"Prattle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then," queried the child, "do all the people praise and call on him; why do the birds sing of the king; and why do the brooks always prattle his name, as they dance from ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... resting-place how sweet! But thou wilt sadly miss The busy hands, the dancing feet, The prattle ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... has been accustomed to enjoy; a wife with a fear gnawing like a serpent into her breast; and children, yes, perhaps children from whose innocent lips the sacred word of grandfather can never fall without wakening a blush on the cheeks of their parents, which all their lovesome prattle will be ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far on ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that they came To sing me to my death; And all the butterflies will mourn for me. I bear away with me The sunshine's dear remembrance, and the low Soft murmurs of the spring. My breath is sweet as children's prattle is; I drank in all the whole earth's fruitfulness, To make of it the fragrance of my soul That shall outlive ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the hero's father, we shall never have done with nursery biography. A gentleman's grandmother may delight in fond recapitulation of her darling's boyish frolics and early genius; but shall we weary our kind readers by this infantile prattle, and set down the revered British public for an old woman? Only to two or three persons in all the world are the reminiscences of a man's early youth interesting: to the parent who nursed him; to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic Cable, whose first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a continent, gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It has since been copied by Mr. Prescott in his valuable hand-book of the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... little bairns, Full of prattle and of glee, And our little dwelling rings With their laughter, wild and free. Of the greenwoods, all the day, I 've a little bird that sings; It reminds me of my youth, And the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... at dinner with little Daniel, feasting his eyes on the fresh beauty of the boy, whose prattle had made the last two days delightful. Daniel had been greatly exercised to find that his great big uncle could not talk Dutch, and that he must talk Portuguese—which was still kept up in families—to be understood. He had hitherto ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... never be woman, nor wife, nor mother, he, on his side, might well renounce manhood, and annihilate himself, dedicate himself to God, to whom his mother gave him. And he still felt within him the soft bitterness of that last interview: Marie smiling painfully at memory of their childish play and prattle, and speaking to him of the happiness which he would assuredly find in the service of God; so penetrated indeed with emotion at this thought, that she had made him promise that he would let her hear him say his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Affectation, why this mock grimace? Go, silly thing, and hide that simp'ring face. Thy lisping prattle, and thy mincing gait, All thy false mimic fooleries I hate; For thou art Folly's counterfeit, and she Who is right foolish hath the better plea; Nature's true idiot I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... I could not succeed in hiding my grave presentiments; but my son's prattle, which was even gayer than usual, quite justified the name of "Sunbeam" given him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... was going on in W—, and Mrs. Kent was trying to influence her husband to vote "No License." Willie Kent, six years old, was, of course on his mamma's side. The night before election Mr. Kent went to see Willie safe in bed, and hushing his prattle, he said: "Now, Willie, ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... ventured to suggest. "The two girls from Dalton!" "A striking scene in the police court!" These and other "striking things" she outlined to serious Dorothy, who now in the early morning sat so close to the car window, and seemed to hear nothing of the foolish prattle, as the ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... went joyously on, and the minister and child roamed about amid the green things of the earth. All the loveliest haunts of that pleasant spot had echoed the grave, but gentle tones of the man of God, and the answering prattle of the little one who went tripping on by his side, sometimes thoughtful and earnest, sometimes merry and glad; and now the time had come for Mrs. Dunmore to return to her city residence, and they must bid their kind friends at the Rectory good-by. Mrs. Colbert sat with her son upon the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... miss'd the mark Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. —Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; Coral redder than those lips Which pale death did late eclipse; Music framed for infants' glee, Whistle never tuned for thee; Though thou want'st not, thou shalt ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... had been assumed that as soon as Dion went back to business in Austin Friars, No. 5 Little Market Street would receive its old tenants again, be scented again with the lavender, made musical with Rosamund's voice, made gay with the busy prattle ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... into the meeting a fevered and fictitious friendliness, chattering over the pauses that threatened to fall upon it, leaving them a reunited company only in name. She presently swept Bella to the camp, continuing her nervous prattle as she showed her the tent and the spring behind it, and told of the log house they were to raise before the rains came. Bella was placated. After all, it was a lovely spot, good for the children, and if Glen could ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... shall come," a prattler 'gan to prattle: * "Needs cease thy blame!" I was commoved to rattle: 'In time,' quoth he: quoth I ' 'Tis marvellous! * Who shall ensure my life, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... tide goes out, how each limpid pool Reflects the sky and the fleecy cloud; How the rills, like children set free from school, Prattle and plash and sing aloud! The shore-birds cheerily call, the while They dart and circle in merry rout,— The face of the ocean seems to smile And the earth to laugh, when the tide ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... satisfied. [Footnote: In this respect, the following simile in Richard the Second is deserving of attention:— As in a theatre the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... that part of man's superior endowments which finds its manifestation in language is to receive the name of reason, what shall we style the rest? We had thought that the love and intelligence, the soul, that looks out of a child's eyes upon us to reward our care long before it begins to prattle, were also ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... ivy. You may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen washed there should be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hardly claim to be considered a theist, and whose God is Fate, Nature, eternal Will—knows nothing. The most favourable judgment he can pass upon such theological speculations is far from encouraging: "in the multitude of fancies and prattle there likewise lurketh much vanity."[133] In eternal justice, however, he professes a strong belief, and, like Job, he formulates his faith in the words: "Fear ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... multum, Divusne loquatur, an heros; Maturusne senex, an adhuc florente juventa Fervidus; an matrona potens, an sedula nutrix; Mercatorne vagus, cultorne virentis agelli; Colchus, an Assyrius; Thebis nutritus, an Argis. The playful prattle in a frolick vein, And the severe affect a serious strain: For Nature first, to every varying wind Of changeful fortune, shapes the pliant mind; Sooths it with pleasure, or to rage provokes, Or brings it to the ground by sorrow's heavy strokes; ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... toyed with by a father's fingers? Who would think that those bloated cheeks were ever kissed by a mother's lips? Would you guess that that thick tongue once made a household glad with its innocent prattle? Utter no harsh words in his ear. Help him up. Put the hat over that once manly brow. Brush the dust from that coat that once covered a generous heart. Show him the way to the home that once rejoiced at the sound of his footstep, and with gentle words ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... she soon recovered her cheerfulness, with the buoyancy natural to childhood, and learned to prattle in broken English very fast. She developed a sturdy self-reliance that was surprising in one so young, and long before spring came was indispensable ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Hears the young child's speech in wonder, Speaks these words of disapproval: Silly prattler, cease thy talking, Thou Last spoken in dishonor; Let all others be astonished, Reap thy malice on thy kindred, must not harm the Bride of Beauty, Rainbow-daughter of the Northland. False indeed is this thy Prattle, All thy words are full or evil, Fallen from thy tongue of mischief From the lips of one unworthy. Excellent the hero 's young bride, Best of all in Sariola, Like the, strawberry in summer, Like the daisy from the meadow, Like the cuckoo ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... small child yourself, and you have not forgotten what your mother used to say to you. I believe that the younger one is, the better one gets on with children. I am very much afraid that a woman of thirty who does not yet know what it is to be a mother, would find it hard to prattle to children and reason ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... her infant prodigy, Clarence, in our care for a little while that she might not be distracted by his innocent prattle while selecting the material ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... about six o'clock, when work at the trading station had ceased for the day, and the store door had been shut and locked by Mrs. Flemming, the trader was seated on his shady verandah, smoking a cigar and listening to the prattle of his little daughter, when his two boys raced up to him from the beach, and noisily asked him permission to take the smallest of the boats (a ship's dinghy) and go fishing outside the reef until the morning. They had just heard some natives crying ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... was coming and stretched out their hands to strive to protect that which they loved best from the stroke of the warring gods. In the case of Seti and Merapi this was their son, now a beautiful little lad who could run and prattle, one too of a strange health and vigour for a child of the inbred race of the Ramessids. Never for a minute was this boy allowed to be out of the sight of one or other of his parents; indeed I saw ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... said: "He whose name I bear had the good fortune to defend the Union and the Constitution in the forum. That I cannot do, but I am ready to defend them in the field." Like other national men, he refused to listen to the "sixty-day" prattle by which others were deceived. He saw that by no "summer excursion to Moscow" could the Southern Confederacy be suppressed; that immense forces would be marshalled in aid of that Confederacy; and that the war for the Union, like the war for Independence, would ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... every scrap of it for supper, though it was much fitter for a rabbit, and all the evening he held on his knee the tired child, and responded to his prattle about Nana and dogs and rabbits; nay, ministered to his delight and admiration of the sheriff's coach, javelin men, and even the judge, with a strange mixture of wonder, delight, and with melancholy ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I must not wed One who is poor, so hold your prattle; My lips on love have ne'er been fed, With poverty I cannot battle. My choice is made—I know I'm right— Who wed for love starvation suffer; So I will study day and night To please and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... three hours thus flew swiftly by while I listened to her lively prattle, which, like the lark's singing, had scarcely a pause in it, her attempt at being still and moonlight having ended in a perfect fiasco. At length, pouting her pretty lips and complaining of her hard lot, she said it was time to go back to her prison; ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... What was that faint something, without a name—a sort of vague uneasiness, which had seemed to creep over him whenever he had seen her during those months—a sense of incongruity between her light prattle and his own inmost thoughts and holiest feelings? It was so slight that as yet he had never faced it. He recognised now it was because his heart had refused to face it. And conscience told him, speaking loudly this time, that he must hold ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... what mouth of the Nile it had been conveyed into the sea—For this reason therefore the Egyptians look upon children as endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in a sacred place), forming omens and presages from it—Isis, during this interval, having been informed that Osiris, deceived by her sister Nepthys who was in love with ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... prattle with Bess, her little quarrels and tart replies, her generous, happy, winning, self-willed ways, were as if they had never been, and in their place came resignation, reserve, pride and a little—only ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... said Nina, "that I shall dance like a wraith. It seems almost a sacrilege to bob around and prattle in such surroundings. How silly their sainted ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... taking its place among the Lost Arts, and the smallest of small talk reigns in its stead. Society, instead of giving its tone to the children, takes it from them, and since it cannot be juvenile, becomes insipid, and because it is too old to prattle, jabbers. Talkers are everywhere, but where are the men that say things? Where are the people that can be listened to and quoted? Where are the flinty people whose contact strikes fire? Where are the electric people who thrill a whole circle with sudden vitality? Where are the strong people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... languidly interested in these announcements. She listened distraitly to the prattle of the children who surrounded her while she was ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... think you would when I got to this point. You people who prattle about your Universal Laws never really consider the exact meaning of the term. My knowledge of the history of science is very vague, but I'm willing to bet that the first Law of Gravity ever dreamed up stated that things fell at such and such a speed, and accelerated at such and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... ever really disappointed or melancholy in a hay-field? Did we ever lie fairly back on a haycock and look up into the blue sky and listen to the merry sounds, the whetting of scythes and the laughing prattle of women and children, and think evil thoughts of the world and of or our brethren? Not we! Or if we have so done, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... unlikeness, but initial likeness with internal unlikeness; not rhyming, but strongly alliterative, and in every case with a change of the interior vowel from a weak into a strong, generally from i into a or o; as 'shilly-shally', 'mingle-mangle', 'tittle-tattle', 'prittle-prattle', 'riff-raff', 'see-saw', 'slip-slop'. No one who is not quite out of love with the homelier yet more vigorous portions of the language, but will acknowledge the life and strength which there is often in these and in others still ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... heavens, what wasn't there in it! I am positive that it would have reduced to rigidity even a Petersburg audience, let alone ours. Imagine an article that would have filled some thirty pages of print of the most affected, aimless prattle; and to make matters worse, the gentleman read it with a sort of melancholy condescension as though it were a favour, so that it was almost insulting to the audience. The subject.... Who could make it out? It was a sort of description of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... his short life Crashaw burnt only with religious fire. But no Englishman has expressed that fire as he has, and none in his expression of any sentiment, sacred and profane, has dropped such notes of ethereal music. At his best he is far above singing, at his worst he is below a very childish prattle. But even then he is never coarse, never offensive, not very often actually dull; and everywhere he makes amends by flowers of the divinest poetry. Mr. Pope, who borrowed not a little from him, thought, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... enough to make sufficient penitence impossible. 'Tis true that in a few weeks the delirium was at an end. Oh, what were my sensations when the mist dispersed before my eyes? I called for my husband, but in vain!—I listened for the prattle of ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... little phial, and tell himself that he was getting stronger. Sometimes he really was so, and then the child sat on his wide hollow chest, and played with the beard that was now all grey and unkempt and matted, until some word in her baby prattle, some look of wondering inquiry in the innocent eyes, golden-hazel and black-lashed, like his own, that were almost too beautiful to be a man's, people used to say, like the weak, passionate, gentle mouth under the heavy moustache, would bring back all the anguish ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the merry prattle of the little ones again out in the side yard. Ain't it funny how they get the gambling spirit so young? I'd hear little Margery say: 'I bet you can't!' And Rupert, Junior, would say:' I bet I can, too!' And off they'd go ninety miles on a straight track: 'I bet you'd be afraid to!'—'I bet ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a favorite, though the gayer ones sometimes quizzed her for her religious tendencies, and her lamentable indifference to flirtation. But then she was so good and so good-humored. and so tolerant of other people's tastes. The prattle of these young ladies became now intolerable to Susan, and when she saw them coming to call on her she used to snatch up her bonnet and fly and lock herself up in a closet at the top of the house, and read some good book as quiet as a mouse, till the servants ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... it, at a few hundred yards distance; and perhaps success might be the easier ensured could some canal, lake, or stream, intervene. From a seat at the centrum phonicum he and his friends might amuse themselves sometimes of an evening with the prattle of this loquacious nymph; of whose complacency and decent reserve more may be said than can with truth of every individual of her sex; since ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the Watling Street! Yet we have not turned—Where are we?" Rothgar gnawed at his heavy moustache as though the answer were difficult to frame; and before he had time to evolve it, Elfgiva, who had caught the exclamation, had broken off her prattle. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was over, they would ramble o'er the lea, And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree, And ANNIE'S simple prattle entertained him on his walk, For public executions formed the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... and Harry Forsyth remained in this state of semi- imbecility, free from anxiety about his mother and sister at home, forgetful of all but his animal comforts and the superficial interest he felt in such prattle as this. His bodily health improved before his mental activity; perhaps it was owing to the freedom from worry consequent upon this lethargic state of mind that he was able to pick ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... this is odd!—the more I try to talk Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic To prattle of myself! I'll try to balk Its waywardness and be more altruistic. So let us speak of others—how they sin, And what a devil of a state they ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the andiron; I never saw Gen'l Darrington but once. He gave me the gold and the sapphires, and I am as innocent of his death, and of the destruction of his will as the sinless little children who prattle at your firesides and nestle to sleep in your arms. My life has been disgraced and ruined by no act of mine, for I have kept my hands, my heart, my soul, as pure and free from crime as they were when God ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of her countrymen and countrywomen are, in that lightness which distinguishes the French or the Italians, and would have enabled her, had she been so fortunately endowed with it, to sit by the fire and prattle innocently to her husband, whatever he might be doing. When she came to her new abode and was turning out the corners, she discovered upstairs in a cupboard a number of brown-looking old books, which had not been touched for many a long day. Amongst them were Rollin's ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... one never confirmed by an oath, and never broken." Especially was Towandahoc attached to the Buckingham family, who ever treated him kindly, and to the little girl who played with his bow and arrows, and tried in her artless prattle to pronounce his name. Unbroken peace had hitherto prevailed between the red men and the pale faces, owing to the just and friendly treatment the natives had experienced; but symptoms of another spirit began now to appear. The war waged between England and France had extended to the colonies, and ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... favor; You stand where you have stood before, The old salt hasn't lost its savor. You now can laugh with friends, at foes' Ne'er heeding Mrs. Grundy's tattle; You've dealt and taken sturdy blows, Regardless of the rabble's prattle. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of breeding up her darling Eugene according to his birth. She did not even know what her father had written, and could only go about her daily occupations like one under a weight, listening to her sisters' prattle about their little plans with a strange sense that everything was coming to an end, and constantly weighing the comparative evils of yielding or ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Letters" are my bedside books. If I wake at night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell coarse stories. I don't heed them. It was the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... waist and flat neck; and, with disdainful looks and a haughty air they passed me by. As I heartily detest the whole race, I determined upon going away; and only waited till the count had disengaged himself from their impertinent prattle, to take leave, when the agreeable Miss B—came in. As I never meet her without experiencing a heartfelt pleasure, I stayed and talked to her, leaning over the back of her chair, and did not perceive, ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... the pool, you must put in sixteen to teach you how to play rashly: they talk all together, and for ever, and of everything. "How many hearts?" "Two!" "I have three!" "I have one!" "I have four!" "He has only three!" and Dangeau, delighted with all this prattle, turns up the trump, makes his calculations, sees whom he has against him, in short—in short, I was glad to see such an excess of skill. He it is who really ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... sought through the early dew—his hunger and thirst so daintily satisfied, as he sat at table, like the first-born of King Theseus, with two wax-lights and a fire at dawn or nightfall dancing to the prattle and laughter, a bright child, never stupidly weary. At times his very happiness would seem to her like a menace of misfortune to come. Was there not with herself the curse of that unsisterly action? and not far from him, the terrible danger of the father's, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphick of easy prattle, innocent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... small cause for grief that the purchaser of American novels prefers Central Park to any "wood near Athens," and is more at home in the Tenderloin than in Camelot. People whose tastes happen to be literary are entirely too prone to too much long-faced prattle about literature, which, when all is said, is never a controlling factor in anybody's life. The automobile and the telephone, the accomplishments of Mr. Edison and Mr. Burbank, and it would be permissible to add of Mr. Rockefeller, influence nowadays, in one fashion ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... I was dressing for dinner, Suzee standing by me or playing with my things and somewhat impeding me, as usual. She seemed to have recovered from her ill-temper and was all smiles and gay prattle. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such scanty room, and the prattle which ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... was a cracker!" remarked Quin, who had been listening to the boy's prattle with an amused expression, as ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... out of him for ever. Miss Abbott, for all her goodness, could not comprehend it, though such a thing is more within the comprehension of women. And when Gino pointed first to himself and then to his baby and said "father-son," she still took it as a piece of nursery prattle, and smiled mechanically. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... since, For ever to rule over Desmond and Erin as martyr and prince, Lived Paolo, the young Campanaro,[95] the pride of his own little vale— Hope changed the hot breath of his furnace as into a sea-wafted gale; Peace, the child of Employment, was with him, with prattle so soothing and sweet, And Love, while revealing the future, strewed the sweet ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... behold him play the host, With all the dignity which red men boast— With all the courtesy the whites have lost;— Assume the very hue of savage mind, Yet in rude accents show the thought refined:— Assume the naivete of infant age, And in such prattle seem still more a sage; The golden mean with tact unerring seized, A courtly critic shone, a simple savage pleased; The stoic of the woods his skill confessed, As all the Father answered in his breast, To the sure mark the silver arrow ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... he could live in the beautiful cottage the elector had given him, independent of the favorite. But no; deprived of his old instrument all else was lost to him. For hours would he sit before his humble door, heedless of his wife's entreaties or the childish prattle of Franz and Nanette; his eye riveted on the old cathedral, and his hands playing nervously, as though cheating himself with the idea he was still at the organ. Then roused by a sudden inspiration, he would rush to the piano and play till his hands ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... was occupied with Willie—his wants and his prattle—her guest sat motionless, his head on his hand, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair. He had that rare repose of bearing which is understood to be a sign of high breeding, but in him was temperament, or a quietude caught from nature and solitude. It gave a positive charm to his manner, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... distinguished by the grandeur of their topics, even more than by the manner in which they are treated. The Oriental philosophy approaches, easily, loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. Speaking of the spiritual discipline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... for you! that so betray a mind Of art unconscious and to beauty blind. 60 Say, does her language your ambition raise, Her barren, trivial, unharmonious phrase, Which fetters eloquence to scantiest bounds, And maims the cadence of poetic sounds? Say, does your humble admiration choose The gentle prattle of her Comic Muse, While wits, plain-dealers, fops, and fools appear, Charged to say nought but what the king may hear? Or rather melt your sympathising hearts Won by her tragic scene's romantic arts, 70 Where old and young declaim on soft desire, And ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... brink of the stream, accompanied by Royal's young brothers, Will and Martin Sinclair. The little river gurgled and frisked along beside the burnt tract, like a line of life bordering death. It seemed to the boys to prattle about its victory over the flames when it stopped their sweeping course, so that the woods on its opposite bank were uninjured, as were those beyond the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... misery of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband. Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly prattle. If ever Madame D'Arblay aimed at more, we do not think that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obtuse Who Progress impede with crude cackle, Predestinate duffers of prattle profuse, Who the biggest world-problems would tackle; State-quacks, shouting Emperors, queer School-Board cranks, We'll give you our best benediction, And speed you at parting with heartiest thanks, If you'll only—"retire ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... and father. After kissing her mother for good-night, the girl went to her own room about ten o'clock. The next morning she prepared her mother for the day with the same care, the same prayers, the same prattle. To her praise be it said that from the day when the terrible infirmity deprived her mother of a sense, Modeste had been like a servant to her, displaying at all times the same solicitude; never wearying of the duty, never thinking it monotonous. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... a time, though she never saw me. I knew her favorite path across the mountains,—it led past a rocky chasm. On the edge of that chasm there was a broad, flat stone, and there she would sit often, reading, or watching the fishing-boats on the Fjord, and listening to the prattle of her child. I used to dream of that stone, and wonder if I could loosen it! It was strongly imbedded in the earth—but each day I went to it—each day I moved it! Little by little I worked—till a mere touch would have set it hurling ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... five days in company with these strange fellow-lodgers, and more than once it gave me an uncanny feeling to turn in the midst of Mr. Fett's prattle and, catching the eye of Marc'antonio or Stephanu as they sat and listened with absolute gravity, to reflect on the desperate business we were here to do. We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... feet, went to his wife, caught her up rudely by one arm, and crushed her against his side, while he blazed defiant scorn upon Kano. "Come Dragon Wife," he said, in a voice that echoed through the space; "come back to our little home. No stupid old ones there, no prattle about painting. Only ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the invocation. During her prolix harangue to the spirits the other two busied themselves, one in rearranging the offerings in the little shed, the other in lighting more incense, while the spectators continued their prattle, heedless of the services. After an interval of some 10 minutes the sacred dance was continued, the priestesses circling and sweeping around with their palm branches waving up and down as they swung their arms in graceful movements through the air. This continued for ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to-day, this vacant prattle, Drowned by the thunder rolling in the West, Voice of the great arbitrament of battle That puts our temper ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... bewildered by this little scene, which was so unlike what he expected, and so unlike those to which he was accustomed in the exercise of his horrible duties, was practically speechless before the little lady who continued to prattle along in a ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... glad to talk and take our turns to prattle, when so rarely we get back to the stronghold of our silence with an ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... request of you, that is, that you should come to learn your worth, and not stoop as you do to every little thing, and remember that eagles do not prey on flies. Enough! I know that you will laugh at my prattle; but I do not care; Nature has made me so, and I ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a jerk and scanned the smoking peak, from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child. When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, but followed me into ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... She continued to prattle of the momentous marriage impending, until her complacent chatter was interrupted by the entrance of her half-sister, Mrs. Wynyard, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... dignified decay. The men, as a rule, occupy inferior posts in Government offices or in business houses. The girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual; they prattle innocently both in French and English. The emptiness of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... cried, laughing. "You can be quick enough when you choose, Master Malapert. But you are more fit to speak of high and weary matters with my sister Mary. She will have none of the prattle and courtesy of Sir George, and yet I love them well. But tell me, Nigel, why do you ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Peter Taylor about flowers and fruit, or of Thomas Neal, concerning pet heifers, and new milk and butter and cheese, became tedious; the jokes and laughter of the farm-hands and dairymaids she heard with irritation; nor could the prattle and play of her romping boys divert her mind from the one absorbing theme—the descent of the Mississippi, the conquest of Mexico, the creation of a New World. In close daily communion with Theodosia, she dwelt not in a white frame house on a woody island of the Ohio River, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... ears, even her little unformed nose, all looked as happy as possible. She was a pleasant little patent moraliser, with a double escapement action for great occasions. On this evening all the family was gathered together, including the inevitable infant, whose prattle serves to soothe the gloomy perversity of morose heroes. On such an evening as this SONOGUN had seen them all years ago, and, though he was standing in the garden and all the windows were shut, he had heard every single whisper of the family ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... penny to bless himself with," replied Percy, "save his wage from my Lord Oxford, and that were but a drop in the sea for us. His old grandmother can do but little for him—so much have I picked out of his prattle. But, surely, Mr Catesby, you would not think to take into our number a green lad such as he, and a simpleton, and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... dead sister's child happy in their love for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech—I would fain recall ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... these guests. Who then? She dreaded the flash of her own mother's eye. Yes, indeed, her pretty mamma had ceased to love her, banished her more and more from her presence, made sharp or dry responses to her prattle. Cecilia sighed inaudibly as she crouched there. Hark! The visitors approached the window; she could touch one by extending her arm from her hiding-place. Who were they? Oh, some of her mamma's gentlemen friends lounging in for an afternoon call. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... three hardened attendants who mistook his consideration for cowardice and taunted him for it. Just to prove his mettle he began to assault patients, and one day knocked me down simply for refusing to stop my prattle at his command. That the environment in some institutions is brutalizing, was strikingly shown in the testimony of an attendant at a public investigation in Kentucky, who said, "When I came here, if anyone had told me I would be guilty of striking patients I would ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... purely and simply the prattle of a mean mouth and vile tongue! They're enough to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... (Bohemia); the, child is given to drink water out of a cow-bell (Servia); when the child, on the arm of its mother, pays the first visit to neighbours or friends, it is presented with three eggs, which are pressed three times to his mouth, with the words, "as the hens cackle, the child learns to prattle" (Thuringia, the Erzgebirge, Bavaria, Franconia, and the Harz); when a child is brought to be baptized, one of the relatives must make a christening-letter (Pathenbrief), and, with the poem or the money contained in it, draw three ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... had sobered, and their faces also had taken on that look engendered by a life of dull routine among sand-hills at the edge of a lonely sea, with seldom the sound of a woman's voice in their ears or the prattle of little children. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... creature of her sex. To hear her talk seraphics, and run over Norris,[327] and More,[328] and Milton,[329] and the whole set of intellectual triflers, torments me heartily; for to a lover who understands metaphors, all this pretty prattle of ideas gives very fine views of pleasure, which only the dear declaimer prevents, by understanding them literally. Why should she wish to be a cherubim, when it is flesh and blood that makes her adorable? If I speak to her, that is a high breach of the idea of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other nations. The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation. They do not speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thing—in the Masnavi of Jelalu-'d-Din er-Rumi (13th century), a grand mystical poem, or rather series of poems, in six books, written in Persian rhymed couplets, as the title indicates. In the second poem of the First Book we read that an oilman possessed a fine parrot, who amused him with her prattle and watched his shop during his absence. It chanced one day, when the oilman had gone out, that a cat ran into the shop in chase of a mouse, which so frightened the parrot that she flew about from shelf to shelf, upsetting several jars and spilling their contents. When her master returned ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... an apple rather than a crown; what they hear concerning Christ, of the life to come, etc., the same do they believe simply and plainly, and prattle joyfully thereof. From whence Christ speaketh unto us old ones earnestly to follow their examples, where he saith, "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." For the children believe aright, and Christ loveth them with their childish sports. ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... Prattle (Mr.), medical practitioner, a voluble gossip, who retails all the news and scandal of the neighborhood. He knows everybody, everybody's affairs, and everybody's intentions.—G. Colman, Sr, The Deuce is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... nine. The young man gave a tender embrace to his companion, and went towards the tilbury which an old servant drove slowly to meet him. The lady had grown grave and almost sad. The child's prattle sounded unchecked through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury rolled away, and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage along the road. Charles ran down the green ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... in giving her a clear field with her Sir Launcelot. Allen humored her, finding a real relief in this childish game which his little friend took so seriously. The one drawback was the amount of intimate information which she conveyed through the medium of her innocent prattle. Allen could not know what was coming next, and so was powerless to head off conversation upon subjects into which he knew he had no right to enter, for Patricia possessed the faculty of keeping herself well informed as to family matters. It was through this that he secured ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... But the road wound around to get out of a low marshy place, a pond in the rainy season, and some rocks that seemed tumbled up on end. They struck a bit of the old Boston Post Road, and that caused the little girl to stop her prattle and think of the old ladies they had never visited. She must "jog" her father's memory. That was what her mother always said ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the intimate stars Carelessly prattle of cosmic affairs. Flat on your back, with your nose pointing Mars, Search for the star who fled South from the Bears. Gaze for an hour at that little blue star, Giving him, cheerfully, wink for his wink; Shrink to the ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... few years, when the frosts of age fell upon his head, he married a handsome and very wealthy widow; but, unfortunately, having lost their first child, a daughter, he lived only long enough to hear the infantile prattle of his son, St. Elmo, to whom he bequeathed an immense fortune, which many succeeding years of reckless expenditure had failed to materially impair. Such was "Le Bocage," naturally a beautiful situation, improved and embellished with everything ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... merely Edward Alleyn the actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. Together these celebrated men are said to have discussed a passage in the new play of Hamlet. The reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained intercourse with professional associates, no biographer deserves pardon for overlooking the revelation, however ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... resembling omnipresence and ubiquity; for nowhere could he go without meeting them, and that oftener than once a-day, in the course of his walks. Sometimes the presence of the sweet Lycoris was intimated by the sweet prattle in an adjacent shade; sometimes, when Tyrrel thought himself most solitary, the parson's flute was heard snoring forth Gramachree Molly; and if he betook himself to the river, he was pretty sure to find his sport watched by Sir Bingo or ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... tell the truth, and you shall hear it. That man's father is an outlaw. He is a fugitive from justice. All this prattle about him being dead ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... through many a march, battle and campaign all over the broad lands of the United States until now, at the hour when most men turned for the placid joys of the fireside, the love of devoted and faithful wife, the homage and affection of children, the prattle and playful sports of children's children—homeless, wifeless, childless he stood at the border of the boundless sea, soldier duty pointing the way to far distant, unknown and undesired regions, content to follow that flag to the end of the world, if need be, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... she was accustomed to laugh at Lady Harriet Beaton's comic stories. This child's prattle was amusing ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... Cabinet Order is not the outcome of religious feeling? By describing the Cabinet Order everywhere as an outcome of religious feeling. Is an insight into social movements to be expected from such an illogical mind? Listen to his prattle about the relation of German society to the Labour movement and to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... I do not mean that I am simply absent from Bodfish's place in the country. I mean that I am deliberately not spending the weekend there. When you interrupted me just now, I was not strolling down to Bodfish's garage, listening to his prattle about his new car." ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... in her sweetest society prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt, sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of the steamer chair, "had too much money. Mines, wasn't it? It was something that paid something to the ton. You couldn't get a glass of plain water in ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all "the two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings—the prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them—a strain of music conducts to "an odd angle of the Isle," and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth.—Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... sometimes sang duets with her. She would have none of his duets to-night. She scarcely smiled when receiving him, and would scarcely condescend to talk to him. She was in no mood for talking with this immature young man —this boy, who came with his prattle when she wished to be alone. It ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... seamstress had seen her little neighbour watching her, and once or twice had nodded to her, and so a sort of acquaintance had sprung up between them; indeed, on several occasions they had met, and the child's prattle had cheered ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... prattle," said the beggar, clutching her fast, and listening as one all ear; and by this time the two knights were close at hand, the taller holding the dog, straining in a leash, while the good Grand Prior spoke. "How fares it with thee, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... chatted away about his neighbours, his boys' club, his new organ, his bishop, his work. I used to think him rather a proser; how I blessed his prosing now! I took long walks with him; he asked a few perfunctory questions about my books, but otherwise he was quite content to prattle on, like a little brook, about all that was in his mind, and he was more than content if I asked an occasional question or assented courteously. Then we had some good talks about the rural problems of education—he is a sensible and intelligent ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... compliments; but, with moderate care, any such Translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into pure, sweet, and partially measured Prose must be better than what I am doing for Jami; {304} whose ingenuous prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse. This I am very sure of. But it ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... a great deal about the "Russian bear," but it will be our own fault if this bear does us any harm. Let the Edinburgh Review, the advocate of mystified liberalism, prattle as much as it choose, on this topic, it becomes us to look at the subject like Americans. There are more practical and available affinities between America and Russia, at this very moment, than there is between America and any other nation in Europe. They ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... so now," said the captain; "or was so very late for, but a month ago, I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what great ones do, the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother, who shortly after died also; and for the love ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... upon this tribute as we went away. We had learned through the innocent prattle of our hostess's busy tongue that she desired a garden, but that Hans thought it a waste of time; that she had suggested open plumbing, and that Hans declined to go to the expense; that she saw little of her brothers ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... Through all that prattle of your age, Through lore of fribble and of sage I've read, and chiefly Walpole's page, Wherein are beauties famous; I've haunted ball, and rout, and sale; I've heard of Devonshire and Thrale, And all the Gunnings' wondrous tale, But ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... points prophetic to a scramble sharp To wear the cast off shoes of those who now Do suck the life blood from our downtrod race. Seldonskip: You bet they'll scramble and they'll scramble hard, An why not tell me? 'Tis all in the game! (Francos to Seldonskip): Again that tongue, in thoughtless prattle wags. It seems that every opening of thy mouth, Doth point to utterance in words uncouth Which clothe some folly in a tattered garb. (Quezox to Francos): And yet most noble sire, my bowels of Discernment do fierce gripe me with the fear That in the rambling words this youth hath tongued ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... great gulf. 'Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.' That the little blackbird, as they used to call her, should have been on the verge of running away with her own husband was a half understood, amusing mystery discussed in exaggerating prattle. This was hushed, indeed, in the presence of that crushed, prostrate, silent sorrow; but there was still an utter incapacity of true sympathy, that made the very presence of so many oppressive, even when they were not in murmurs discussing the ghastly ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on a bench in the doorway to rest. After a little while they noticed a number of swallows collected together under the eaves of the roof, and as these birds are such chatter-boxes, they began to prattle with one another. Having learned the language of birds, the children knew what the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... particular flower of all that is beautiful, fashionable, young, and marriageable in Tanoa. Bright and cheerful, neat and comely, pleasant partners at a bush-ball are these half-Anglicized daughters of the Ngatewhatua. They can prattle prettily in their soft Maori-English, while their glancing eyes and saucy lips are provoking the by no means too hard hearts ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... following everywhere at his heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features,—and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the morning air had gone to her head. And round about the doe she grouped the children of the king, Cinderellas, fairy queens, magicians, monsters—all the familiar personages of those imaginary realms, crowding them in tumultuously with the kaleidoscopic rapidity of a dream. Her prattle sounded like the warbling of a bird; full of sweet modulations, with now and then a rapid succession of melodious notes that were not words,—a continuation of the wave of music already set in motion, like the vibrations of a string during a pause—when ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... much depraved as to hinder us from respecting goodness in others, though we ourselves want it. This is the reason why we are so much charmed with the pretty prattle of children, and even the expressions of pleasure or uneasiness in some parts of the brute creation. They are without artifice or malice; and we love truth too well to resist the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was anaemic, ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... to hard work) for a genteel place; but she masters that so fast, that now as my daughter is married and gone from me, I am desirous to qualify her to divert and entertain me in my thoughtful hours: and were you, sister, to know what she is capable of, and how diverting her innocent prattle is to me, and her natural simplicity, which I encourage her to preserve amidst all she learns, you would not, nor my son neither, wonder at the pleasure I take in her. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Nobly resolv'd, sweet friends and followers! These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: But, since they measure our deserts so mean, That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, They shall be kept our forced followers Till with their eyes they ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... decide between Ayrshire Ruga and Fellenberg for the pillar that requires a red rose, to fix the right proportion of sand and leaf-mould to suit his carnations—when 'his only plot' is to plant the bergamot—he resents being fobbed off with prattle:— ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." Do not heed the specious prattle about "first love," and so place, irrevocably, the seal upon your future destiny, before you have sounded, in silence and secrecy, the deep fountains of your own heart. Wait, rather, until your own character and that of him who would woo you, is more fully developed. Surely, if this "first love" ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... sing idly or prattle with an imaginary being that had a habit of peeking over the edge of the basket or would shout a greeting to some bird or butterfly and ask finally: 'Tired, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... little girls in her lap, and seemed to enjoy hearing their childish prattle. Patty glanced at the gay rings on the lady's fingers, and at the pictures on the walls, and wondered why it wasn't a happy home, and what made Mrs. Chase's eyes so red. Then all at once she remembered what Siller Noonin had said: "O, yes, Mrs. Chase has ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... barber who excelled in judicial astrology save thyself: but I think and I know that thou art most prodigal of frivolous talk. I sent for thee only to shave my head, but thou comest and pesterest me with this sorry prattle." "What more wouldst thou have?" replied he. "Allah hath bounteously bestowed on thee a Barber who is an astrologer, one learned in alchemy and white magic;[FN612] syntax, grammar, and lexicology; the arts of logic, rhetoric and elocution; mathematics, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... gratifying occupation it is to an affectionate mind, even in a way of nature, to walk through the fields, and lead a little child by the hand, enjoying its infantine prattle, and striving to improve the time by some kind word of instruction! I wish that every Christian pilgrim in the way of grace, as he walks through the Lord's pastures, would try to lead at least one little child by the hand; and perhaps, whilst ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... a loud cough from Mr. Dowden, so abrupt and artificial that his intention to check the flow of my innocent prattle was embarrassingly obvious—even ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... must conquer the latter, or become wicked and contemptible. If, therefore, you give way to this melancholy, how will you be able to perform your duty towards me, in cheerfully obeying my commands, and endeavouring, by your lively prattle and innocent gaiety of heart, to be my companion and delight? Nor will you be fit to converse with your brother, whom (as you lost your good papa when you were too young to know that loss) I have endeavoured to educate in such a manner, that ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... there is something like the charm of meadows and fields in your sweet prattle, and you should never desert it for the thickets of psychological speculations.—Come on, child. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... lady continued to prattle on. She had taken the girl's hand in hers, and was gently forcing her down on to a low stool beside her armchair. She was talking about Paul, and said something about Anne Mie, and then about the National Convention, and those beasts ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... this to be some recompense for their toil, some comfort for the dangers they have passed. In short, whatever though unrequested, we are wont to discourse of, we are desirous to be asked; because then we seem to gratify those whom otherwise our prattle would disturb and force from our conversation. And this is the common disease of travellers. But more genteel and modest men love to be asked about those things which they have bravely and successfully performed, and which modesty will not permit ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... take place on the first anniversary of the wedding. The child is a marvel of beauty, and is very healthy. I am the godfather, and he has been named after me. I am already dreaming of the time when Periquito shall begin to talk, and amuse us with his prattle. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... he loved pretty songs, and would try and learn anything the gentleman would tell him." That day he so pleased the gentlemen by his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... heard or saw, after she entered these mysterious and secluded apartments. The slightest question concerning Master Heriot's ghost, was sufficient, at her gayest moment, to check the current of her communicative prattle, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... minister's daughter, a little chubby girl of three summers, taking part in the general entertainment, strove to make her Gaelic sound as like English as she could, in my especial behalf. I remembered, as I listened to the unintelligible prattle of the little thing, unprovided with a word of English, that just eighteen years before, her father had had no Gaelic; and wondered what he would have thought, could he have been told, when he first sat down to study it, the story of his island charge ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... but picked up her basket and proceeded with her out of the valley. Chris gave a hand to the child, and save for Tim's prattle there was no speaking. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Hogboom only grinned. "Prattle away all you please," he said, "but I mean it. I've got magnificent facilities for dying just now. I'll consider a proposition to die for the benefit of the cause if you fellows will agree to keep me in cigarettes and pie ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... his habit to pass very much of his time here; thus, this was really His Majesty's audience chamber. Here he would have his little daughter of whom he was passionately fond—taking a great delight in listening to her merry prattle, and her amusing remarks on whatever attracted her attention. The windows of the room look out on to the Dam, a large square, which is quite the busiest part of the city. The view from these windows is a ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Franklin, have really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an "obstructing nuisance," or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Caesar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying "the prattle of infant man," or "adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with." We believe, on the contrary, that it was by such studies that Gibbon and Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote acquired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... of time, became my wife; and Mr Micklan, loved and respected by the whole of the community, lived to hear the prattle of his great-grandchildren. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... inexpressibly tedious to him, and so he told his sympathetic professor, the learned Thibaut, author of the treatise "On the Purity of Music," in a characteristic manner. He went to the piano and played Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," commenting on the different passages: "Now she speaks—that's the love prattle; now he speaks—that's the man's earnest voice; now both the lovers speak together "; concluding with the remark, "Isn't all that better far than anything that jurisprudence can utter?" The young student became quite popular in ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Another gives his nights and days to games, And feasts, and dances with the reigning belles: A smile perpetual is on his lips; But in his breast, alas, stern and severe, Like adamantine column motionless, Eternal ennui sits, against whose might Avail not vigorous youth, nor prattle fond That falls from rosy lips, nor tender glance That trembles in two dark and lustrous eyes; The most bewildering of mortal things, Most precious gift ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... my face is torn and twisted makes me no different from you. I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate as you. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to mislead the men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindliness and sympathy for ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... me with your childish prattle," he observed to Bertie van Tahn, who had slung himself languidly into a neighbouring chair and looked conversationally inclined; ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... my left hand, between Deloraine and me, and it was clear she was discontented with her position. Her eyes wandered down the table to Vennard, who had taken in an American duchess, and seemed to be amused at her prattle. She looked with disfavour at Deloraine, and turned to me as the lesser of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan |
