"Childishly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... edge of the piazza he turned for an instant and eyed her a bit quizzically. With her big credulous blue eyes, and her great mop of yellow hair braided childishly down her back, she looked inestimably more juvenile and innocent than his own little shrewd-faced six-year-old whom he had just left domestically ensconced in the middle ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... 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
... the morbid fear that I might not be up to standard. And then the uniform! It was the outward symbol of the lost selfishness and the cleaner honour. It hadn't been paid for; it wouldn't be paid for till I had lived in the trenches. I was childishly anxious to earn my right to wear it. I had said "Good-bye" to myself, and had been re-born into willing sacrifice. I think that was the reason for the difference of spirit in which I read the two headlines. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... of romance could be more given to the vapours. You will absolutely destroy the remaining respect I have for you, unless you tell me the truth, and what is underneath in your mind influencing you to behave so childishly." ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... that he had been almost childishly reckless in expenditure on artistic and beautiful things which were unnecessary to his art and beyond his means, although those for a while had been abundant. At the time of the failure of the 'Night Watch,' his wife Saskia died, leaving him their little son, Titus, a beautiful child. ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the girl. "And what shall I be doing while you are dispensing me on the East Side? New York has other sides. While you go slumming with the Seraph, I shall be talking to the Snake! Now, do laugh!" she entreated childishly, turning her ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... signs of warmth. Her eyes were enigmatic as black diamonds; and her mouth was a red bud of scorn. Her dignity was immense for all that her braids had come down from their coronet and were hanging childishly about her shoulders; the loose strands fluttering about ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... presenting me with all sorts of expensive knick-knacks, and being childishly grieved when ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... trust me. You are not going to kill me; you are not going to harm me; for you would gain nothing by getting my ill will. I forgive your indignities, for it was natural for you to be provoked, and I provoked you needlessly—childishly, in fact; but after what I have said, anything further in that line ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... 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
... ride alone with 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, with ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... be enough; and now take particular care that we do not again unwittingly expose ourselves to the reproach of talking childishly. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... 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 ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... village and brought it home, without a word to any one, trusting to the puppy's own attractions to plead for it. It had seemed to Benjamin that nobody could resist that puppy. But Grandfather Wellman had all his life preferred cats to dogs, and now he was childishly fond of Seventoes. Benjamin's mother often said that she didn't know what grandsir would do if anything ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... she added, with an effort at cheerfulness, "I'm just cross, I guess, Emily; don't mind me! I'm tired out with examinations and—" her eyes filled again—"and I'm sick of wet cold weather and rain and snow," she added childishly. "Our house is full of muddy rubbers and wet clothes! Other people go places and do pleasant things," said Margaret, her breast rising and falling stormily; "but nothing ever happens to us except broken arms, and bills, and boilers bursting, and chicken-pox! It's drudge, drudge, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... there, twisting her hands together childishly, trying to understand the thing that had fallen upon her; then suddenly she broke ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... 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. Theoretically, "the division ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... said: "Paganini came to Cassel and gave two concerts, which I heard with great interest. His left hand and his constantly pure intonation were, to me, astonishing; but in his compositions and his execution I found a strange mixture of the highly genial and the childishly tasteless, by which one felt alternately ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Laon "Orosius." Now and then occurs a tiny scene—perhaps a fight between two grotesque brutes, neither fish, nor fowl, nor beast known to the naturalist, but a horrible compound of the worst qualities of each. The human figure, when it occurs, is childishly shapeless. But the design and treatment, nevertheless, bear witness to a lively imagination and considerable knowledge of Christian symbolism. It is these mental qualities which, in spite of the manifest absence of manual skill, render the Gellone ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... almost certainly be troublesome. Strangely enough, the Countess hated her the more for that. To value so lightly the thing for which Olga Loschek would have given her soul, this in itself was hateful. But there was more. The Countess saw much with her curiously wide, almost childishly bland eyes; it was only now that it occurred to her to turn what she knew of Hedwig and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... "this won't do. There are too few symbols to give us a key; too few repetitions to furnish us with any key basis. Come, Captain, let us use our intellects; let us talk it over with that paper lying there between us. It's a simple cipher—a childishly simple one if we use our wits. Now, sir, what I see repeated before us on this sheet of paper is merely one of the forms of a symbol known as Solomon's Seal. The symbol is, as we see, repeated a great many times. ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the sun. There had been no rain for days, and 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 ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... has been too long," said Ravenswood, somewhat haughtily, "if her displeasure at my presence is likely to be so formidable. My dear Lucy," he resumed, in a tone of soothing encouragement, "you are too childishly afraid of Lady Ashton; she is a woman of family—a lady of fashion—a person who must know the world, and what is due to her husband and her husband's guests." Lucy shook her head; and, as if her mother, still at the distance of half a mile, could have seen and scrutinised ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Well, I thought, childishly pleased, at least I am not one of the innumerable nameless faces that pour in and out of the library daily. "What else was there supposed to be?" ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... but Eleanor is so sublimely unconscious of offence and childishly contented with herself, that he has not ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... alike, if I may revive a good and expressive phrase of the period, hastily and unskilfully slubbered up: Bowdler is a poor second-hand and third-rate example of the Jonsonian gull; and the transfer of Moll's regard from him to his friend is both childishly conceived and childishly contrived. On the whole, a second-rate play, with one or two first-rate scenes and passages to which Lamb has done perhaps no more than justice by the characteristic and eloquent cordiality of his commendations. Its date may be probably determined as early ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... scientific discovery is like that strange and awful manifestation known as the "Milky Way." We see it with our naked eye—numberless stars and a pale, growing blur around and behind them, and we childishly call it the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... of 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 ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and rollick in women" 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, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... remained childishly rooted in her refusal to preside at his board, unless compelled; and her brow, knit at the remembrance of her fall, was set to meet the further encounter. Joan and Madge and Mysie, with their blooming cheeks, and their kissing-strings ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... confess I was in total ignorance of what you tell me. I don't see how, under the circumstances, you can do anything. I was never more surprised in my life, in fact, than when I read your letter. The whole thing is too childishly preposterous. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... this sentence. Grebel, during an earlier sojourn there, had sown the seed, of which these were the ripened fruits. They burnt the Bible, because it said: "The letter kills." They sported with puppets; led about dancing apes tied to a string; wept childishly, and were comforted with apples, and cast off all their clothes, because they must become like little children, of whom alone was the kingdom of heaven. Yea, in the end, one of them, Leonard Schucker, desired ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... deceiving her; but her unhesitating acceptance of his word made him hate the part he was playing. At the same moment a doubt shot up its serpent-head in his own bosom. Was it not he rather than she who was childishly trustful? Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and dismiss once for all the tiresome question of the letter? Considering what her experiences must have been, such trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But the moment ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the 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
... blackness Delmia feebly groped her way to her sister's side, and throwing her shrunken arms about her, tried to win her back to consciousness by childishly calling her ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... as if it were personally responsible for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall. Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror—her flushed cheeks, tumbled ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... you see that the mischief is done! You behave shamefully, and now you talk childishly. You have made these children disloyal, and what hold can I have on them except through their loyalty? You have thrown me back at the start—I cannot bear to think how far—and you talk as if some foolish ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... woman, or an old priest who had seen and forgiven much, or men who knew and pitied youth, would have understood. Neither of the men to whom she spoke realized the significance of that childishly pitiful confession. Champneys felt that she had shamed his name, belittled the sacred Family which was his fetish; Glenn thought she had made a fool of him for her own amusement. Never again would he trust ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... in Dick's effusive greeting, or the Dona's coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous confidences. It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine. Both mother and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of voice, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... walked across the meadows by that path on several occasions, and in the dead silence of the brilliant night vivid recollections of a warm summer's evening long past came back to me—sweet remembrances of days when we were childishly happy in each ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street—something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilful mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and she knew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and to know it at a moment like the present, were ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Geoffrey! Don't be cross! I think I really am tired. I seem to have danced for hours." The tone was childishly plaintive, and French was instantly appeased. The joy of being with her—alone—returned ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more robust influence of Parish Thornton ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... sufficient to explain any amount of anxiety. It was the second week of July, 1870; and the destinies of France trembled, as upon a cast of the dice, in the hands of a few presumptuous incapables. Was it war with Prussia, or was it peace, that was to issue from the complications of a childishly astute policy? ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... in his convictions till the time when new facts may oblige him to abandon them. Science does not ask that we should prefer this or the other explanation; it only asks that we should study the facts unprejudiced, that we should be sincere, and not shut our eyes childishly ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... cracked from side to side, isn't it? I am sorry. For life is not so easily disposed of. And there is only life to look at now, and life is a bewilderingly complex business, you will find, because the laws of it are so childishly simple—and implacable. And one of these laws seems to be that in our ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the door, and still I hesitated. To some who read, my hesitancy may brand me childishly timid; but I, who had met many of the dreadful creatures of Dr. Fu-Manchu, had good reason to fear whomsoever or whatsoever rapped at midnight upon my door. Was I likely to forget the great half-human ape, with the strength of four lusty men, which once he had ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... he and Byron had very little in common. Byron disliked his familiarity and his airs of equality; while he himself was not long in discovering Byron to be egotistical to the verge of insanity, childishly vain of his rank, ill-natured, jealous, coarse, inconsiderate, disloyal, a blabber of secrets, mean, deceitful. But the glamour of Byron's fame, the romance that surrounded him, his rank, which Leigh Hunt valued ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heart out of Luther and weary the tough spirit; this attack he will neither understand nor conquer!"' Fearlessly also, and in a manner which would have been impossible to him at the Wartburg, he spoke out against the grievous 'sin at Worms, when the truth of God was so childishly despised, so publicly, defiantly, wilfully condemned;' it was a sin of the whole German nation, because the heads had done this, and no one at the godless Diet had opposed them. He reproached himself with having, in order to please good friends there, and not to appear too obstinate, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... father had not retired when he reached The Dreamerie, and the sight of that stern yet kindly and wholly understandable person moved him to sit down beside The Laird on the divan and take the old man's hand in his childishly. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Blackmore has no such intention. His stories are full of adventure and dramatic situations, and his melodrama is of the lurid kind on which the calcium light is thrown. Sometimes, as in 'The Maid of Sker' and 'Cripps' they violate every probability. In others, as in 'Mary Anerley,' the mystery is childishly simple, the oft-repeated plot of a lost child recovered by certain strangely wrought gold buttons. In 'Erema,' the narrative suffers for want of vraisemblance, and loses by being related by a very young girl who has had no opportunity of becoming familiar with the world she describes. He is constantly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... 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 to cede Venetia after its first victory ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... 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 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... any." 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, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... the rest of the posse, for this was rather more than they had planned ahead. The sheriff, however, only sighed, and as the moonlight increased Vic could see that he was deeply, childishly contented, for in the heart of the little dusty man there was that inextinguishable spark, the love of battle. Chance had thrown him on the side of the law, but sooner or later dull times were sure to come and then Pete Glass would cut ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... up her lips to his, childishly, lovingly. "I will be good," she said. "I will be good. I will never ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... brook, O blithe brook, what will you say to me If I take off my heavy shoon and wade you childishly? ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... while in a corner, to the ridiculous anger of Maroossia who went to bed tonight without kissing me. She (the Baroness) said that Sophie had already reached London after the stay in Copenhagen and Paris. "Her mission," she said,—as usual coquettishly and childishly looking around with a fear of being overheard,—"was a failure." In Copenhagen "they would not even listen", to Sophie, and she was told that the solution and the "demarches" must be made, if made, from London, as there people have every means to arrange with ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... with a last memory of sunlight dancing on a myriad tiny wavelets, and a blessed peace and abandon soaking into our very souls we doze, then sleep, sleep as we never sleep in the city; as we had fancied a short day before never to sleep again; dreamlessly, childishly, as Mother Nature intended her children ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... The woman, childishly interested in the grotesque inkwells on the table, stepped forward and raised one curiously. Her bony hands, of almost transparent thinness, seemed hardly able to sustain the weight of the cast bronze. It was hard to believe such a birdlike claw capable of delivering ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... The war sprang from the inherent antipathy between two forms of political organization radically hostile to each other. Is the war over, will it ever be over, if we allow the incompatibility to remain, childishly satisfied with a mere change of shape? This has been the grapple of two brothers that already struggled with each other even in the womb. One of them has fallen under the other; but let simple, good-natured ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... out his one hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it, as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the empire have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is still as uselessly and childishly vexatious as when pilloried in imperishable language ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... If he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble." His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his victim had, and then ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... rub'd with wormwood or mustard, they will either wipe it off, or else suck down sweet and bitter together; so is it with some Christians, let God embitter all the sweets of this life, that so they might feed upon more substantiall food, yet they are so childishly sottish that they are still huging and sucking these empty brests, that God is forced to hedg up their way with thornes, or lay affliction on their loynes, that so they might shake hands with the world before it ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... either the courage or the conscience to yield. But even now Faber had not the most distant intention of forsaking her; only why should he let her burden him, and make his life miserable? There were other pleasures besides the company of the most childishly devoted of women: why should he not take them? Why should he give all his leisure to one who gave more than the half of it to ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Ghiberti; the antique influence cannot be conceived as absent in the history of Italian painting. So far, as a study of the impossible, the speculation respecting the fate of Renaissance art had it not been influenced by the antique would be childishly useless. But lest we forget that this antique influence did exist, lest, grown ungrateful and blind, we refuse it its immense share in producing Michel Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, we may do well to turn to an art born and bred like Italian art, in the Middle Ages; like ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the news of the King's death. In the evening, at the Students' Union, there was great commotion and much anxiety. There were rumours of a change of Ministry, of a Bluhme-David-Ussing Ministry, and of whether the new King would be willing to sign the Constitution from which people childishly expected the final incorporation of Slesvig into Denmark. That evening I made the acquaintance of the poet Christian Richardt, who told me that he had noticed my face before he knew my name. Julius ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of the Powers have in the past been so hampered by the traditions of a tortuous diplomacy, so tossed and perturbed within by the cross-currents of intrigue, that they have shown themselves almost childishly incapable of arriving at clear-cut decisions. Old policies, old formulae, old jealousies, old dynastic influences still hold control of the majority of the chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these things it is that have made questions ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... 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 ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... day the prisoners were taken into the exercise yard to meet their wives and children. On these occasions when supplies of food were brought in, some very heart-rending scenes were witnessed, the little toddlers clinging to their fathers' coat-tails and childishly urging them to come home, while the women's eyes were wet ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... lyrical. They accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the little fatling toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I am afraid she won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very serious and gave their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more childishly earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the gaudy graduates, panting in her anxious zeal and stopping at last with her image of the Virgin she resembled flung wildly down her back from the place where it ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... three or four. It will be seen that this form of instrument gives us what Mr. Charles Reade describes as the invention of Italy, namely "the four corners."[20] The same author in speaking of the order of invention remarks that he is puzzled "to time the Violono, or as we childishly call it (after its known descendant) the Double Bass. If I were so presumptuous as to trust to my eye alone, I should say it was the first of them all." With this opinion I entirely agree, and I am also in unison with Mr. Reade in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... after a general lightening of this baggage of detail. After Scott we beheld the starveling story—once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable—begin to be pampered upon facts. The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cheever had escaped from the Ritz-Carlton they took lunch at another restaurant. Zada was childishly proud of her tact and of Cheever's appreciation. But afterward, on the way "home"—as she called what other people called her "lair"—she grew ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... undergoing a "rest cure." The sprightly young clergyman started on his mission full of bright expectations. He returned anon, looking prematurely aged. Nobody could get a word out of him at first; he seemed top have become afflicted with a partial paralysis of the tongue. After babbling childishly for an hour or so he fell silent altogether, and it was not till next morning that he recovered full powers of speech. Wild horses, he then announced, would not drag form his lips what had passed ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... not imagine how slowly time goes when you are not with me! I can't describe the feeling; there is a sort of sense of emptiness, which hurts—a certain longing which can not be satisfied, and hence never ends, but grows day by day. When I remember how childishly merry we were in Baden, and what mournful, tedious hours I pass here, my work gives me no pleasure, because it is not possible as was my wont, to chat a few words with you when stopping for a moment. If I go to the Clavier and sing something from the opera ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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
... been 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 ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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 ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... these love affairs, and not infrequently causes the lovers to hate each other; in which case they childishly look upon each other as the cause instead of the occasion of the torment. Also under the spur of the taunts of mates the lovers are stimulated to say things to or about each other that lead to estrangement. ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... she felt the obtrusive condescension to her level. I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion at the sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame me and I was obliged to get up and go. She was childishly affectionate. If M'Kay came in and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her face brightened into the sweetest and happiest smile. I recollect once after he had been unusually annoyed with her he repented just as he was leaving home, and put his lips to her head, holding it in ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... 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 ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... couch, her arms flung upward and her hands clasped beneath her head, she lay staring fretfully at the globe of electric light which hung from the centre of the embossed and gilded ceiling. Seen thus, with the soft curves of throat and arms revealed, and her face childishly set in a cloud of loosened hair, she looked no older than Cicely—and, like Cicely, inaccessible to grown-up arguments and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... such prejudices and peculiarities, no less than of his gifts, Borrow was ridiculously proud. In certain respects he was as vainly, querulously, and childishly assertive as Goldsmith himself; while in the haughty self-isolation with which he eschewed the society of people with endowments as great or even greater than his own, he was quite the opposite of "poor Goldy." If the latter had regarded his interlocutors straight in the eyes with ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... not tell me, though I laid many traps for more during the long weeks my bones were healing. But although he denied me his confidence in this matter, he told me much of this Corsica I had so childishly invaded, and a great deal to make me blush for my random ignorance; of the people, their untiring feud with Genoa, their insufferable wrongs, their succession of heroic leaders. He did not speak of their passion for liberty, as a man will ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... your room, and find such a book lying about, she would immediately set you down as a profligate.' I did not understand this at all, and it seems to me now that the fact that I had so very simply and childishly volunteered to read the verses to my stepmother should have proved to my Father that I connected it with no ideas of an ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... how a debate on Budget of 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... our gratitude for the doubtful boon of life. He does not pretend to be just, while he is committing, or winking at, the most intolerable injustices. He does not set up to be long-suffering, while in fact he is childishly touchy. He does not profess to be merciful, while the incurable ward, the battlefield—nay, even the maternity home and the dentist's parlor—are there to give him the lie. (Here, of course, I am not contrasting him with the Invisible King, but with more ancient ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 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 ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shall have dared to criticize and censure this teaching of mine, I pay 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, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... conferred upon him; and although this was indeed a high honour, in speaking about it he only mentioned the word 'Ritter' without referring to the particular order, because this seemed to him too ordinary for a person of his dignity. He was, however, childishly pleased over the affair, and felt that he had been miraculously rescued from the narrow sphere of his Dresden Vestalin production to find himself suddenly transported into regions of glory, from which he looked down upon the distressing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... safely in the sun. Once in a long while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat, swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the golden surface into long, parabolic ripples; but he was too wise to court a trial ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... caressing things, to stoop and kiss them, to praise them for their pretty ways of looking up at her as into the eyes of a friend and beloved. There were certain little blue violets which always seemed to lift their small faces childishly, as if they were saying, 'Kiss me; don't go by like that.'" She would sit on the porch, elbows on knees and chin on hands, staring upward, sometimes lying on the grass. Heaven was so high and yet ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... y-red ben or y-songe, The pleynte that she made in hir distresse? 800 I noot; but, as for me, my litel tonge, If I discreven wolde hir hevinesse, It sholde make hir sorwe seme lesse Than that it was, and childishly deface Hir heigh compleynte, and therfore I it ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... one curious instant he looked out over the village, his fastidious scholar's soul absorbed by some intellectual irritation, of which Rose understood absolutely nothing. She stood bewildered, silent, longing childishly to speak, to influence him, but not knowing what ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Picture Palace?" she mimicked. Both seemed almost childishly relieved. So in spite of his successful-business-man mouth, he wasn't the kind that is less a husband than a telephone-receiver, especially at home. Still, she would have made a difference even to telephone-receivers, that could be felt ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... black or white, work more willingly if they see the aim and purpose of their toil, I told them as they set about the task what our intent was. It pleased them, and they worked with a will, being indeed childishly eager to begin the bombardment before ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... knolls of Paradise with Eve. He will be young when he sits upon the grave of the thousandth generation of our posterity, listening to the beating of his own heart, or sporting with his butterfly consort, as childishly as if he were no older than the daisy under his foot. His empire is a theme of which the tongue never grows weary, or utters all that seems to come quivering and gasping to the lips for utterance. We think, more than we ever spoke, of love; and if we have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... my distress. You must have seen an advertisement perhaps the book itself, the villanous book itself, that has been published to defend me against the Critical Review.(1008) I have been childishly unhappy about it, and had drawn up a protestation or affidavit of my knowing nothing of it; but my friends would not let me publish it. I sent to the printer, who would not discover the author—nor could I guess. They tell me nobody can suspect my being privy to It but there is an intimacy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... 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. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... mind. Warren, meeting Jack in the barn at the usual hour, said "good morning" pleasantly, but Jack merely gave a curt nod. He might be working, but there was no reason why he should pretend to like it, he said to himself childishly. ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... most inconsequent of me to mention such a childishly fabled person to you as Dick Whittington, and yet strangely enough that hero of a nursery legend will have a great deal in common with both of you in ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... came to him again. He was somewhat fretful from his illness. A gentleman[538] asked him, whether he had been abroad to-day. 'Don't talk so childishly, (said he.) You may as well ask if I hanged myself to-day.' I mentioned politicks. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I'd as soon have a man to break my bones as talk to me of publick affairs, internal or external. I have lived to see things all as bad as they ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the people on the hillside were standing up in their excitement watching the boats, which were nearly dead level. Mauryeen stood by Randal's mother, with one hand thrust childishly within her arm, and the other shading her eyes from the bright sun. Suddenly the people were startled by the sound of running feet, and all looking in one direction they saw Mauryeen's mother coming without bonnet or cloak, her face ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... he wrote two-thirds of a novel with a breathless ease of creation that made him marvel at himself and the pitiful struggles of less gifted novelists. Then in a moment of insight he picked up his manuscript and realised that what he had written was childishly crude. He had felt his story while he wrote it, but somehow or other he had failed to get his emotions on paper, and he saw quite clearly that it was worse and not better than the majority of the books which he had held up ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... slender, shapely feet of the French cocotte. Her stockings were of thin pink silk. Her slender, soft fingers were without a ring. Her jewelry, no doubt, had long since gone to the money lender. She seemed childishly happy because I sat and talked to her. Poor little Gabrielle! Her tragedy was one of genuine bereavement, or perhaps the worst of all tragedies—loneliness. I shall never think again of Vienna without picturing ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... was well looked over, with all the brothers and sisters at different stages, and the group of officers. Miss Mohun noted the talk that passed over these, as they were identified one by one, sometimes with little reminiscences, childishly full on Gillian's part, betraying on Kalliope's side friendly acquaintance, but all in as entirely ladylike terms as would have befitted Phyllis or Alethea. She could well believe in the words with which Miss White rather hastened the turning of the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blazing with a hundred candles. Coloured balls and frosted silver and wooden figures of red and blue hung all about the tree—it was most beautifully done. On a table close at hand were presents. We all clapped our hands. We were childishly delighted. The old great-aunt cried with pleasure. Boris Grogoff suddenly looked like a happy boy of ten. Happiest and proudest of them all was Markovitch. He stood there, a large pair of scissors in his hand, waiting ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... for how different a purpose! Were these the records of days, or weeks, or months? The only furniture of the cells is a raised platform of wood, the sole bed of the miserable inmate. The Italian visitors, before leaving, childishly vent their useless rage at the sight of these places of confinement, by breaking to pieces the windows and shutters, and scattering their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning. But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl pricked him. She was still in the hook of Harlan's arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him. "Not that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... that thinke the middle Zone extremely hot, because the people of the countrey can, and doe liue without clothing, wherein they childishly are deceiued: for our Clime rather tendeth to extremitie of colde, because wee cannot liue without clothing: for this our double lining, furring, and wearing so many clothes, is a remedy against extremetie, and argueth not the goodnesse of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer dallying would compel him ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... heavenly blessing that had fallen upon Denver. Special trains disgorged thousands of travellers, who were caught up in the wave of religious enthusiasm directly they arrived. The whole town was flooded with a sort of exaltation, and there was a recrudescence of childishly superstitious beliefs, which broke out with all the spontaneity and vigour that usually characterises the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... confess I was not altogether sorry to see it. In fact, my reader, I must just uncover my sin, and say that I felt a little jealous of Mr. Percivale. The negative reason was that I had not yet learned to love him. The only cure for jealousy is love. But I was ashamed too of Wynnie's behaving so childishly. Her face flushed, the tears came in her eyes, and she rose, saying, with a little choke in ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... her, it seemed with enormous heart-beats, Helen remembered Franklin's words. 'Let it melt—please let it melt, dear Helen.' But it had needed the inarticulate, the instinctive, to pierce to the depths of life. Gerald's tears, his head so boyishly pressed against her, his arms so childishly clinging, had told her what her heart might have been dead to for ever if, with reason and self-command, he had tried to put it ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
