"Childishly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a woman's nature in the spoilt child, though for an instant disposed to resent it as seeming to involve the enforced infliction of himself upon her, Edwin Drood stands watching her as she childishly cries and sobs, with both hands to the handkerchief at her eyes, and then—she becoming more composed, and indeed beginning in her young inconstancy to laugh at herself for having been so moved—leads her to a seat hard ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... the locusts filled the air with their zeeing. The wide field was dotted with golden patches of the arnica blossom, or yellow daisy, as the farmers called it. I wandered through the hot, knee-high grass, picking handfuls of the broad yellow suns, then childishly threw them away, and pulled others, with great heads of sweet red clover, and spears of timothy too. I was so happy. My whole being was filled with causeless peace and gladness. From time to time I glanced back to the shade of the oak trees, to the tall, slender figure, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... be the rule everywhere. We have done a respectable amount of gallery-slaving, and I have been amusing myself by picking up the topography of ancient Rome. I was going to say Pagan Rome, but the inappropriateness of the distinction strikes me, papal Rome being much more stupidly and childishly pagan than imperial. I never saw a sadder sight than the kissing a wretched bedizened doll of a Bambino that went on in the Ara Coeli on Twelfth Day. Your puritan soul would have longed to arise ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... work on the system of mutual assistance in the construction of houses. This childishly amicable system, which is as clumsy as the block-houses erected, can be ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... contrast to the worthy provincials, who, considerably disgusted by his aristocratic manners, were all studying him with sarcastic intent. This needs an explanation. At twenty-two, young people are still so near childhood that they often conduct themselves childishly. In all probability, out of every hundred of them fully ninety-nine would have behaved precisely as Monsieur Charles Grandet ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Douglas was still pale and his voice broke, childishly. "Only, all of a sudden it seems cowardly to me for you to hit Mother. She's not a child. You haven't got the excuse that you're training her. And you know she can't hit you. You're a good fighter, but I notice you don't hit Peter Knight or Charleton Falkner, any time they peeve you a little. ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... at this Silvere, with his absolute ideas of honesty, felt vexed, although he did not venture to find fault with the girl, whose occasional sulking distressed him. "Oh! the bad girl!" thought he, childishly exaggerating the matter, "she would make a thief of me." But Miette would thereupon force his share of the stolen fruit into his mouth. The artifices he employed, such as holding her round the waist, avoiding the fruit trees, and making ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... point of time or particle of matter may be gathered the relations of a solar system or the experiences of a life; that a universe may be compressed into an atom, or a molecule expanded into a macrocosm; therefore I expect nobody to sneer at my Rosamond as childishly nappy in her simple honeymoon, or at me for making extravagant and unsupported assertions, when I say that this hour and a half, and these four miles out to Clarendon Park and back,—the lifting and the tucking in, and the setting off, the sitting ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... unless there was work for him to do. She had a peculiarly swift and easy stride that went with him in his thoughts along the turf by the wayside halfway and more to Chichester. He thought always of the two of them as being side by side. His imagination became childishly romantic. The open down about him with its scrub of thorn and yew became the wilderness of the world, and through it they went—in armour, weightless armour—and they wore long swords. There was a breeze blowing and larks were singing and something, something dark and tortuous dashed suddenly in ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... entered the box, and Madame was bright with youthful bloom, bright with jewels, and, moreover, a beauty. She was a little creature, with childishly large eyes, a low, white forehead, reddish-brown hair, and Greek nose ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her brother-in-law, Elly, her grown-up nephew Richard ... the whole town, which, of course, would hear the news at once.... Herr Rupius! No, in good truth, she was not intended for such things! How childishly and clumsily, after all, she had set about it, so that only the slightest accident was needed to betray her. Had she, then, failed to give the least thought to all these things? Had she only been obsessed with the idea of seeing Emil once more, and ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... at Nick. He was intent on the children and had not seen the girl. Again the pretty creature nodded and beckoned, and Angela's curiosity was fired. Apparently there was something which she alone was privileged to see. She was amused and childishly flattered. It would be fun, she thought, to steal away and give Mr. Hilliard a surprise when he turned round to find her gone. Then, just when he was beginning to be frightened, she would come back and tell him her small adventure—whatever it might ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... can't scrape together the money for a cow, we must cut expenses somehow. Perhaps you could stop stuffing your nostrils with that dirty snuff? And you ought at any rate to be able to sell that fancy fox skin you play with so childishly. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the surprise and delight that animated her beautiful countenance when first she gazed upon the miniature. The likeness was perfect, even to the minutest shading of her costume; and so forcibly and even childishly did this strike her, that it was with difficulty I could persuade her she was not gazing on some peculiar description of mirror that reflected back her living image. She expressed a strong desire to retain it; and to this I readily assented: stipulating only to retain ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... smile with me. Come down from those heights which I cannot attain. Leave your battles on the hilltops and return some time to our home. As I cannot ascend to you, you must descend to me for a moment. Forgive me, Olof, if I talk childishly! I know that you are a man sent by the Lord, and I have felt the blessing with which your words are fraught. But you are more than that—you are a man, and you are my husband—or at least ought to be. You won't fall from your exalted place if you put aside your solemn speech now and then and ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... scene which was just over, support himself by the remembrance of the silence that gives consent, and exult as a happy lover. But even this feeling was not without a shade of remorse. Had he not shown himself childishly weak thus to yield up the resolve of many hours of thought to the tears of a pretty girl? How was he to meet his lawyer? How was he to back out of a matter in which his name was already so publicly concerned? What, oh what! was he to say to Tom Towers? While meditating ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... to. Denis, being used by inheritance and upbringing to another point of view, did not see that it was so funny; to him it was a very natural profession for a man to go into; his family had always provided a supply of members for both houses. Lucy and Peter, socially more obscure, laughed childishly together over it. "Fancy being a Liberal or a Conservative out of all the things there are in the world to be!" as Peter ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... overhung by the green leaves of an exuberant wild fig that has thrust its roots into the sturdy old walls. Here, at Manfredonia, we are already under the shadow of the holy mountain and the archangel's wings, but the usual representations of him are childishly emasculate—the negation of his divine and heroic character. This one portrays a genuine warrior-angel of the old type: grave and grim. Beyond this castle and the town-walls, which are best preserved on the north side, nothing in Manfredonia is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... pearl-grey kid, redolent of Lubin's "violet," and spread out the almost childishly small fingers on his own broad palm, which suddenly closed over it like a vice; then with a half smile of strange tenderness, in which all the stony sternness of lips and chin seemed steeped and melted, he drew the glove softly, caressingly over ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... got it for the Colonel," replied Charley, laughing childishly, "and I started to take it over to him, but my burros got away at Daylight Springs, so I made camp and drunk ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... there was in courtesy no escape without a return biographical sketch. She hung her head, twisted her tapering fingers in her lap, and looked childishly embarrassed and unhappy. Another long silence; again he broke it. "You'll pardon my saying so, but—you're very young, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... holy Monarch acts; and the acts are wonderful. To criticise these acts exists a wild-cat Press, liable to suppression at any moment, as morbidly sensitive to outside criticism as the American, and almost as childishly untruthful, fungoid in the swiftness of its growth, and pitiable in its unseasoned rashness. Backers of this press in its wilder moments, lawless, ignorant, sensitive and vain, are the student class, educated in the main at Government expense, and a thorn in the side of the State. Judges without ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... careless touch; Endurance hardens with a word; She holds a trifle with a clutch So strangely, childishly absurd, That he ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgment. For it is not unknown that Lactantius (a famous author though poor mathematician) writes very childishly concerning the form of the earth when he scoffs at those who affirm the earth to be in form of a globe. So that it ought not to seem strange to the intelligent if any such should likewise now deride us. The mathematics are written for mathematicians, to whom (if I deceive not myself) these ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... but and save for "prepositions," when this can be done only by condemning the current usage of nearly all good authors, as well as the common opinion of most grammarians; and the greater is the wonder, because they seem to do it innocently, or to teach it childishly, as not knowing that they cannot justify both sides, when the question lies between opposite and contradictory principles. By this sort of simplicity, which approves of errors, if much practised, and of opposites, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... long time Stanton lay and considered the matter judicially from every possible point of view. "It would have been rather pleasant," he mused "to know who 'we' were." Almost childishly his face cuddled into the pillow. "She might at least have told me the name of ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that I had reflected about the matter for three days, and drawn up, and learned by heart, this little speech in order to address it to the mistress of ceremonies at the first opportunity. I am really tired of being treated so childishly, when I am a woman, and may ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... full sail to the war,) and that he owed the people an account of his actions, and not of the money he spent. Hereupon Cato returned from Sicily, and, together with Fabius, made loud complaints in the open senate of Scipio's lavishing unspeakable sums, and childishly loitering away his time in wrestling matches and comedies, as if he were not to make war, but holiday; and thus succeeded in getting some of the tribunes of the people sent to call him back to Rome, in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... they had a sharp expression of outlook and readiness, which, without a trace of fierceness or greed, was yet equally animal. Only all the time there was present something else, beyond characterization: behind them something seemed to lie asleep. His hands and feet were small and childishly dainty, his whole body well-shaped and well put together—of which the style of his dress ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... reform. Thiers had warned him in vain, in an admirable speech delivered on May 3d, that France had everything to lose by aiding in bringing about the unity of Germany. The emperor obstinately persisted, proposing to tear up those treaties of 1815 which, two years before, he had childishly declared to be no longer in existence. His proposition of a congress, however, failed through the refusal of Austria and the petty states to take part in it. He next signed with Austria a secret treaty by which the latter promised ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... they found me asleep, went home, held a council, came the next day with their elephants and horses, overwhelmed the few giants watching me, and carried me off. Jubilant over their victory, the smaller boys were childishly boastful, the bigger boys less ostentatious, while the girls, although their eyes flashed more, were not so talkative as usual. The woman of Bulika no doubt ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her assurance that he smiled. "Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it gives me hope ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... leave Mr. Stocks to enjoy his heroics in peace. He would find an excuse; meanwhile, give him quiet and solitude to digest his bitterness. He cursed himself for the unworthiness of his thoughts. What a pass had he come to when he grudged a little kudos to a rival, grudged it churlishly, childishly. He flung from him the self-reproach. Other people would wonder at his ungenerousness, and his sulky ill-nature. They would explain by the first easy discreditable reason. What eared he for their opinion when he knew the far greater shame in ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... It was childishly spoken, but the pathos of it went straight to the man's heart. He tasted the rice under her watching eyes and pronounced it very good; then waited for her to follow his example which she did ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... might be childishly faulty, but the feeling of the speech was without a flaw, and from the heart Daisy would have accepted Mrs. Yorke as she was, and thought it no shame or embarrassment to escort her anywhere; but bonny Allie was a lady of high degree, with an eye for appearances ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... argue so childishly. The evils that befell Hellas were not at all those which Demosthenes prophesied. They are no proof of his foresight. From the point of view of his wishes they were entirely accidental. To see this we need only inquire what would in all probability have come to pass had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... always been a brave man, but I confess I felt childishly scared before the wild, mesmeric power of his eyes. I was unable to move a finger, but I blurted out boastfully: "If it wasn't for your preacher's hat and coat I'd send your sneaking soul ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... had always been—something childishly truthful. He would never stand a chance in court! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of books about him, he lay in a long cane chair under the trees; then the book would drop on his knees, and blowing smoke in curling wreaths, he lost himself in dramatic meditations. It was pleasant to see that Emily had grown innocently, childishly fond of her cousin, and her fondness expressed itself in a number of pretty ways. 'Now, Hubert, Hubert, get out of my way,' she would say, feigning a charming petulance; or she would come and drag him out ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... European war began, and particularly since the late riots in Dublin. This class, which so sadly misrepresents the loyal Irish people, deserves but little patience from Americans. Its members stutter childishly about "breaches of neutrality" every time a real American dares speak a word in favour of the Mother Country; yet they constantly violate neutrality themselves in their clumsy attempts to use the United ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... with an amused candor, and told her they were gentry, a cut above. Yet Dorcas continued to believe he might have consorted with them, if he chose, and her manner to him had a softer friendliness because he was so kind. And when she could forget her old-fashioned gown, she was quite childishly content. At the gate that night he thanked her profusely for the pleasure of her ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... was brought to his knees, and the escort, dismounting, formed a wide circle of sentries round the little party, the undernote of danger suggested by their presence giving a distinct flavour to the childishly simple affair. The white man's craze for carrying his food many miles from home, in order to eat it on the ground, remains a perpetual bewilderment to the natives, who express their opinion on the matter in all frankness and simplicity by christening ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... answered by a little woman with a girlish figure and gray hair. For a moment John Baird paused before speaking to her, as he had paused before ringing the bell, and in the pause, during which he found himself looking into her soft, childishly blue eyes, he felt ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... these thoughts, and miserable for lack of some comforting, guiding, and—if possible—absolving voice. She missed her mother childishly day and night, and all that premature self-possession and knowledge of the world, born of her cosmopolitan training, which at Oxford had made her appear so much older than other English girls of twenty, seemed to have broken away, and left her face to face with feelings ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is too childishly open to be misunderstood. Mr. Desmond's spirits are rising with marvellous rapidity; indeed, for the past two minutes he feels as if he ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... in the mind of such a light-headed woman as Lucretia certainly was, and if it did in her case, Caesar and her father would never have allowed her to give voice to any such undiplomatic scruples. We can discover no trace of moral pride in her; all we discern is a childishly naive joy at ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... all very well without the icy cold that assailed my legs, and I saw nothing in reach to cover me. I said to myself, "Captain, the position is not tenable," when at length I perceived on the couch—One sometimes is childishly ashamed, but I really dared not, and I waited for a long minute struggling between a sense of the ridiculous and the cold which I felt was increasing. At last, when I heard my wife's breathing become more regular and thought that she must be asleep, I stretched out my arm and pulled toward me ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... jewel-case and went out; and I heard her chatting a minute after with some gentlemen in the house, as if she were perfectly and childishly happy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... modulation of the syllables. It was, of course, only a bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incongruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna at once made her sit down in an arm-chair facing Alyosha, and ecstatically kissed her several times on her smiling lips. She seemed quite ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a perfectly amiable one, unless anything was said or done to cause him extreme provocation. In fact, he would not be easily provoked. He is inclined rather to take a maudlinly affectionate and friendly view of things and people; to be very simply, almost childishly, pleased with the last new idea. That wretched Infant of his is a case in point. I should be glad if you would tell me, sir, what happened in this room just before Ronnie ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... and generous self, or that the mastership of Saint Bede's, his easy income, and his high reputation had any thing to do with it, never once crossed her imagination. She was so simple; her forlorn, shut-up, unhappy life had kept her, if wildly romantic, so intensely, childishly true, that, whatever objections she had to Dr. Grey's offer, the idea that this could form one of them—that any one could suspect her—her, Christian Oakley—of marrying for money or for a home, did not occur to her for an instant. He saw that, this lover, who, from his many years of ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and just awash, the conning tower of the submarine showed up out of the sea about half a mile away, and suddenly Vane heard a voice beside him cursing it bitterly and childishly. He turned, to find one of the smoking-room patriots shaking his fist at it, while the weak tears of rage poured down his face. Afterwards, on thinking the experience over, Vane decided that that one spectacle had made it almost ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... and found the door locked," he said when he went upstairs with the tray. He gave her the two sprigs of jasmine. She laughed as she sat up in bed, childishly threading the flowers in the breast of her nightdress. Her brown hair stuck out like a nimbus, all fierce, round her softly glowing face. Her dark eyes watched the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... racing; the air was cold on his face as he rushed out. But it brought to his nostrils odors strange and yet strangely familiar. He was oddly light-headed, irresponsible as a child as he shouted and danced and threw himself high in the air, to laugh childishly at the pure pleasure of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... gone. It was still there and he heard it speaking to him, begging him to listen, pleading with him to go somewhere, go back, back to something or other. And there was an arm about his waist and some one was leading him, helping him. He broke down and cried childishly and some ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... childishly sweet and pure in the face that smiled welcome to him as he came noisily through the snow-crust; and something, too, in the colonel's face, which reached out and gripped at his very heartstrings, and filled him with a warm glow that was new and strange to him, and which was almost ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... put my letter into the post rather hastily, not expecting to have to acknowledge another from you so soon. This morning's present has made me alive again: my last night's epistle was childishly querulous; but you have put a little life into me, and I will thank you for your remembrance of me, while my sense of it is yet warm; for if I linger a day or two I may use the same phrase of acknowledgment, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... acquires dignity and worth when one becomes familiar with its life. Children in their ignorance and lack of understanding are incredibly cruel. So, likewise, are nations. The treatment of inferior by superior races throughout the ages has been childishly cruel, unjust, stupid, inimical to the best interests not only of the victims, but also of mankind. This has been so, not so much by reason of bad intentions, although selfishness has been at the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Scots, in our National Portrait Gallery, is loaded with chains, brooches, and pendants, enough to stock the show-case of a modern manufacturer. This love of elaborate jewellery was a positive mania with many nobles in the olden time. James I. was childishly fond of such trinkets, and most portraits represent the king with hat-bands of jewels, or sprays of jewellery at their sides. His letters to his favourite, Buckingham, are often full of details of the jewels ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... so peaceful, so elemental and satisfying before: that companionship with the little lonely, aspiring, neglected child. She was so responsive and joyous; so eager to learn, so childishly interested in the fairy tales of another sort of existence that he kept from decay by repeating to her. And then that sudden, upleaping flame in the purple-black eyes. The fierce rush of hot, live blood to the pale face. The grip of those small work-stained hands as they ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... and sickly. Her flaxen curls still dangle prettily upon her shoulders. She expected her mother; that mother has not come. The picture seems strange; she looks childishly and vacantly round,—at the dealers, at Graspum, at the sheriff, at the familiar faces of the old plantation people. She recognizes Harry, and would fain leap into his arms. Nicholas, less moved by what is going on around him, hangs reluctantly behind, holding by ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia should be as beautiful as the Palazzo Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with delight ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... nothing to him of the conversation I had overheard, or of my own suspicions, childishly thinking I would gain the greater credit by unearthing the whole affair and divulging it ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... up her lips to his, childishly, lovingly. "I will be good," she said. "I will be good. I will ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... die out of her, and she looked at him as she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path—eagerly, childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed him violently like a ball ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... so childishly unreasonable as this before, and yet I loved her more madly than ever; but I did not like this allusion to Travers, a rising barrister, who lived with his sister in a pretty cottage near the station, and had shown symptoms ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... times she wandered aimlessly through Royal Street, or walked in the direction of the Alameda, explaining the landmarks of the city to Aguirre at her side. In the midst of these walks she would stop at the brokers' shop to greet the patriarch, who smiled childishly as he contemplated the youthful and ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had seemed to him the pledge of the Heavenly Father's forgiveness; and he added, perhaps a little childishly, that it had been his impulse to promise never to touch a card again, but that he dreaded the only too familiar reply, 'What availed ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and for some time after, she was childishly untidy and negligent in her dress: her frocks were tossed on, as if buttons and strings were unnecessary incumbrances,—one sleeve off the shoulder, the other on,—and her soft, silky hair brushed 'any how': but Miss Emma Roberts, whose dress was always in good taste, determined on her reformation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... with brave attire, drink the best of wine, and pay court to stately ladies. Thereto ye be served with the best of food that ever king did gain in the world. And were this not so, yet should ye tarry here for your fair wife's sake, before ye risk your life so childishly. Wherefore I do counsel you to stay at home. Your lands be rich, and one can redeem his pledges better at home than among the Huns. Who knoweth how it standeth there? Ye should stay at home, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... ablest of them napping; for they are so subtle that they will sometimes tell you the truth because they think you will suppose it to be a lie. I do not wish to catch them napping, however; I cling to the wisdom of ignorance, and childishly enjoy the way in which things work themselves out— the cul-de-sac resolving itself at the very last moment into a promising corridor toward the outer air. At every rebuff it is my happiness to be hopelessly bewildered; and I gape with admiration when the Gordian knot is untied. If the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... his passionate gratitude to her, he must needs ask himself, did she suppose that a man or a marriage was to be remade in a month, even by her plastic fingers? Women envisaged these things so easily, so childishly, almost. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sacrifice a reputation or a career without counting the cost, I am inclined to feel that they have probably done better for themselves than if they had been prudent and cautious. I don't say that they are always right, because people yield sometimes to a mere whim, and sometimes to a childishly overwhelming desire; but if there is a real touch of unselfishness about a sacrifice—that's the test, that some one else's joy should be involved—then I feel that it isn't my business to approve or disapprove. I feel in the presence of a force—an 'ought' as Lestrange ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her hand, so childishly confident, so free of her old restraint now, that he took it without a word and fell in at her side. He had rushed to her tumultuously. On his lips had been a hundred things that he had wanted to say. He had meant to claim her in the full ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... barely time to salute the members of the Government, and to exchange a few words with General Botha, when we had to "quit." For eight days we wandered round with Colonel Bullock at our heels, always remaining, however, in the same neighbourhood. This officer's tactics in trying to capture us were childishly simple. During the day there would be skirmishes between the enemy and General Botha's men, but each evening the former would, by retiring, attempt to lull us into a sense of security. But as soon as the sun had set, they would turn right about face, return full speed to ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... me," Lord Henry replied, smiling in a manner that was at once childishly winsome and wise. He was still startlingly boyish, despite his thirty-three years, and though his slight baldness added a few years to his face, he did not look a month older ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make foolish mysteries ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... is I," I said bitterly. "I have been childishly wrong. I have been foolish. It never entered my thought, that you - or anybody - liked me, except as ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... content to spend hours over her instructions in chess on that pleasant balcony in the shade of the house. Though really only a year older than Dennet Headley, she looked much more, and was so in all her ways. It never occurred to her to run childishly wild with delight in the garden and orchard as did Dennet, who, with little five-years-old Will Streatfield for her guide and playfellow, rushed about hither and thither, making acquaintance with hens and chickens, geese and goslings, seeing cows and goats milked, watching butter churned, bringing ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... asserted to be. The defects of the Zohar are in keeping with this imposture. Absurd allegories are read into the Bible; the words of Scripture are counters in a game of distortion and combination; God himself is obscured amid a maze of mystic beings, childishly conceived and childishly named. Philosophically, the Zohar has no originality. Its doctrines of the Transmigration of the Soul, of the Creation as God's self-revelation in the world, of the Emanation from the divine essence of semi-human, semi-divine powers, were only commonplaces ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... the bell and called, 'Dunyasha!' But instead of Dunyasha, Fenitchka herself came on to the terrace. She was a young woman about three-and-twenty, with a white soft skin, dark hair and eyes, red, childishly-pouting lips, and little delicate hands. She wore a neat print dress; a new blue kerchief lay lightly on her plump shoulders. She carried a large cup of cocoa, and setting it down before Pavel Petrovitch, she was overwhelmed with confusion: ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... that I am, I have undone my self, And with my own hand turn'd my fortune round, That was a fair one: I have childishly Plaid with my hope so long, till I have broke it, And now too late I mourn for't; O Spaconia! Thou hast found an even way to thy revenge now, Why didst thou follow me like a faint shadow, To wither ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... dragged up, rather than brought up, had run away from a hag known as Old One-eye, she had been arrested and committed to prison for eight years. Taught sewing there, she had saved up some three hundred francs. Ignorant, childishly fond of flowers and the open air of the country, she had made Rigolette's acquaintance, with hardly a deeper object than to have a companion in her jaunts. Her money spent, Fleur-de-Marie had fallen in with the Ogress, the keeper of the Lapin Blanc Tavern, who had kept ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... no attention to them, even to the extent of despising their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, a writer of prominence in other lines although but little versed in mathematics, spoke very childishly about the form of the earth when he ridiculed those who declared that it was spherical. Hence it should not seem strange to the learned if some shall look upon us in the same way. Mathematics is written for mathematicians, to whom these labors of ours will seem, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... flushed, childishly miserable face that stared indignantly through glittering tears, rose before his eyes. He forgot that he had ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... and her command was executed. They took from Anna Leopoldowna her last joy, her only consolation—they took away her son, whose smiling face had lighted her prison as with sunbeams, whose childishly stammered words had sounded to her as the voice ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... Suddenly his face wrinkled pitiably, childishly, and his eyes filled with tears immediately. Through the sparkling gleams of his tears he looked closely into the white face of his father, whose eyes had ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... disagreeable when she had asked for a consultation; but she could not, and it did not avail her to reflect that she was rendering herself liable to all conceivable misconstruction, —that she was behaving childishly, with every appearance ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was that Paragot went to London. Some legal formality, the establishment of identity or what not, necessitated his presence. I daresay he could have arranged matters through consuls and lawyers and such-like folk, but Paragot who was childishly simple in business matters obeyed the summons to London ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... write?" he asked. She had never called upon him for proof of his scholarship, and he was childishly eager to reveal to the woman he loved attainments of which ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... calm and the silence, and he went slowly up, trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs and tears. Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up against a wall—for he was sure of not being observed—and pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the iron balustrade bright with the friction of many hands, the scraped ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... on the ship, she was to think of him alone, and always as the author of the splendor and the happiness. Of almost any other person we would speak compassionately; but he had lived long enough to know better than dream so childishly—long enough at least to know there is a law for everything except the vagaries of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... shout. Very unreal it was, with the stars shining faintly overhead, the black shadows all around, and those two shafts of light poking out into nowhere. She walked back to the inside edge of the road and sat down, and bye-and-bye she felt quieter. It had been such a childishly foolish thing to do and so useless. The minutes passed and she began to wonder what time it was getting to be. And then she felt a growing irritation and suddenly she was hungry. All she could hear was the threshing about of the brush and the sound of heavy dragging. Once she went around ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... affliction after the fashion of a Mrs. Gummidge. It affected her worse than any one else, first because the ridicule and fault-finding to which her brother had always treated her were tripled in their amount and quality, and yet as she was dependent upon this childishly weak brother she must endure the treatment. Secondly, she was reminded that her age was somewhat near Mark Constantine's age and perhaps a similar fate lay in store for her. Lastly, it tied her down—propriety demanded that someone be in the sick room a share ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... to Nick Kendrick. Nick's hobby was music, and he treasured his second-hand stereophonic unit and collection of tapes. He too was a classicist in his way, and there was many a long winter night when Harry sat there listening to ancient folk songs. The quaint atonalities of progressive jazz and the childishly frantic rhythms of "cool sounds" were somehow soothing and reassuring in their reminder of a simple ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... Elwin! He was exactly in his usual state, only more demonstrative than ever, and had been driven in by some neighbours who were coming to the reading. I had tea up for him, and he went down at seven with me to the dismal den where I dressed, and sat by the fire while I dressed, and was childishly happy in that great privilege! During the reading he sat on a corner of the platform and roared incessantly. He brought in a lady and gentleman to introduce while I was undressing, and went away in a perfect and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... two miles she sang lustily, childishly, with the complete abandon of a girl without a burden. Daddy Skinner was coming home, and God had given her back the student. The remembrance of his eyes thrilled her from ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly amused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where their mysterious retreat was situated. It was thought "very English" to have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of distinction to what was generally conceded to be the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... seized his big, strong fingers with her small gloved ones and tried to pull them away from the door. But Quin began to laugh, and in spite of herself she laughed back; and, while the two were childishly struggling for the possession of the door-handle, Captain Phipps all unnoticed passed out of the mess-hall, gave a few instructions to his waiting orderly, and disappeared ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... childishly, Mordecai passed a bowl of water to each of his guests that they might wash their hands, which they did, murmuring the blessing as they did so. Then, taking his place at the head of the table, he poured water over his own hands, saying the Hebrew ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... extremely respectful, love-letter. I don't recall the words now, but I remember well that through the high-flown phrases there was apparent a genuine feeling, which cannot be feigned. When I had finished reading it I met her glowing, questioning, and childishly impatient eyes fixed upon me. She fastened her eyes upon my face and waited impatiently for what I should say. In a few words, hurriedly, but with a sort of joy and pride, she explained to me that she had been to a dance somewhere in a private house, a family of "very nice people, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... alienates thought from reality. The language of birds is excellent in its way, and those ancient sages who are reported to have understood it very likely had merely perceived that it was not meant to be intelligible; for it is not to understand nature to reduce her childishly to a human scale. Man, who is merged in universal nature at the roots of his being, is not without profound irrational intuitions by which he can half divine her secret processes; and his heart, in its own singing and fluttering, might not wholly misinterpret ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the spirits of the dead, or to any other existences, good or evil (unless, indeed, by possibility to ourselves as magnetically and sympathetically influenced by some metaphysical potencies whereof we know next to nothing), the seemingly miraculous powers exhibited, however weakly and childishly, in numberless seances, privileged to possess among the company an ecstatic medium between (as is assumed) ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a charming group in the little, green, gloomy place, each with the strongest possible family likeness to the others. They were as much alike as the roses on one bush; all were, although not tall, long, and slim of body, and childishly round of face, with delicate coloring; all had pathetic dark eyes and soft lengths of dark hair. Mrs. Carroll and her husband's sister, although not nearly related (Mrs. Carroll had married her many-times-removed cousin), resembled each other as if they had been ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... strangers!' Or even the little Liseta would say, he! he! 'Why does the stranger press my foot in his great hand when he helps me into the saddle? Tell him that is not the way, Pereo.' Ha! ha!" He laughed childishly, and stopped. "And why does Senorita Amita now—look—complain that Pereo, old Pereo, comes between her and this Senor Raymond—-this maquinista? Eh, and why does SHE, the lady mother, the Castellana, shut Pereo from her councils?" he went on, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... perfumes, are the element of these tender spirits; they assist nature in embroidering her carpet with green leaves, many-coloured flowers, and glittering insects; in the human world they do but make sport childishly and waywardly with their beneficent or noxious influences. Their most violent rage dissolves in good-natured raillery; their passions, stripped of all earthly matter, are merely an ideal dream. To correspond with this, the loves of mortals are painted ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... The natives, friendly and childishly curious, had gathered in force to watch these strange new creatures, and because of their trusting natures had been easily trapped, imprisoned and forced to work long, hard hours ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the refrain. The host delivers himself of an epic about his love across the seas, with the most agonizing expression, and in a shockingly bad voice. He is the worst singer I ever heard; but his companions greet his effort with approving shouts of "Yi! yi!" They look so fierce, and yet are so childishly happy, that at the thought of their exile and of the dark tenement the question arises, "Why all this joy?" The guide answers it with a look of surprise. "They sing," he says, "because they are glad they are free. Did you ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... approached and crossed behind them with a mighty rumble. When all was still he spoke again, and the tone of his voice was childishly wistful. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... its grace even in the huddled-up attitude. The face hidden in the chair, childishly, as though a child suffered pain, was lifted as Lady O'Gara touched the bronze-brown head. The misery of Stella's wide eyes shocked her. Stella's face was stained and disfigured by tears. The soft close hair, which she had taken to wearing plaited about her head, was ruffled ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... take one of the pipkins from the fire, she poured its contents into a wooden bowl which stood beside her on the table. She added a horn-spoon and a pinch of salt, fetched a slice of coarse bread from a cupboard in one of the dressers, and taking all in skilled steady hands, hands childishly small, though brown as nuts, she disappeared through the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... wife, no doubt; we are commanded so to do; but we ought to love her with moderation and discretion."—"I am afraid I shall be guilty of some sin in spite of all my endeavours," says Joseph; "for I shall love without any moderation, I am sure."—"You talk foolishly and childishly," cries Adams.—"Indeed," says Mrs Adams, who had listened to the latter part of their conversation, "you talk more foolishly yourself. I hope, my dear, you will never preach any such doctrine as that husbands can love their wives too well. If I knew you had such a sermon in the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... you see this ghastly business in its true aspect. Look at the lighter side of Viviette's character. She is gay, fond of admiration, childishly fond of teasing, a bright creature of bewildering moods. Would she be safe in your hands? Might you not one day again see things red before your eyes and ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... ever; and therein he charged himself with offences that his nature was above committing. Then he burst into bitter blame of Will, and at a weak moment—for nothing is weaker than the rare weakness of a strong man—he childishly upbraided the farmer with that fateful advice concerning Clement, and called down upon his head deep censure for the subsequent catastrophe. Will, as may be imagined, proved not slow to resent such an attack with heart and voice. A great heat of vain recrimination followed, and the men broke ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the day a great statesman began his speech by utterance of he word "Sugar." Contrast of imposing personality of the Minister and sonorousness of his voice with commonplace character of utterance tickled fancy of House, then as now almost childishly eager to be amused. The great man looked round with stern glance that cowed the tittering audience. "Sugar," he repeated amid awed silence, and triumphantly continued ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... factory depends, the instruments which they use, have been slowly worked out, each generation using the gifts of the last and transmitting the inheritance until it has become a social possession. This can only be understood by a man who has obtained some idea of social progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the producer. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... itself is but one part of reason, and that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy at any rate, will never do. Though each one may report in different words of his rotational experience, the experience itself is almost childishly simple, and whosoever has been there instantly recognizes other authentic reports. To have been in that eddy is a freemasonry of which the common password is a "fie" on all the operations of ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... business," she went on, "from beginning to end, was very simple, childishly simple. In fact, ridiculous. And sickening. You're not going, Adele?" she interrupted herself as ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... to the softer emotions. Love wrought no external change upon her. It made her believe that she had left her girlhood behind her and was now a woman with a newly-developed heart capacity at which she would childishly have scoffed a little while before. She felt ashamed of the bee on the window pane, although it somehow buzzed as frequently as before in spite of her. Her calendar, formerly a monotonous cycle of class times, meal times, play times, and bed time, was now irregularly divided ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... against the window-panes—in order to varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod in December proves that one possesses either a dilatory or a childishly anticipatory mind. But before uncorking the varnish bottle, it occurred to me to examine a dog-eared, water-stained fly-book, to guard against the ravages of possible moths. This interlude proved fatal to the varnishing. A half hour went happily by in rearranging ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... out laughing. His disappointment at not being welcomed by Barbara at Northlands was so genuine and so childishly unconcealed. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... needed in entomology. Without a good dose of this quality, a mental defect in the eyes of practical folk, who would busy himself with the lesser creatures? Yes, let us be simple, without being childishly credulous. Before making insects reason, let us reason a little ourselves; let us, above all, consult the experimental test. A fact gathered at random, without criticism, cannot establish ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre |
