colour in the cheeks; her great violet eyes gazed wonderingly into the study, and her lips parted in childlike uncertainty, while her little gloved hand rested on the door-post as though to get a sense of ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... sufferings, and was then left to rest, while the doctor returned to the morning-room, to face the sisters with what courage he might. Bridgie lay back in a deep, old-fashioned chair, a slight, almost childlike figure, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders bowed as by too heavy a burden—the burden of all those five motherless,—it might soon be fatherless?—children. Esmeralda, straight and defiant by the fireplace, her ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... man's eyes narrowed to black slits as he studied the childlike expression of Shirley's face. He wondered if there could be a covert threat in this innocent confidence. He answered laconically: "Oh, I suppose so. We read about crooks in the magazines and then see their capers in the motion picture thrillers, but down in real life, we find them ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... rather suspicious creatures. The Pope Sylvester II. had also a favorite black poodle, in whom the Devil was supposed to have taken up his abode. According to Wier, however, Agrippa's black dog was quite a harmless beast, and remarkable only for the childlike attachment which the great philosopher had for him. It may be worth remarking, that this writer, although he speaks of Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever having been a friend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... certain note of the true student. You who are students all know The Advancement of Learning, just as the servants sitting beside you all know the second chapter of First Peter. Well, your master Verulam there tells you, and indeed on every page of his, that it is only to a humble, waiting, childlike temper that nature, like grace, will ever reveal up her secrets. 'There is small chance of truth at the goal when there is not a childlike humility at the starting-post.' Well, then, all you students who would fain get to the goal of science, make the Church of Christ your starting-post. Come ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... conversion of the Indians, and were zealously served by missionaries. The Jesuits, whose first appearance in New France dates from 1611, were active and devoted. Their aim was to reduce the fierce Red men to a state of childlike docility to priests, and they discouraged all colonization in their neighbourhood. It was true that the most active French colonial element, the trappers, were barbarized by the natives, and that the pursuit of the fur trade and other causes had brought the French into sharp collision ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... head can rest Soothed and childlike on his breast, And in trustful innocence Draw new strength and courage thence; He, the proud man, feels within ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that had not been visible two years before—the outward marks of an inward, and very bitter struggle, and Bridgie flushed beneath the scrutiny of that clear-seeing, childlike gaze, and trembled at the thought of what was ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was afterward. The party started off from Hampton in high fettle and with a childlike trust in the honesty ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... are still many childlike tribes of men who practically disbelieve in death. To them death is always a surprise and an accident—an unnecessary, irrelevant intrusion on the living world. 'Natural deaths are by many tribes regarded as supernatural,' says Dr. Tylor. These tribes have no conception of death as the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... highly his strategic skill in outmanoeuvring Pope at Manassas, and Hooker at Chancellorsville, totally ignoring that in both cases the movements were planned and ordered by General Lee, for whom (Mr Benjamin said) Jackson had the most "childlike reverence." ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion, tender respect, sympathy, childlike gratitude, that when he paused and gently took her hand, she remained bewildered, speechless, overpowered. Harley smiled as he gazed upon her blushing, downcast, expressive face. He conjectured at once that the idea of such proposals had ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the hatchway and listened. And then he distinguished Praying Donald's low, deep voice raised in supplication; then Grandaddy had been fighting again and they had come to pray for him. The boy crept miserably back to his bed and, childlike, soon ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... have no father, brother, or husband to protect me, take a shelter under a black alpaca. It repels dirt, too, as well as disrespect. It is clean as well as safe, and that is a great desideratum to a poor schoolmistress," she said, smiling with an almost childlike candor. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... childlike," he said in ecstasy. "I have long thought of it, sure. An' thar is a big store of whisky thar, eh, boss? Good—good! And what time will ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the Divine Providence has found for you—the society of friends, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age.... And we now are men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner nor cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers, and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... idea of his own beauty and importance. The Egyptians were an observant people and inclined to satire, and I have a shrewd suspicion that the sculptors, in giving to such statuettes this character of childlike vanity, yielded to the temptation to be merry at the expense ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty-five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more childlike. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... brows over those clear, childlike eyes, puckered a bit. I saw she wasn't at all satisfied with what I ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... bidder. He could not understand it, but somewhere deep within the sensitive child was struck a note of pain, the echoes of which have never left him throughout his strenuous life. He felt dimly in his childlike way the loneliness of his mother. He has never forgotten it. Lonely indeed she was. She had but one friend to turn to, and that one friend was her brother, Richard Lloyd, the village shoemaker up in North Wales. To him she wrote and ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... about an exhibition of pictures in the Cercle des Mirlitons, which she wanted to see with him that afternoon, asked him about the work he had done to-day, and if he had given a thought to her now and then between his crusty old books, and altogether gave evidence of such childlike and implicit confidence in his love and faith, such utter absence of suspicion as to possible rocks ahead, that that which he had it in his mind to do seemed almost like a stab in the dark. His mental suffering was so poignant as to be visibly reflected in ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... whose account, I believe, Fuseli's passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic to swear like him. His friendship with Bonnycastle had something childlike and agreeable in it. They came and went away together for years, like a couple of old schoolboys. They also like boys rallied one another, and sometimes made a singular display of it—Fuseli, at least, for it was he who ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ears more or less cup-shaped with a remarkable power of motion. Their eyes were seemingly huge, probably no larger than a terrestrian's, though in the tiny head they were necessarily closely placed, protected by heavy bony ridges that actually projected from the skull to enclose them. Tiny, childlike chins completed the head, running down ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... It was a forlorn little voice, for all its unmistakable note of rejoicing. How very young she was—and childlike! ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the direction from which the music came, and now it seemed to hold him fascinated. After his question, which sounded to her almost childlike, and which she did not answer, Domini glanced at his attentive face, to which the green shadows lent a dimness that was mysterious, at his tall figure, which always suggested to her both weariness and strength, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... was looking at Hazel, searching hungrily for a hint of the same overwhelming passion that he felt. But he only found childlike joy, gratitude, affection, and a faint shadow for which he could not account, and from which he began to hope ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... Stanley's car and, coming from the cottage, caught sight of that little idyll under the dappled sunlight, green, and blossom. It was something from the core of life, out of the heartbeat of things—like a rare picture or song, the revelation of the childlike wonder and delight, to which all other things are but the supernumerary casings—a little pool of simplicity into which fever and yearning sank and were for a moment drowned. And quite possibly he would have gone away ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... inconsistent heart of man. A voice louder than the preacher's—the voice of daily, hourly experience—proclaims the melancholy fact, that no amount of high-wrought feeling, no loftiness of speech, no intensity of expression, is a guarantee for purity of soul and conduct, when obedience, simple, childlike obedience, has ceased to be the spring of every motion and every aim. Reader, let us grapple with this truth! We are servants here on earth, not masters! subjects, and not legislators! Infants are we all in the arms of a just father! The command ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... being prepared for evidently with childlike delight, and instead of its being a few hours' expedition, it proved that it was to be an affair of a week. Tents were to be taken, huts to be formed, and quite a large district swept of the dangerous beasts. For as the sultan informed the English officers, the tigers had been unmolested ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... the soothing company of his wife, the only being in the world to whom his pride could have communicated the grief of his heart, or the doubts of his conscience! Alas! never on earth should he hear that soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, was afar; but she was happy,—a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind to the darkening clouds. His elder child, with her changeful moods, added but to his disquiet and unhappiness. Next to Edward, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... its fiery passions, was refined, shy and tremulous. A dimple in her chin and a small sensitive mouth gave her an expression at once timid and childlike. Her footstep had feline grace, delicacy and distinction. She had a figure almost perfect, erect, lithe, with small hands and feet and tiny wrists. Her voice was a soft contralto, caress-ing and full of feeling, with a touch of the languor and delicate sensuousness of the Old South. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... American incidents and characteristics. He left me nothing but his example and the memory of his many virtues, for all that he ever earned was given to the poor. He was {17} too good for this world; but the remembrance of his high principles, his cheerfulness, his childlike simplicity and truly Christian character, is never absent from my mind.' It was John Howe's practice for years 'to take his Bible under his arm every Sunday afternoon, and, assembling around him in the large room all the prisoners in the Bridewell, to read and explain to them the Word ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... and Machiavellian policy of keeping the more virile states of Europe at cross-purposes with one another by means of the cunning device called the Balance of Power, while behind the backs of these tricked and childlike nations Britain was meanly snapping up all the most desirable regions of the earth. According to this view it was in some mysterious way Britain's fault that France and Germany were not the best of friends, and that Russia had been alienated from ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... and other convivial bodies, at supper, the doctor's gestures were made with knife and fork in hand, and it was spoken in a rich brogue and tones sometimes of thrilling pathos, anon of sharp and vehement indignation, and again of childlike endearment, amidst pounding and jingling of glasses, and screams of laughter from the company. Indeed the lord mayor, a fat slob of a fellow, though not much given to undue merriment, laughed his ribs into such a state of breathless torture, that he ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "It's preposterous, childlike!"—he brought the frail trifle down to the table with an emphasis which was all but its destruction—"imbecile! I tell ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... They are a simple, childlike people, almost ignorant of malice, patient and easily influenced by an appeal to their feelings. There is far less family feeling and attachment to each other than among the ignorant Irish, apparently, though I don't know how much allowance to make for their being so much less demonstrative ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... been further removed from airs of majestic pathos than this embodiment of the most charming childlike grace; but if anything for which her passionate nature ardently longed was positively refused, she understood how to attain it by the melody of her voice, the spell of her eyes, and in extreme cases by a silent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... figure, childlike and pathetic in its look of fatigue and of sorrow, had said nothing as yet, but her eyes, large, brown, and full of tears, looked up from the fire and sought those of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, who had drawn near to the hearth and to her; then, as they met his, ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... him no reply ... but this time he seemed to me such a good-natured soul, his face expressed such childlike ingenuousness ... a light suddenly seemed to dawn upon me, and there came ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... profane name of Balzac capable of adding an interest even to this venerable sanctuary. Those who have read the terrible little story of "Le Cure de Tours" will perhaps remember that, as I have already mentioned, the simple and childlike old Abbe Birotteau, victim of the infernal machinations of the Abbe Troubert and Mademoiselle Gamard, had his quarters in the house of that lady (she had a speciality of letting lodgings to priests), which stood on the north side of the cathedral, so close under its walls that the supporting pillar ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... made then for another Madonna of marble, which was of full length and by the hand of the same Nino; in the attitude of which Madonna the mother is seen handing a rose with much grace to her Son, who is taking it in a childlike manner, so beautiful that it may be said that Nino was beginning to rob the stone of its hardness and to reduce it to the softness of flesh, giving it lustre by means of the highest polish. This figure is between a S. John and a S. Peter in marble, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... manifest in a reappearance of the obvious, —in a love of the sea and of the beauty of clouds, in the adventure of death and the yet more amazing adventure of living, in a vital love of colour, whether of the Orient or the drug-shop, in childlike love of melody, and the cool cleansing of rain, in strange faces and old memories. This, in the past, has been poetry, and this will be poetry again. The singer who, out of a full heart, can offer to the world his vision ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... the Father Explaining the Bible to his Children,[11] and the Village Bride.[12] Both represent family scenes among village people, and contain, as their most charming features, some delightfully natural children. One could scarcely find anything more deliciously childlike than the mischievous little ones who gather about the table to listen to the Father Explaining the Bible, and whose love of fun even this solemn occasion cannot repress. Equally attractive are the ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... and returning jealousy she reflected that the simple-minded affectionate girl might prove as wax in the hands of her clever godless daughter. But it was too soon to intervene and try to undo her own work. She would watch and wait, and hope still that the infinite beauty and preciousness of a childlike faith would touch the stony heart that nothing had touched, and win back the wandering feet to the ways ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... all the properties of excellence which belong to a Primer for a childlike people, as ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Shrapnel's cottage to say farewell to Jenny Denham previous to her departure for Switzerland with her friend Clara Sherwin. She had never seen a snow-mountain, and it was pleasant to him to observe in her eyes, which he had known weighing and balancing intellectual questions more than he quite liked, a childlike effort to conjure in imagination the glories of the Alps. She appeared very happy, only a little anxious about leaving Dr. Shrapnel with no one to take care of him for a whole month. Beauchamp promised he would run over to him from Holdesbury, only an hour by rail, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and large they were, and drawing them out from the box, and putting them back into it, and tumbling them about in every way. I acted just like a child with its drum and its ball, its top and its orange, rolling them from side to side; and it was a long time before I grew tired of this childlike play. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... no," he said, with that childlike smile of his that suffuses his whole face with an irresistible light. "There is nothing wrong. Play it again; please, play it again, just for me. It is so beautiful. I have never heard these solo passages played with such ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... world of mind and heart torture. His eyelids lifted. He looked at me, then at Beulah Sands, with eyes so sad, so awful in their perplexed mournfulness, that I almost wished they had never opened, or had opened to let me see the childlike look that now shone from the girl's. His gaze finally rested on her and his lips ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry." Simplicity— the perfect simplicity of a child— beautiful simplicity— simple and childlike beauty,— such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. "Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower." The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age when the poetry of Pope— and ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... Bach in the solo songs of the 'St. Matthew Passion' are all the more impressive because every sentiment of joy in its various shades is wholly excluded; they are all based on the emotion of sorrow. The most fervent sympathy with the sufferings of the Son of Man, rising to the utmost anguish, childlike trustfulness, manly earnestness, and tenderly longing devotion to the Redeemer; repentance for the personal sins that his suffering must atone for, and passionate entreaties for mercy; an absorbed contemplation of the example offered ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... sky peeped caressingly at us through the delicate foliage. My head was going round with excess of bliss. I hasten to remark, Liza was not a bit in love with me. She liked me; she was never shy with any one, but it was not reserved for me to trouble her childlike peace of mind. She walked arm in arm with me, as she would with a brother. She was seventeen then.... And meanwhile, that very evening, before my eyes, there began that soft inward ferment which precedes the metamorphosis of the child into the woman.... I was witness of ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... looked at her in childlike wonder, and then her face lit up with a heavy smile. "Oh, my! there's no fear of him!" ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... look so—I try to hide it. But of course we're very simple. Let me ask then a simple earnest childlike question. Are ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... gesture. Mrs. Mortimer went on, "Well, he certainly has a brilliant future before him. Everybody says that—" She stopped, struck by her rather heavy emphasis on the theme and by a curious look from Lydia. The girl did not blush, she did not seem embarrassed, but for a moment the childlike clarity of her look was clouded by an expression ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... lax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for us than we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light- heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlike simplicity and frankness, its normal ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... me wicked, Cousin Lavinia?" Margaret asked with a sudden relaxation of her figure and something infinitely childlike and appealing in her tone. "You really don't ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... upon books at an age when most girls are sent to school. The doctor had a good taste of an old-fashioned kind in literature, and he had a library pretty well stocked with the elderly English authors, poets and essayists and novelists, and here and there an historian, and these Kitty read childlike, liking them at the time in a certain way, and storing up in her mind things that she did not understand for the present, but whose beauty and value dawned upon her from time to time, as she grew older. ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... had an engineering office in Belgium. As the use of telegraph and telephone was suddenly stopped there remained nothing but to close the office. I therefore paid off my employes, among whom was a young office boy, a Belgian, about 16 years old, frail stature, small build, almost childlike appearance, but well ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... or nine weeks hence, to accompany him on foot to Quebec, and then to Niagara and New York. I should like it well, if my circumstances and other considerations would permit. What pleases much in Mons. S—— is the simple and childlike enjoyment he finds in trifles, and the joy with which he speaks of going back to his own country, away from the dull Yankees, who here misunderstand and despise him. Yet I have never heard him speak harshly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... he answered, "Yes—Yes—" She had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... And then she sprang up and began to pace the room. How to help him. Slowly, and with a minute examination, she went in memory through his story, with its egoism, its cruelty, its ambition, its punishment, its childlike helplessness of to-night, and of many nights. She recalled each word that he had spoken until she came to almost the last, "I have prayed. But God forgives only those who reverse their evil acts. Mine can never ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all," said Mr. Wilmot. "His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret—I think it is the same with them all—not only Ethel and Richard, who have been immediately concerned; but that one object has been a centre and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... recognizing its own; and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise in literature, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... though his little son should see the purple asters blossom on his grave many, many times before they met. To this belief Demi held fast, and in it found both help and comfort, because it led him unconsciously through a tender longing for the father whom he had seen to a childlike trust in the Father whom he had not seen. Both were in heaven, and he prayed to both, trying to be ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... I loafed delightfully for four years and let my mind run absolutely to seed, while I smoked pipe after pipe under the elms, watching the squirrels and dreaming dreams. I selected elementary—almost childlike—courses in a large variety of subjects; and as soon as I had progressed sufficiently to find them difficult I cast about for other snaps to take their places. My bookcase exhibited a collection of primers on botany, zooelogy and ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... law of the phenomenon it contemplates. Nay, the poetic relations themselves in the phenomenon may suggest to the imagination the law that rules its scientific life. Yea, more than this: we dare to claim for the true, childlike, humble imagination, such an inward oneness with the laws of the universe that it possesses in itself an insight into the very nature ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... and a delight in at last doing work of a practical nature, was soon able to shoe a horse, temper and weld iron, bolt and rivet a gate and mend broken farm implements with considerable skill, much to the open-minded and childlike Hanson's ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... poets, the singers—what have the great voices said? They have sung the praises of the victor's laurels without knowing what they are. You, old Homer, bard of the lisping tribes of the coasts, with your serene and venerable face sculptured in the likeness of your great childlike genius, with your three times millennial lyre and your empty eyes—you who led us to Poetry! And you, herd of poets enslaved, who did not understand, who lived before you could understand, in an age when great men were only the domestics of great lords—and you, too, servants of the resounding ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Scripture itself. Side by side with these there is that singular form of the religious spirit which has been so constantly misunderstood, and which, except in a very few persons, seems so rare nowadays—the faith which is implicit without being imbecile, childlike without being childish, devout with a fearless familiarity, the spirit to which the Dies Irae and the sermons of St Francis were equally natural expressions, and which, if it could sometimes exasperate itself into the practices of the Inquisition, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... long tramps, she always dressed in a blue blouse and the apparel of a man, saying that skirts were not made for bushes. She walked before me in the sand with a firm step and such a charming melange of feminine delicacy and childlike temerity, that I stopped every few moments to look at her. It seemed that, once started, she had to accomplish a difficult but sacred task; she walked in front like a soldier, her arms swinging, her voice ringing through the woods ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... whose faith so earnest Guides these Indians' childlike hearts, As their hands to toil thou turnest, Teaching them the Builder's arts, Speak thy thought! as now they gather Round the white walls on the plain, Rearing them for God the Father, And ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... they are, by the inscrutable will of their Creator, and that we have nothing to do but to register the facts and wonder? Was this single island selected for a fantastic display of creative power, merely to excite a childlike and unreasoning admiration? Is all this appearance of gradual modification by the action of natural causes—a modification the successive steps of which we can almost trace—all delusive? Is this harmony between the most diverse groups, all presenting analogous ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... generous delight at having been the instrument of their relief the harmonies of pure affections, without any grating now the hope, well grounded she thought, of improvement in her uncle, and better times for them all a childlike peace that was at rest with itself and the world these were mingling and interchanging their music, and again and again, in the midst of it all, faith rang ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... under their auspices, differed from that of the morning, not merely in name and form, but in its subtle character. In the one instance it had been an innocent pastime, occasioned by childlike and joyous impulses. The people's manner might have reminded one of a bit of darkened landscape that had been rapidly filled with light, and almost ecstatic life by the advent of a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... History so as to be intelligible to young children. In fact, it will generally be found that classical history is remembered at an earlier age than modern history, probably because the events are simple, and there was something childlike in the nature of all the ancient Greeks. I would begin a child's reading with the History of England, as that which requires to be known best; but from this I should think it better to pass to the History of Greece, and that of Rome (which is in course of preparation), both because of their giving ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good to cultivate simple tastes. The pure and childlike heart will find unspeakable enjoyment in all that God has made, though it be as familiar as a lawn sparkling with dewdrops, a hay-field scented by clover-blooms, a streamlet murmuring over the pebbles, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... vindictiveness; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives of wild or southern countries—a ferocity which enhances the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the impulsive nature thus occasionally betrayed, but there was nothing in it to make her distrust, or recoil in the least, from the new-found brother. On the contrary, all their intercourse was peculiarly charming ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her attendance was a new and exquisite repose. It was the first taste of her mother's love, and made her content to be helpless; as there she lay, murmuring thanks, and submitting to be petted with a grateful face of childlike peace, resting in her mother's affection, and made happy by the depth of warm feeling in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in right assertion; it is the assumption of legitimate responsibility and command. To be lowly of heart does not mean to be inefficient; to be humble does not necessarily mean to be obscure. Luther and Lincoln were both of a childlike humility ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... mountains, its lakes and natural defenses, it defied the foreigner. Was it that Mexico was then so accustomed to transfer its allegiance from one military ruler to the other that even foreign invasion left it indifferent? Or was it the childlike faith in the unknown, the national Quien sabe? spirit, virtually carried out at this supreme crisis? However this may have been, very little of the outside conflict seemed as yet to have penetrated the minds of the people. The diplomatic corps entertained our little coterie, which ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... strange look at her. There was gratitude in it, but much more; a fiery bitterness and something childlike ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... are afraid, but because, as Ts'ao Kung says, "all have embraced the firm resolution to do or die." We may remember that the heroes of the Iliad were equally childlike in showing their emotion. Chang Yu alludes to the mournful parting at the I River between Ching K'o and his friends, when the former was sent to attempt the life of the King of Ch'in (afterwards First ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... this fragile flower of the North transplanted into the little garden at Tarascon would brighten its monotony, and be sweeter to see and breathe than that everlasting baobab, arbos gigantea, diminutively confined in the mignonette pot. With her childlike eyes, and her broad brow, thoughtful and self-willed, Sonia looked at him, and she, too, dreamed—but who knows what the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... will the fragments of goodness and beauty that are in each of us find their true fruition. This doctrine may be inconvenient in practice, but it is far removed from vulgar sensualism, of which Shelley had not a trace. Hogg says that he was "pre-eminently a ladies' man," meaning that he had that childlike helplessness and sincerity which go straight to the hearts of women. To this youth, preaching sublime mysteries, and needing to be mothered into the bargain, they were as iron to the magnet. There was always an Eve in his Eden, and each was the "wonder of her kind"; but whoever ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow |
