"Gabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become a follower in studying Fourier, I suddenly perceived that by reasoning I was becoming incredulous; that on each article of the creed my reason and my faith were at variance, and that my six weeks' labor was wholly lost. I saw that the Fourierists—in spite of their inexhaustible gabble, and their extravagant pretension to decide in all things—were neither savants, nor logicians, nor even believers; that they were SCIENTIFIC QUACKS, who were led more by their self-love than their conscience to labor for the triumph of their ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... a parrot prefers to nuts and the stones of various fruits. Wood says he once succeeded in obtaining the affections of a Parisian Parrot, solely through the medium of peach stones which he always saved for the bird and for which it regularly began to gabble as soon as it saw him coming. "When taken freshly from the peach," he says, "the stones are very acceptable to the parrot, who turns them over, chuckling all the while to show his satisfaction, and picking all the soft parts from the deep indentations in the stone." He used to crack ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... some matter which must be read to a sick person, do it slowly. People often think that the way to get it over with least fatigue to him is to get it over in least time. They gabble; they plunge and gallop through the reading. There never was a greater mistake. Houdin, the conjuror, says that the way to make a story seem short is to tell it slowly. So it is with reading to the sick. I have often heard a patient say to such a mistaken reader, ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... said he, "I can read and write all I've any need for. But as for you, with all your gabble and talk ... ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... arranged his books, I took a good look at him. A regular German—rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one's ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble. His clothes were rusty, his hands were large, and he hadn't a really handsome feature in his face, except his beautiful teeth, yet I liked him, for he had a fine head, his linen was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... my son, that they be not over well liked of the Church and the dignitaries thereof. They go about setting men by the ears, bringing down to the minds of the commoner sort high matters that are not meet for such to handle, and inciting them to chatter and gabble over holy things in unseemly wise. Whereso they preach, 'tis said, the very women will leave their distaffs, and begin to talk of sacred matter—most unbecoming and scandalous it is! I avise you, my son, to have none ado with such, and to keep to the wholesome direction ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... teased his sister for a long time in vain, to play out of doors with him, the spoiled boy hissed at her, and said, "You are an ugly old cat!" Then slamming the door after him, he went into the barn-yard, where the screaming of the pigs, the gabble of the geese, and the clucking of the hens, soon proclaimed that he was venting his ill-temper on the dumb creatures who had their home there. Poor Charlie! the indulgence of his mother, and the almost constant absence of his ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... the swamp and the shrill trumpeting of the mosquito army attacking his face and hands were not agreeable lullabies. As the darkness deepened, a medley of doleful noises pervaded the horrible wilderness. An unearthly gabble of strange water-fowl broke out suddenly, was kept up for a few seconds only, and then ceased. Only once in the night did Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the only people in Homeburg who had lunch at noon, and as early as 1900 they ate it from the bare table. She was the only woman in Homeburg who could "look in" on an afternoon gabble of any kind for a few minutes and get away with it without insulting the hostess. When she shook hands with you, you always grabbed in the wrong place, no matter how much thought you put into it, and while you were readjusting your sights and clawing for ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... 'Metskie Tsar' and the 'Angliskie Tsar,' and kept repeating the Russian word for defeat. The 'Angliskie Tsar' I recognised, of course, as the King of England, but my brain was too sick and dull to read any further meaning into the man's reiterated gabble. I grew so ill just then that I had to give up the struggle against fever, and make my way as best I could towards the nearest point where nursing and doctoring could be had. It was one evening, in a lonely rest-hut on the edge of a huge ...
— When William Came • Saki
... learned pedants much affect; It was a parti-color'd dress Of patch'd and piebald languages: 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three laborers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent: And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast and large, For he could coin or counterfeit New words with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... his last lair, He'll gabble rhyme, nor sing nae mair, Cauld poverty, wi' hungry stare, Nae mair shall fear him; Nor anxious fear, nor cankert care, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Cap'n, eagerly, forgetting for the moment the presence of Constable Nute, "those wimmen might gabble a little at you and make threats and things like that—but—but—there isn't anything they can do, you understand!" He winked at Mr. Parrott. "You ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the shrill ringing of a bell, the sound of feet and the gabble of a phonographic message. The man in yellow appeared. "Yes?" ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... with all sorts of heterogeneous diet can form no test of genius, taste, judgment, or natural capacity. Competitive Examination takes for its norma: 'It is better to learn many things ill than one thing well'; or rather: 'It is better to learn to gabble about everything than to understand anything.' This is not the way to discover the wood of which Mercuries are made. I have been told that this precious scheme has been borrowed from China: a pretty fountain-head for moral and political improvement: ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... half-and-halves, the people who claim friendship because circumstances happened to have thrown you together fairly frequently—and one of us has a beautiful house and the other an excellent cook—these people press upon my spirit like a strait-waistcoat. I gabble the conventional small-talk of polite sociability, and I thank God when they are gone! They are called "friends," but we have absolutely nothing ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... one of what Welles called "Vincent's sidewipes," which he could inlay so deftly that they seemed an integral part of the conversation. He wondered what Mrs. Crittenden would say, if Vincent ever got through his gabble and gave her a chance. She was turning to him now, smiling, and beginning to speak. What a nice voice she had! How nice that she should have ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, this was hardly to be wondered at; for the priest, so far as I could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... it at your leisure, and your wife can read it as well as yourself, if read it you must. And, in short, what must that man be made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and balderdash of a club or a ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... describe it, had the crude coloring of the Newlyn school, which she abominates. She thinks Turner might approve of Suarez in his black and white stripes, but the Guanaco crater reminds her of Gustave Dore, who always exaggerated his tone values. I learn that sort of gabble by heart. Jennie's a good sort, yet ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... relief. The regular diplomatic machinery stuck fast at this point, both at home and abroad. In one of his gossipy, confidential letters Fisher Ames remarked that Hammond was a most "petulant, impudent" man, habitually railing against the conduct of our government "with a gabble that his feelings render doubly unintelligible." But Pinckney, our representative in England, was equally undiplomatic. He was "sour and also Gallican"; although calm in manner, "he had prejudices, and unless a man has a mind above them, he ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... would only admit two good verses in Gray's exquisite "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. "Tristram Shandy" would not live. "Hamlet" was gabble. Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" was poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except "A Tale of a Tub." Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel. Deists, like Hume, Priestley, or Gibbon, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cast the first stone! There was a tendency also among both monks and nuns to slip out before the end of the service on any good or bad excuse: they had to see after the dinner or the guest-house, their gardens needed weeding, or they did not feel well. But the most common fault of all was to gabble through the services as quickly as they could in order to get them over. They left out the syllables at the beginning and end of words, they omitted the dipsalma or pause between two verses, so that one side of the choir was beginning the second half before ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... at him; we may cry ourselves to sleep, but who laughs himself to slumber? Ma'am, are you going to leave us?" he asked, seeing that Mrs. Cranceford was on her feet. "But of course you have duties to look after, even though you might not be glad to escape an old man's gabble. I call it gabble, but I know it to be wisdom. But I ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... clean and comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve in age. They had good play-ground set off for them, and shady galleries to walk up and down in. Coming from their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that at the best are very second-rate eloquence, and at the worst are respect destroying, mind destroying gabble, there are various forms of "ethical" teaching, advocated and practised in America and in the elementary schools of this country. For example, a story of an edifying sort is told to the children, and comments are elicited upon the behaviour of the characters. "Would you ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... "Come, stop your gabble, you boys!" blustered the doughty engineman, speaking to everybody and with a show of authority. "Bucks, notify the despatcher I'm ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Charlies-hope.—Aweel, sir, and then the inferior sort o' people, ye'll observe, are kend by sorts o' by-names some o' them, as Glaiket Christie, and the Deuke's Davie, or maybe, like this lad Gabriel, by his employment; as for example, Tod Gabble, or Hunter Gabble. He's no been lang here, sir, and I dinna think onybody kens him by ony other name. But it's no right to rin him doun ahint his back, for he's a fell fox-hunter, though he's maybe no just sae clever as some o' the folk hereawa wi' ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Greek emperor. But when there he pilfered and plundered to so enormous an extent, that he was soon obliged to fly, to avoid being hanged. Thereupon he joined himself to the sect of the Arians, and, by his quick parts, soon learnt to gabble the unintelligible jargon of theology and metaphysics. About this time the Arian emperor, Constantine, kicked from the episcopal chair at Alexandria the good and most Catholic Athanasius; and your redoubtable Cappadocian was, by an Arian synod, appointed ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... obeyed at once, and they walked softly on into the darkness ahead, for from apparently close behind them—though the speakers had not yet reached the mouth of the low cavern—there came the confused angry gabble of many voices, and on looking back Ned saw the mouth of the place darkened, and it seemed as if the enemy were about to come in; but some were apparently hesitating, and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... glad to see you." Ann came suddenly down to earth, and tried to focus her attention on. Miss Caroline's hospitable gabble. "Such a lot of people here this afternoon, too.... I'm so pleased. And a beautiful day, isn't it? Even Mr. Coventry has been tempted out of his shell. He'll be quite a social acquisition to the neighbourhood soon, at ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Under the moon and sun. It's aye the rabble, And I to gabble, And hey! for the tale that is ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... showed considerable alarm. "Gracious heavens!" she cried, "you must not stop talking to him; he will turn you inside out, and I shall be undone. Nay, you must gabble these words out, and then run away as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... morning from Paris the signal to know whether it is day or night, or whether, indeed, they shall laugh or weep! A great people, once the noblest, the cleverest in the world, repeating the same day, at the same hour, in all the salons, and at all the crossways in the empire, the same imbecile gabble engendered the evening before in the mire of the boulevards. I tell you? Monsieur, it is humiliating that all Europe, once jealous of us, should now shrug her shoulders in our faces.—Besides, it is fatal even for Paris, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Mirth and merriment. Hence many a war-spear Cold from the morning shall be clutched in the fingers, Heaved in the hand, no harp-music's sound shall 80 Waken the warriors, but the wan-coated raven Fain over fey ones freely shall gabble, Shall say to the eagle how he sped in the eating, When, the wolf his companion, he plundered the slain." So the high-minded hero was rehearsing these stories 85 Loathsome to hear; he lied ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... at an end, and I have done nothing but gabble. I have many and more important things to write to you about. Lord, forgive me! I am not in a mood for it today. I shall soon write again. My best greetings to Zigesar. Truly this warm, true heart does me much good. Farewell for today, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... quarter of it—would be swallowed up like a mouthful, and never seen again! Castle Warlock was twice as old—that was something! but why had not Lady Joan told him hundreds of stories about Cairncarque, instead of letting him gabble on about their little place? But she could not love her castle as he did his, for she had no such father in it! That must be what made the difference! That was why she did not care to talk about it! Was he actually going to see her again? and would she be to him the same as before? ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and gives an inquisitive glance at the nigh leader's foot, that he shod only yesterday. A flock of geese, startled from a mud-puddle through which the coach dashes on, rush away with outstretched necks, and wings at their widest, and a great uproar of gabble. Two school-girls—home for the nooning—are idling over a gateway, half swinging, half musing, gazing intently. There is a gambrel-roofed mansion, with a balustrade along its upper pitch, and quaint ogees of ancient joinery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... him and rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on the velvet cushion in an attitude of studied grace, remain in silent prostration for a certain time; then mutter over a Collect, and gabble through the Lord's Prayer, rise, draw off one bright lavender glove, to give the congregation the benefit of his sparkling rings, lightly pass his fingers through his well-curled hair, flourish a cambric handkerchief, recite a very short passage, or, perhaps, a mere ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... our day and generation to gabble them over unthinking, carelessly unmindful of the fearful fate ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... my head aches badly!" said Henrietta. She wished to rid herself of this uncalled-for gabble, in order that she might devote herself to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... loosed I found myself among a rough crowd of men in the 'tween decks of a large ship. The air was dim and close. From the row of heavy guns and great ports, several of which were open, I knew her to be a battleship and of large size. From the gabble of talk all round me I knew ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... any print of goodness wilt not take, Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning,[387-96] but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. But thy vile race, Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou Deservedly confined into this rock, Who hadst deserved ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... unlocking of the door, emphasized the importance of something stored at the far end, an object or objects which must be used first. He had wondered about that tape. A sensation of urgency, almost of despair, had come through the gabble of alien words, the quick sequence of diagrams and pictures. The message might have been taped under a threat of ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... candidly, looking down at my feet as they trip quickly along through the limp winter grass, "there is no use blinking the fact that I have no conversation—none of us have. We can gabble away among ourselves like a lot of young rooks, about all sorts of silly home jokes, that nobody but us would see any fun in; but when it ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... supposition—I think he must certainly have himself bestowed on it, as it excels the most outrageous pranks of the alliterative age. It is called, "Green-Room Gossip; or, Gravity Gallinipt; A Gallimaufry got up to guile Gymnastical and Gyneocratic Governments; Gathered and Garnished by Gridiron Gabble, Gent., ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... da!" crooned the General. His conversation was evidently based on the theory that the English language is a dark mystery, insoluble by system, but likely to be blundered into fortuitously, at any moment, if the searcher gabble with sufficient steadiness and persistence. His costume, consisting merely of the ordinary blue denim overalls of commerce, would have been positively commonplace were it not for the wings of bright pink tissue paper, which he wore with a somewhat confusing obstinacy, pinned firmly to his ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... close to Third Avenue, something reassuring in the sidewalk gabble, the air of cheap carnival, the white arc lights over open fruit stands, and the percussive roar of Elevated trains. Presently even Third Avenue would withdraw to over its shops, the sidewalks fall quiet and darken, pedestrians become sinister. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows. I go to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is more than some do that gabble the most about salvation. If I pay for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me; so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of getting saved or damned. I've never ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... now. Indeed, indeed, I have loved you all! You, the workers, all puffed up and dyspeptic and ready for the asylums; and you, the good-for-nothing lazy drones; you, the strong silent men, who have heads quite empty, like gourds; and you also, the frivolous, useless men that chatter and gabble to no purpose all day long. Even you, that, having begun to read this book, could get no further than page 47, and especially you who have read it manfully in spite of the flesh, I love you all, and give you here and now my final, complete, full, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of a soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. She stood looking up at him, her ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... hypocrites,—ye Uncle Tom's Cabin hypocrites,—ye Beecher hypocrites,—ye Rhode Island Consociation hypocrites! Oh, your holy twaddle stinks in the nostrils of God, and he commands me to lash you with my scorn, and his scorn, so long as ye gabble about the sin of slavery, and then bow down to me, and buy and spin cotton, and thus work for me as truly as my slaves! O ye fools and blind, fill ye up the measure of your folly, and blindness, and shame! And this ye are doing. Ye have, like the French infidels, made reason your ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... the Barracks, around the corner, through the cloistered walk, came Captain Lemuel, whistling. He was in good spirits; ready to join his "Squad" beside the fountain and have an evening's "gabble" with the youngsters. They had been abnormally good that day. Wholly obedient to his restrictions in the length of their rides, eager to improve in their shooting—which was so far removed from "sharp"; and in every respect so "decent" that he puzzled his brain ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... "What a gabble the old geezer makes," Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teeth all extracted, they began an attempt ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... called the obsequious and the sullen? Well, one had them, the types themselves, detected in the fact; and one had them together. Obsequiousness ran out of the first like wine out of a bottle, sullenness congested in the second. Obsequiousness was all smiles; he ran to catch your eye, he loved to gabble; and he had about a dozen words of beach English, and an eighth-of-an-inch veneer of Christianity. Sullens was industrious; a big down-looking bee. When he was spoken to, he answered with a black look and a shrug of one shoulder, but the thing would ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that would drive an Englishman mad. A Boer farmer, sitting on his stoep, large and strong, but absolutely lethargic, is the very incarnation of the spirit of the veldt. At the same time, when one remembers the clatter and gabble of our civilisation, it is impossible to deny him a certain dignity, though it may be only the dignity ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the first (Lamb himself is, in England, his only important forerunner) to unite and combine criticism of different branches of art. He never has the disgusting technical jargon, or the undisciplined fluency, of the mere art critic, any more than he has the gabble of the mere connoisseur. But it is constantly evident that he has a knowledge of and a feeling for the art of line and colour as well as of words. Nothing can be better than the fragments of criticism which are interspersed in the Scott book; and if his estimate of Hook as a novelist ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... beat of women," he muttered. "Gabble, gabble, and an hour right out of a day's work means nothing to 'em. Oh, here you are, Miss. You know that gray alpaca coat of mine you took the letter ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... principle; the only system, she maintained, by which you can live long and easily, and lose nothing. If you run away when you see danger, you can come back when all is safe. Run quickly, return slowly, hold your head high, and gabble as loud as you can, and you'll preserve the respect of the Goose Green to a peaceful old age. Why should you struggle and get hurt, if you can lower your head and swerve, and not lose a feather? Why in the world should any one spoil the pleasure of life, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... dark, it becomes a government of chance and not of design. The imputation was one of those artifices used to despoil an adversary of his most effectual arms; and men of mind will place themselves above a gabble of this order. The last session of Congress was indeed an uneasy one for a time: but as soon as the members penetrated into the views of those who were taking a new course, they rallied in as solid a phalanx as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... her brother's early life. 'As regards spiritual advantages out of the house he had none; for our Pastor was one of the old sort, with a jolly red nose caused by good cheer. He used to lay his Hat and Whip on the Communion Table and gabble over the service, running down the Pulpit Stairs not to lose the opportunity of being invited to a good dinner at the Hall.' It was with reference to his sister's husband that FitzGerald in conversation with Tennyson used the expression 'A Mr. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of Sects ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... all a-jangle from trail-strain and the depressing atmosphere of the Watts ranch, it seemed to Patty she must shriek aloud if the woman persisted in her ceaseless gabble. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... to show us your collection. It is nearing the time when we must go home, for father has had to-day to listen to an unparalleled amount of gabble and is very tired." ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of the most extraordinary nature. For one who is always preaching of Truth of Beauty, the dulness of his moral sense is perfectly ludicrous. He cannot see that the hero into whose mouth he places his favourite metaphysical gabble—his dissertations about the stars, the passions, the Greek plays, and what not—his eternal whine about what he calls the good and the beautiful—is a fellow as mean and paltry as can be well imagined; a man of rant, and not of action; foolishly infirm of purpose, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... you understand me, technically reverent; they have startled the whole place with their curtsies and crossings in church; but they gabble up to the very porch; and the familiarity with which they discuss High Mass, as they are pleased to call it! I was obliged to silence them, and I must ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard some such sentimental gabble as this before from my slaves, my lord," said Abrazza to Media. "It has the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... such stories as these are ript up; that would burthen the strongest memory to bear them: and so much the more, because it is impossible to distinguish one from the t'other, when the men and the women that gabble so one among another. And oft-times they spin such course threads of bawdery in their talk, that are enough to spoil a whole web of linnen. And who can tell but that their tattling would last a whole night, for there's hardly one of them who hath not at the least ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... of his old patched up body, now no longer needed: weary of the noisy nuisances of life, and the tiresome and futile gabble of humanity: resentful, now that his spirit has actually survived death, when he remembers the scientific books he had read which almost struck despair in him. ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... rot you do gabble, Murray!" suddenly cried Alan Hawke, dropping a double barrier of the newest Times, as he prepared to leave the clubroom in disgust. "Hugh Johnstone was only called down to Calcutta on some important financial business some days ago, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... "Listen to 'em gabble like a pack of old women," laughed Jack, as the friendly argument about the crackling ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... friends came now he shot his angry questions, like bullets, from the fireside. "Haven't they done anything yet, eh? How much longer do you reckon that roomful of old women will gabble in Richmond? Why, we might as well put a flock of sheep to decide upon ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... England they are known as "Gabriel's Hounds"; in Devon as the "Wisk," "Yesk," "Yeth," or "Heath Hounds"; in Wales as the "Cwn Annwn" or "Cyn y Wybr"; in Cornwall as the "Devil and his Dandy-Dogs"; and in the neighbourhood of Leeds as the "Gabble Retchets." They are common all over the Continent. In appearance they are usually described as monstrous, human-headed dogs, black, with fiery eyes and teeth, and sprinkled all over with blood. They make a great howling noise, which is very shrill and mournful, and appear to be in hot pursuit ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... look away from that west of vast and burning color to the delicately dotted eggs in the tiny cradle—the same relief felt in descending from a mountain-top to the valley; in turning from the sweep of the sea to watch beach-fleas hopping over the sand; in giving over the wisdom of men for the gabble of ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Oppression and injustice—these were things far removed from the planets of the Ages that sparkled like jewels in the vault of Night. A vagrant breeze whispered in the valley sedges to the placid lake. High in the air, invisible, migrating wavies winged into the south, the distant gabble of their passing ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... should be called. You have been moistening your own throat to some purpose, and using it to gabble tunes very suitable to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... forgetting all courtliness, Margaret, the Colonel, and Maclachlan fell over one another, so to speak, in telling the Prince who I was. For a few seconds there was a gabble of introductions, which made me feel hot ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... with the eight o'clock breakfast and ends only when all retire for the night. No privacy, no isolation is allowed. If you take a book and begin to read in a remote corner of a parlor or piazza, some idle matron or idiotic girl will tranquilly invade your poor little bit of privacy and gabble of her affairs and the day's gossip. There is no escape unless you mount to your ten-by-twelve cell and sit (like the Premiers of England when they visit Balmoral) on the bed, to do your writing, for want of any other conveniences. Even such retirement is resented by the boarders. You ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... feeling that had come over me since entering the schoolroom: it was really an effort for me to answer him; I felt as if I wanted only to be let alone, and I realised, without being able to control it, that my voice was very irritable as I said briefly, "One has got to be silent when you begin to gabble." ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... they cannot reach." It is not what foolish sound is shaped by a deal of stinking breath and blown adown the wind to be forgotten like the bray of an asthmatic burro, to perish like the snows of yesteryear, that should be our concern—not what the idle gabble of Mrs. Grundy proclaims us, but what we actually are. Public opinion is an ever-shifting rainbow. The "heretics" of one age are the saints of the next: the "cranks" of our own time may be the philosophers of ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this time to thoroughly convince Buckhurst of my ability to gabble platitude. My desire that he should view me as a typical gendarme ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... cuff of his blue-striped panjammers, the Chinaman, patting him like he might a dog, saying, "Poor captain! Never you mind, captain! She all lite now, captain," while the prisoners broke out in a big gabble of how they were saved, and piped up with ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... verse-jargon as to-night! Strange it is that the so-called 'poetical' trick of confusedly heaping words together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... reported to have the sharpest eyes, and the quickest ears; her pupils believed that nothing ever could pass Miss Martineau's observation; nevertheless, after Mrs. Ellsworthy's visit she was distrait, she was indifferent to mistakes, and she allowed her naughtiest and most troublesome scholar to gabble through her French translation without once correcting her. School over, Miss Martineau discovered that she had no appetite for her dinner; she left quite a nice little repast, cooked in French style, untasted on the table, and hurrying up to her bedroom, put on her mantle and poke bonnet and ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Jack might manage to get across. His plans came to nothing; and, indeed, the Channel where they were was much too wide to be crossed except in a small vessel or in a large boat. Jack was beginning to speak French pretty well, and Bill was able to gabble away with considerable fluency, greatly to the delight of Jeannette, who was his usual instructress. He tried to teach her a little English in return, but she laughed at her own attempts, and declared that she should never be able ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... you were to cut him up in little bits and put each atom under a microscope, you would find in every molecule the text of some proclamation. The genii of syntax and prosody are his guardian angels, and the love of "gabble" is the be-all and the end-all of his political existence. He loves not GARIBALDI. He would have done violence to his grandmother rather than consent to the invitation of the Italian liberator. For short, he calls him ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... Mendicant Friars and Jacobins, who are the two hemispheres of the Christian world; by whose gyronomonic circumbilvaginations, as by two celivagous filopendulums, all the autonomatic metagrobolism of the Romish Church, when tottering and emblustricated with the gibble-gabble gibberish of this odious error and heresy, is homocentrically poised. But what harm, in the devil's name, have these poor devils the Capuchins and Minims done unto him? Are not these beggarly devils sufficiently wretched already? Who can imagine that these poor ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... He got up quickly on to his knees and, shrinking as though from the cold, nervously thrusting his hands into his sleeves, he muttered in a rapid womanish gabble: ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... they don't sing," said Rap; "they gabble and squawk and swim in the water, but they can fly as quick as Swallows, for all they look so heavy." "I wish he would begin with this little mite of a thing, that isn't much bigger than a bee," said Nat, showing Rap ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... him, of course, they would use a different scrambler circuit than the one which was plugged into his own unit, but he would be able to hear the gabble of voices, even if he couldn't understand ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... vividly real to us than any history. The jests which Pompeian idlers scribbled on the walls, while Vesuvius was brooding its fiery conspiracy under their feet, bring the scene nearer home to us than the letter of Pliny, and deepen the tragedy by their trifling contrast, like the grave-diggers' unseemly gabble in Hamlet. Perhaps our judgment of history is made sounder, and our view of it more lifelike, when we are so constantly reminded how the little things of life assert their place alongside the great ones, and how healthy the constitution of the race is, how sound its digestion, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... sent for him. Some kind of a gabble-fest on the star-star level, I gather. Otherwise we're almost ready to blast. And we know what kind of cargo to ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... (there are many errors, one or two gross ones), ill written, ill thought! But in fine it is off my hands: that is a fact worth all others. As to its reception here or elsewhere, I anticipate nothing or little. Gabble, gabble, the astonishment of the dull public brain is likely to be considerable, and its ejaculations unedifying. We will let it go its way. Beat this thing, I say always, under thy dull hoofs, O dull Public! trample it and tumble it into all sinks and kennels; ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... thy foeman Right hard, and Rolf the bowman, And many, many others, The forky lightning's brothers! Wake—not for banquet-table! Wake—not with maids to gabble! But wake for rougher sporting, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... characters of the play from a French novel, based on an Italian plot, and wove around the story a lot of glittering talk to please the lords and ladies who listened to the silly gabble of their prototypes. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... me dub With the name of Legion-Club. Such assemblies, you might swear, Meet when butchers bait a bear; Such a noise, and such haranguing, When a brother thief is hanging: Such a rout and such a rabble Run to hear Jack-pudden gabble; Such a crowd their ordure throws On a far less ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... leave over, Jim," said the shiftless one. "Besides, there's a dif'rence between you an' me talkin'. When I talk I'm always sayin' somethin'; but yourn is jest a runnin' gabble, like the flowin' uv a creek, always the same an' ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... deliberate purpose of becoming the beggars of men's votes; of winning an office the chief worth of which, in their eyes, lies in its emoluments?—when even the glorious and far-sounding voice of fame for them means only the gabble and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... among his fellow-soldiers. At length we placed him on the ground before us, and told him that he might play the part of spokesman for the whole. Tete Rouge was delighted, and we soon had the satisfaction of seeing him talk and gabble at such a rate that the torrent of questions was in a great measure diverted from us. A little while after, to our amazement, we saw a large cannon with four horses come lumbering up behind the crowd; and the driver, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... said the inventor. "I will not insult you by an unworthy suspicion. The world is full of impertinent people, and we can no more stop their gabble, than that of swallows in the air. This nameless fellow signs himself 'One of Many,' That is probably a lie. But if there were thousands like himself prying into your and my affairs, I should not care. As for motives, none but fools and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we had a long gabble, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have.... His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in public. All over the ground the women, mostly negresses, were seen on their knees, beside the pools among the rocks, furiously scrubbing and pounding away at their work, and like all negresses they were exceedingly vociferous, and their loud gabble, mingled with yells and shrieks of laughter, reminded me of the hubbub made by a great concourse of gulls, ibises, godwits, geese, and other noisy water-fowl on some marshy lake. It was a wonderfully ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... He was eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did not know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... youngster's monologue became a sort of soothing hum, for which the other was grateful. "I was cross and sleepy and chilly and nervous," Brunner explained, "and the boy's gabble rested me." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... o' spades—that's death—was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin' an' chitterin' as 'ow the old chap 'ad been playin' cards wi' the devil, an' got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don't listen to maids' gabble,—she's doin' well, devil or no devil—an' if any one was to talk to 'er 'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of 'er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong woman Miss Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt 'er 'and on 'is collar a-chuckin' 'im out o' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... me he always has been the soul of courtesy and frankness. Dignified, but reasonably familiar; tenacious when sure of his position, but not hard to persuade or to convince in a cause having merit, I have good reason to be incredulous when I hear persons gabble about the unwillingness of President Wilson to seek counsel or accept advice. For a really great man who must be measurably conscious of his own intellectual power, he has repeatedly done both things in an astonishing degree during ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... to foot it to the ranch, and that one wouldn't have been me. Huh! Does me good to hear your nonsense gabble again. I declare it does. When ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... imagination simply, refused to picture Mrs. Nevill Tyson in Rome. Her presence in the Eternal City seemed something less than her footprint in its dust or her shadow on its walls. Nothing is more irritating than to have your dream of a place destroyed by the light-hearted gabble of some idiot who has seen it; but Mrs. Nevill Tyson spared your dreams. The most delicate ideal would have been undisturbed by the soft sweep of her generalities, or the graceful flight of her fancy from ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... pye-ball'd languages; 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think when he did gabble, Th' had heard three labourers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent; And truly, to support that charge, He had ...
— English Satires • Various
... persons go to the theatres; the playbills, however, are not seductive. If you go in, you will find the house nearly empty; the actors gabble their parts with as little action as possible. You see they are bored, and they bore us. Sometimes when some actor, naturally comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter seems out of place. One does not know ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Louise began apologizing in a perfect gabble, and mademoiselle said I had de l'esprit, but I am sure I did not ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... window, if you remember, all very much alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don't pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they don't gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never more surprised in all ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome |
