"Namby-pamby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... supervision is not of authority but of friendly interest. The home conditions of every boy are pretty well known, and his tendencies are observed. And no attempt is made to coddle him. No attempt is made to render him namby-pamby. One day when two boys came to the point of a fight, they were not lectured on the wickedness of fighting. They were counseled to make up their differences in a better way, but when, boy-like, they preferred the more primitive mode ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... said Mr. Culpepper, hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be as ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... tattered dresses, barefooted and dusty, walking and driving the loose cattle. Too many excursions and pleasure jaunts had reduced their horses to skeletons before the real trials of the journey had fairly begun. But the women of '52 and '53 were not of the namby-pamby sort. When the trials came they were brave and faced privations and dangers with the same ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... a chance," and took no credit to himself for it. This pleased her, won her confidence—if, already, that had not been done by his frank face, in spite of his fancy clothes and her assumption that he was a namby-pamby weakling. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... is a little of the chameleon, and takes a different hue with every different companion: he is very attentive and officious, and somewhat sentimental, with Lady Lillycraft; copies out little namby-pamby ditties and love-songs for her, and draws quivers, and doves, and darts, and Cupids, to be worked on the corners of her pocket-handkerchiefs. He indulges, however, in very considerable latitude with the other married ladies of the family; and has ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... "None of this namby-pamby stuff," he had once been quoted as saying; "if you got enemies, don't tease 'em—show 'em who's running things. Blackjack 'em, if ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... in 1862, I published by Putnam in New York a book entitled "Sunshine in Thought," which had, however, been written long before. It was all directed against the namby-pamby pessimism, "lost Edens and buried Lenores," and similar weak rubbish, which had then begun to manifest itself in literature, and which I foresaw was in future to become a great curse, as it has indeed done. Only five hundred copies of it ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... haunt my mind with sweetness. Nature on either side is virginal. It flames and trembles with natural passion both in boy and girl, and they are as pure as a pair of daisies. Any workman in the school of Namby-Pamby could have kept their purity. Any writer of the Roman-candle-volcanic tribe could have heaped up their fires, after a fashion. But for this special piece of work God had first to make a gentleman, and then ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... rough-and-tumble with the boys I saw staring at me in the streets. But I was taught by my English tutor, Heath, that it would be lowering my dignity to associate with those fine young boys. My "dignity" was placed in a strait-jacket and, in a namby-pamby way, I was taught to play ALONE. I had cousins scattered over Europe who took their lot more happily than I; but even they regretted the mocking barriers that laid down a barrage between us and the more fortunate chaps ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... it," he shouted, "I'll close the theatre to-morrow and sack every one in it. I'll buy any theatre in New York where you try to present your namby-pamby play. I'll buy every manager she goes to for an engagement, every newspaper that says a word of praise of any work of yours. I tell you I'll stand behind the scenes and pull the strings which shall bring you and her to the knowledge of what failure and want mean. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this hereditary gift of veracity, honesty and good sense. So it was with Johnson himself. Behind all his learning lay something which no learned language could conceal. "On s'attend a voir un auteur et on trouve un homme." Authors then, as now, were often thought to be fantastical, namby-pamby persons, living in dreams, sharing none of the plain man's interests, eager and querulous about trifles and unrealities, indifferent and incapable in the broad world of life. Nobody could ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... which these lines are written the wits of Queen Anne's days contemptuously gave the name of Namby-Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who has used it in some instances, as in the lines on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject, little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... performance. Pope, one may believe, had a contempt for Philips, whose pastoral inanities, whether better or worse than his own, had not the excuse of being youthful productions. Philips has bequeathed to our language the phrase "Namby-pamby," imposed upon him by Henry Carey (author of Sally in our Alley, and the clever farce Chrononhotonthologos), and years after this he wrote a poem to Miss Pulteney in the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen |
