"Babbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... us never found very full vent at Belfontaine, and that, I think, was due very largely to the quiet and kindly, but somewhat rigid, Quakerism of my grandfather. We felt and knew without babbling into words. ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... no account of any great poet, whose genius was of that dreamy cartilaginous kind, which hath its being in haze, and draws its nourishment from lights and shadows; which ponders over the mysteries of trees, and interprets the oracles of babbling waters. They have all been men—worldly men, different only from others in reasoning more by feeling than induction. Directed by impulse, in a greater degree than other men, poets are apt to be betrayed into actions which make them singular, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... had a great distaste for the quiet of country life, "there would be no need for them to be dragging themselves off into the country." In her heart Marya Dmitrievna more than once regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its babbling brook, its wide meadows, and green copses; but she never opposed her husband in anything and had the greatest veneration for his wisdom and knowledge of the world. When after fifteen years of married life he died leaving her with a son and two daughters, Marya ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... spin out a long record for this last evening at home. O, budding vines and flowers! who will train your rich luxuriance into fairy, fantastic clusterings, or watch your opening petals in the summer which is to come? Who listen to the babbling fountains, or roam the cedar-walks that border the dancing river? And O, the far, far-stretching forest, from whose mysterious depths, in a bright year passed away, I saw him emerge, and hurried down the gravelled path to meet him at ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... with music Sung by the babbling brook. Sweet lullabies with chorus clear In which the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the bed. The lad is moaning fearfully. He is babbling dreadful words and his throat rattles painfully. "How blue...? her mouth ... how bloody ... her forehead ... ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... Suddenly my friend sent for me, and I saw with my own eyes what at a distance it had seemed impossible to believe. As I entered the house, with the fresh air still upon me, I spoke confidently, with babbling ignorant tongue. 'Wait till you see her face!' was all my poor ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... When the long, white-covered wagons, bound for the far West, passed by, I thought of the novelty of a six-months' journey through the bright spring and summer days in a house on wheels, meals under shady trees and beside babbling brooks, sleeping in the open air, and finding a home, at last, where land was cheap, the soil rich and deep, and where the grains, vegetables, fruit, and flowers grew bountifully with but little toil. But ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... reason of her increasing references to Claims, and the All-Mind, and to the fact that the pain in a neglected tooth was only a manifestation of cowardly unbelief. The doctor scented mischief in the glib phrases. He held his peace heroically, though, albeit now and then he longed to shake his babbling patient as the terrier shakes ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... said: 'You are cured, Pierre Duval, but you are not yet fit to fight. You are low in your mind. You need cheering up. You are to have a month's furlough and repose. You shall go home to your farm. How is it that you call it?' I suppose I had been babbling about it in my sleep and one of the nurses had told him. He was always that way, that little Doctor Roselly, taking an interest in the men, talking with them and acting friendly. I said the farm was called ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... martial deed, the heaven-taught song, To thee I turn with swimming eyes; Where is that soul of Freedom fled? Immingled with the mighty dead, Beneath that hallow'd turf where Wallace lies Hear it not, Wallace! in thy bed of death. Ye babbling winds! in silence sweep, Disturb not ye the hero's sleep, Nor give the coward secret breath! Is this the ancient Caledonian form, Firm as the rock, resistless as the storm? Show me that eye which shot immortal ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Forever silent; even if they broke In thunder, silent; yet remember all He spoke among you, and the man who spoke; Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow Thro' either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work; whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foe; Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... make no "silence in the hills;" for the Pamet, as I saw it, is far too sedate a stream ever to be caught "babbling." It has only some three miles to run, and seems to know perfectly well that ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... morning gown; putting on her dressing-gown; shaking her long soft auburn hair over her shoulders, and glancing about the room in search of various articles of her dress,—a running flow of easy talk came babbling out ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... considerable time. Not being able to get near Mr. Montenero, and having failed in all my objects, I grew excessively tired, and was going away, leaving my mother to the care of Mowbray, but he stopped me. "Stay, stay," said he, drawing me aside, behind two connoisseurs, who were babbling about a Titian, "you will have some diversion by and by. I have a picture to sell, and you must see how it will go off. There is a painting that I bought at a stall for nothing, upon a speculation that my mother, who is a judge, will pay dear ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I passed an hour or two in talk. Florac, he told me, is part Protestant, part Catholic; and the difference in religion is usually doubled by a difference in politics. You may judge of my surprise, coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the population lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly separated. Black ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Beauty! Was the poor man insane? Had much study made of him a monomaniac babbling in a dream of absurdities? Do you ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair tumbled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tumbledown as a place can become where wind and storm have, for many years, been allowed to work havoc, they saw the old crone standing erect and sober at the roadside, on the same spot where she usually sat in a drunken stupor, lurching to and fro, and babbling incoherently, and with her were four of the children. All five were now washed and combed, and as decently dressed as was possible for them ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... glory of yellow and red. Neither the bracken nor the heather minded the July heat, but the butterflies thought it a trifle uncomfortable, and made for the clumps of trees, and looked longingly and regretfully at what had been a noisy, babbling little brook, but was now a dry and stony channel, deserted even by ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... These hang by their ears because they listened to empty and vain speech, and turned their ear away from hearing the Torah. These hang by their tongues, because they talked slander, and accustomed their tongue to foolish babbling. These hang by their feet, because they walked with them in order to spy upon their fellow-men, but they walked not to the synagogue, to offer prayer unto their Creator. These hang by their hands, because with them they robbed their neighbors of their possessions, and committed murder. These women ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... had rescue come so near, only to prove that it could not reach me? So I went on crying, with a clasping of my hands and turning up of my eyes, in incoherent prayer. I was not thinking of Madame, or of Mary Quince, or any other person, only babbling my anguish and despair helplessly in the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the mad scene in "Lucia" the use of the "white voice" suggests the babbling of the mad woman, as the same voice in the last act of "Traviata" or in the last act of "Boheme" suggests utter physical exhaustion and the approach ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... madness of Lear is as different from the feigned madness of Edgar [Footnote: There is another instance of the name distinction in Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet's pretended madness would make a very good real madness in any other author.] as from the babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in Falstaff and Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious than the gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... to bed, young man, I'll come down there and help you along," an angry whisper came from the little window up under the roof. "You've been babbling and babbling steady for half an hour," grumbled the annoyed Ethan. "How do you expect me to get any sleep with that racket going on? Come on up to bed before the old man ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's adulation, to obey and to follow all the caprices of the public mind—described Mr. Wordsworth as resembling, in the quality of his mind, an old nurse babbling in her paralytic dotage to sucking babies. If this insult was peculiarly felt by Mr. Wordsworth, it was on a consideration of the unusual imbecility of him who offered it, and not because in itself it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is the breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... time with Dame Van Winkle." With some difficulty he got down into the glen; he found the gully up which he and his companion had ascended the preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grapevines that twisted their coils ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... increasing rain, the dreariness of the road, the moanful wind in the tops of the trees; he felt that to be alone was to suppress a part of his happiness, that his light and talkative heart must seek a hearing for the babbling of its joy. So off he strode, and as he climbed over a fence, he laughingly jolted himself upon the top rail to see whether it would break. It did not, and he laughed to find a stick of old timber strong enough to support his weight. He called himself a lumbering ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the weak-eyed on their foreheads, the phylactery of the have-beens—I lay myself open to be believed a cripple, or to look an old fool. A vivacious reviewer in Punch's "Booking Office," will have a vision of me as a babbling elder peering at society from below a green pent. However—I must risk it. It says exactly what I mean; and what I ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... nun cried, running in, and instantly the babbling of voices ceased, and four girls hastened to the pianos placed on either side of the stage, two left-hands struck a series of chords in the bass, the treble notes replied, and, to the gallant measure ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... got so dead for sleep by this time that she was merely babbling. She'd probably of fallen over in her clothes if I hadn't been there. Anyway, I got her undressed and into bed. She said Clyde's goodnight song always rung in her ears till she slept. It didn't ring ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the company came Madame du Deffand, a blind old woman of seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused the lethargic man, by inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de Castelmaron—about whom he went on babbling until death stopped ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... pearl-and- gold fountain-pen, but took scant notice of them, being too deeply stirred and too much surprised at her appearance. She was no longer the vital, dashing girl he had known, but a pallid, cringing wreck of a woman. She shrank back at sight of him, babbling unintelligible words and cowering as if expecting ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... with the highest order of eloquence, he was clear, distinct, and persuasive. His style of speaking resembled not the babbling brook or the dashing cataract, but usually the limpid stream, gliding gracefully amid fields and fruits and flowers, though sometimes assuming the power and proportions of the majestic river, cutting its sure and certain way to ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... musk was everywhere, and the sound of the tapping of gold snuff-boxes, and the fluttering of fans, and the sharp, technical calls of the gamesters, and the hollow laughter of hollow hearts. There was a hired singing-girl with a lute at one end of the room, babbling of Cupid and Daphne, and green meadow and larks. But she was poorly dressed and indifferent looking; and she sang with a sad, mechanical air, as if her thoughts were far off. Hyde would have passed her without ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... depth of the little ravine, through which ran a tiny, babbling brook. This had long ago been named "Merrywater," nor had it ever seemed gayer and more winsome than then. It was like reunion with some old beloved playmate, and Amy forgot everything but the present enjoyment as she stooped and dabbled in the water here and there. Sometimes she came to the fantastic ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... irons and cast into a low, dark hole, that cold frosty night, and the next day, without even giving him a morsel of bread or a drop of water, he was thrown on to a peasant's sledge, and dragged before the King to receive judgment. Erik himself cast his sister's fair name and fame into slander's babbling pool, and high dames and citizens' wives washed unspotted ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... perfectly, and have all the joy thereof. Now send them back into the cave, and they will be apparently much blinder than the folk who have been there all the time, and their talk of what they have seen will be taken for the babbling of fools, or worse. Small wonder that those who have beheld the light have but little mind to return to the twilight cave which is the common world. But remember—everyone in the cave possesses the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... ever thus that love is taught By his divinest teacher; He silent adoration seeks, But shuns the prosy preacher. Now read me right, ye gentle anes, Nor deem my lesson hollow; The deepest river silent rins, The babbling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... my bosom now. And, O defender of our house! attend My secret utterance. No friendly ear Is that which hearkens for my voice. My thought Must not be blazoned with her standing by, Lest through her envious and wide-babbling tongue She fill the city full of wild surmise. List, then, as I shall speak: and grant the dreams Whose two-fold apparition I to-night Have seen, if good their bodement, be fulfilled: If hostile, turn their influence on my foes. And yield not them their wish that would by guile Thrust ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... jeers of the court-folk; I am not received as a guest should be; I am girded at with harsh gibing, and stung with babbling taunts. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... is down with a fever." And at once prepared a simple remedy which soon silenced the babbling lips in slumber, after which she sent ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... fur his bag is right down yere, I keeps tellin' you," Trencher heard the scared darky babbling as he was ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the canopy of boughs her brother made to shield her from the dew, listening to the soft sounds about her, the twitter of a restless bird, the bleat of some belated lamb, the ripple of a brook babbling like a baby in its sleep. All night she watched the changing shores, silvery green or dark with slumberous shadow, and followed the moon in its tranquil journey through the sky. When it set, she drew her cloak about her, and, pillowing her head ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... me laugh. Mrs. Lutwidge has been babbling, that she will go to Portsmouth with the Admiral; who says, he shall be so fully employed that he cannot be much with her. She whispered Bedford—"I have many friends ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... with his pistol butt.] Take that, thou babbling fool! this is no fitting time to preach. Ho! Jepherson. Bring ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the poreblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp at night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling Hall, For thee, fair Justice, welcome all! Thus though my noon of life be passed, Yet let my setting sun, at last, Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! There let me taste the homefelt bliss. Of innocence and inward peace; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... my soul was made manifest shortly afterward. For one evening when once again the wind blew mightily down the chimney, and the rain beat hard upon the roof as I was being put to bed, the mechanical babbling of my lips was suddenly transformed into a real, anxious prayer, and therewith the spiritual navel-string, which up to that time had bound me exclusively to my parents, was broken. Indeed things soon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... matter really, but of matter so difficult to handle. The poem is a mere incident, such as happens every day: we are permitted to overhear a scrap of trivial conversation; but this very triviality does but deepen the effect of what we surmise, a dark obstruction, underneath the "babbling runnel" of light talk. A study not entirely dissimilar, though, as its name warns us, more difficult to grasp, is the fourth of the Bad Dreams: how fine, how impressive, in its dream-distorted picture of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... my father and give it to her. I'll be revenged on her in all sorts of ways. Yes indeed, I'll bring her to such a pass that—my father will have to beg his bread. But can I really be in possession of my senses, babbling here in this fashion about these futurities? Good Lord! I do believe I love her— seeing I ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... rode on, out of that canon, over the rocky ridge, down into another canon, on and on, past an old camp-site, along a babbling brook for miles, and so at last out into ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the breathless sky, Bathed in the limpid light; while, as the sigh Of secret love, silent as shadows glide, The soft wind played among the leafy pride Of the green trees, and scarce the aspen shook; A babbling voice was heard from every brook, And down the vale, in murmurs low and long, Tweed poured its ancient and unwearied song. Before, behind, around, afar, and near, The wakeful landrail's watchword met the ear. Then Edmund leaned against the hallowed tree, Whose shade had been ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... the scorching sun that beat down from the pale blue of the cloudless sky upon a sea hardly less blue in its greater depths. Only the hope that they would soon reach Timor seemed to rouse them from a state of babbling ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... my dear critic, the ancient Aryans were just doddering—the old duffers: or babbling, the babes. But as for me, I have some respect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleeve than just the marvel of the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... am Glory!" As a tomb That groans on opening, "Say, were thine," Cried the dark figure. "I consume Thee and thy splendors utterly. More names have faded in my gloom Than chronicles or poesy Have kept alive for babbling earth To boast of in despite of me." The other cried, in scornful mirth, "Of all that was or is thou curse, Thou dost o'errate thy frightful worth! Between the cradle and the hearse, What one of mine has lived unknown, Whether through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he was not listening. Her words sounded ridiculous and babbling. He was taking no ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... extinct in the second generation. The last of them, Ursula Babb, the grand-daughter of John, was to be seen wandering up and down the little beach of Lynmouth, a half-crazed old crone, cursed with the evil-eye, and babbling disjointed and incoherent stories of the ruin ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... from some invisible tree-top above, or the air is filled with a delicious perfume, for the source of which one seeks around in vain, as the flowers that cause it are far overhead out of sight, lost in the great overshadowing crown of verdure. Numerous babbling brooks intersect the forest, with moss-covered stones and fern-clad nooks. One's thoughts are led away to the green dells in English denes, but are soon recalled; for the sparkling pools are the favourite haunts of the fairy humming-birds, and like an ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... "What man—not that babbling idiot, Bridgers?" He said something, but instantly recovered his self-possession. "Keep quiet," he said with professional sternness. "Yes, you are the heiress of an interesting gentleman ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... The officer went on to reconnoitre, and then, to the great discomfiture of the forty fellows huddled together in the clay watercourse, a hundred or so Turks put in an appearance on the brink of the steep cliff on the left. Babbling excitedly they looked curiously down on the silent crouching troopers. Trapped, and entirely at the Turks' mercy, Mac momentarily expected annihilation, and wondered vaguely why it did not come. Retreat was hopeless, and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... not too inexperienced. Caelius's smile, for instance, boyish and inviting, had seemed to her full of promise. He was worth the winning and was close at hand. Catullus had introduced him, which would add piquancy to her letting the din of the Forum succeed the babbling of Heliconian streams. Suddenly she laughed aloud, cruelly, as another thought struck her. How furious and how impotent Cicero would be! If she could play with this disciple of his, and then divest him of every shred of reputation, she might ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... life. The hillside was just turning purple with heather bloom, and along the winding, stony road the yellow asphodels were dancing in the wind. Everywhere there was the scent of bog-myrtle and wild-rose and sweetbrier, and the tinkling sound of becks babbling over glossy rocks; and in the glorious sunshine and luminous air, the mountains appeared to expand and elevate, and to throw out glowing peaks and summits ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... treated here, not daring at first to move her for fear of permanent shock to her reason; who could give them no help to establish her identity; who had a thousand absurd fears and fancies and accusations to make; who in her babbling had at one time accused Bayne Trevors of having forcibly abducted her; who at another had cried that it was a man named Carson, a man named Lee, who had brought ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... illures, tempts and often robs our domestic life of its sweetness, while the black man, with the wrong conception of freedom, often makes it impossible for our men to leave their homes unguarded." "Bah! away with such nonsensical babbling! You are saying, Mrs. Bruce, that which down in your innermost soul you do not believe. Such talk as that has given Southern women undesirable notoriety, and is making the world believe that to keep us pure it costs yearly hundreds of ignominious human sacrifices, a thing that we should rise up ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... among the wild flowers, making friendship with the dragon-fly, With the ant in her circling citadel, with the spider at her silk-loom, Talking to the babbling brook, speaking kindly to the uncouth terrapin, And frog, who to them seem'd dancing joyously in watery halls. Like the chirping of the wood-robin murmured their tuneful voices, Or rang out in merry laughter, gladdening the ear of the Mother, Who when ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... a frightful thing to see a strong man broken. About me, at the one time, were forty strong men being broken. Ever the cry for water went up, and the place became lunatic with the crying, sobbing, babbling and raving of men ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... may go hang: what does a babbling poet know about dreams? Pauper dreams may come through those gates, for all I know; that was the kind that Homer saw, and not over clearly at that, as he was blind. But my beauty came through golden gates, golden himself and clothed ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... could not agree about their chief good, or wherein to place the happiness of mankind, nor had any of them a tolerable answer upon this difficulty, to satisfy a reasonable person. For, to say, as the most plausible of them did, that happiness consisted in virtue, was but vain babbling, and a mere sound of words, to amuse others and themselves; because they were not agreed what this virtue was, or wherein it did consist; and likewise, because several among the best of them taught quite different things, placing happiness in health or good fortune, in riches or in honour, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... one another. What did it mean? This babbling of strange names? Was it possible that they were on the track of discovering the identity of the girl who now denied the name she ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... Seymour. The delegates, hushed into silence by the dominating desire to verify rumours of an impending change, now gave vent to long, excited cheering. "The folks were frantic," said an eye-witness; "the delegates daft. All other enthusiasms were as babbling brooks to the eternal thunder of Niagara. The whole mass was given over to acclaims that cannot even be suggested ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... marries Cordelia, and they reign happily ever afterward. As for Lear, he advances into a gentle convalescence. Before the week is out he will be sunning himself on the bench beneath his pear tree and babbling of his early days. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and his voice had ever that pleasant undertone of laughter which endears. "You villain, have you been making love to Elsin Grey, that she should come babbling of Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault, Mr. Renault ere I had set foot in my own hallway? It was indecent, I tell you—not a word for me, civil or otherwise, not a question how I had 'scaped the Skinners at ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... doing," said he, writing to a friend, "the oppressed find double gain; first, what is written may be submitted to the judgment of others; and second, one has a better chance of working on the fears, if not on the conscience, of an arrogant and babbling despot, who would otherwise overpower by ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... essential, and presently the interloper was no longer gaunt or pallid or apprehensive, but grew pink and cherubic of build, and arrogant of mind. He had no sensitive sub-current of suspicion as to his welcome; he filled the house with his gay babbling, and if no maternal chirpings encouraged the development of his ideas and his powers of speech, his cheerful spirits seemed strong enough to thrive on their own stalwart endowments. His hair began to curl, and a neighbor, ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... hands of the black Republican party. It has already declared war against you and your institutions. It every day commits acts of war against you; it has already compelled you to arm for your defense. Listen to no vain babbling; to no treacherous jargon about 'overt acts'; they have already been committed. Defend yourselves! The enemy is at your door; wait not to meet him at your hearthstone; meet him at the door-sill, and drive him from the Temple of Liberty, or pull down its ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... that we preach, we have not devised or yet imagined, nor taken it from cunning fabulists who know how to speak brilliantly of all things (such as at that very time the Greeks were), for it is mere fable, and fancy, and idle babbling that they cunningly give forth, and wherein they would be wise,—such we have not listened to, nor have we followed them; that is, we preach not what is from the hands of men, but are sure that it is of God, and have ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... waltzing. Gentlemen had worn paper nightcaps, put on masks, and been led about blindfold. They had crept under chairs, waved flags from tables, thrown up colored balls, and unraveled puzzles—all to the rhythm of the waltz-measure babbling on like a summer brooklet under the sun, through ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... for martial deed and sacred song, To thee I turn with swimming eyes; Where is that soul of freedom fled? Immingled with the mighty dead! Beneath the hallowed turf where Wallace lies! Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death; Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep, Disturb ye not ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... on the poop duplicated the previous one, save that the men were more excited, more frightened. They were babbling ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... adorn my flowing tongue, Than ever man pronounced or angel sung; Had I all knowledge, human and divine That thought can reach, or science can define; And had I power to give that knowledge birth, In all the speeches of the babbling earth, Did Shadrach's zeal my glowing breast inspire, To weary tortures, and rejoice in fire; Or had I faith like that which Israel saw, When Moses gave them miracles and law: Yet, gracious Charity, indulgent guest, Were not thy power exerted in my breast, Those speeches ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the toiling ship, the dip of oars resonant in the hollow fog and a ripple babbling on ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the move. The new abode was a charming house, with the park behind it, and the space between nearly all glass. Great ferns, tall citrons, fragrant shrubs, brilliant flowers, grew there; a stone-lined pool, with water-lilies above, gold-fish below, and a cool, sparkling, babbling fountain in the middle. There was an open space round it, with low chairs and tables, and the parrot on her perch. Indeed, Popinjay Parlour was the family title of this delightful abode; but it might almost as well have been called Mother ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the miniature portrait which Margaret had given me the day of our little ride and talk in London and then an orderly came with a message and that gave me an excuse to put an end to this untimely babbling for which I had no heart. The message was from Solomon. He had got word that the British war-ship had come back up the river and was two miles above Stony Point with a ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... mountain in moonlight; and Shibli Bagarag said, 'Lo! I have marked wonders, and lived a life since our parting; and this well, 'tis a miracle to dip in it, and by it sit many maidens weeping and old men babbling, and youths that were idle youths striking bubbles from the surface of the water. The well is rounded with marble, and the sky is clear in it, cool in it, the whole ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which he had passed so many days? But he forgot all in the figure that advanced to receive them. With a pretty grace she gave her hand to his mother and welcomed "Mr. Overbeck." How she talked—talked like a babbling brook! It was now his turn to open big eyes and be silent. He tried to recall the girl he had left. Vain endeavor! This bright creature, grave and gay, silent but ready, respectful yet confident, how ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales Of endless treasure; Thy bounty offers easy sales Of lasting pleasure; Thou ask'st the conscience what she ails, And swear'st to ease her; There's none can want where thou supply'st; There's none can give where thou deny'st. Alas! fond world, thou ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... would make me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name. I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night. Your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out OLIVIA. Oh, you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... there was no stopping him. He seemed to know that there was something wrong, and twice tried to pull himself together and confer rationally with the Doctor; but his mind ran out of control at once, and he fell back to a whisper and the story of his troubles. It is terrible to hear a big man babbling like a child of all that a man usually locks up, and puts away in the deep of his heart. Moriarty read out his very soul for the benefit of any one who was in the room between ten- thirty that night and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... she might breakfast undisturbed. There is something admirably, astonishingly firm, in the texture of her mind. Laura has been down, babbling to me all she knew. At eight o'clock, when it had been light a full hour, Anna, after once or twice crossing her chamber to consider, turned the key and resolutely opened the door; expecting by her manner, Laura says, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... she went babbling on as if he were broken-hearted, in need of her greatest care and tenderness, although he really wasn't at all; and for the moment she actually made him feel as though ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... early orb of morn! Welcome, infant day! O'er the wood-top'd mountain borne, Mark its coming ray! Now o'er babbling brooks it beams; Sips from each flower its dew; Now with glorious gladdening gleams Wakes the world anew. Zephyrs first, o'er flowers that slumber'd, Quit their couch, and play; Breathe o'er flowers ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... misfortunes set her crying again, and again, with quiet patience, he consoled her. Presently she was babbling cheerfully of her home, her mother, and her dolls, and asking many questions. He made the replies politeness demanded, but he lent an abstracted ear to her talk, for he was considering different plans for escaping Mr. Biggleswade, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... farm down in the hollow there, isn't it? And how long have you been herding?" asked Grace, who still stood on the stepping-stones, and pursued the conversation with the noisy little stream babbling round her. ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... practising them. He then conceded to the impetuous penitent the kiss of peace, in a slight embrace which was like the accolade given by a monarch to new knights.[308] The whole scene is ignoble. We seem to be watching an unclean cauldron, with Theresa's mother, a cringing and babbling crone, standing witch-like over it and infusing suspicion, falsehood, and malice. When minds are thus surcharged, any accident suffices to release the evil creatures that lurk ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... what a world's convention of agonies is here! All external nature in a storm, all moral nature convulsed,—the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the desperate fidelity of Kent—surely such a scene was never conceived before or since! Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific than any which a Michael Angelo, inspired ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... reproof was as meaningless as the babbling of a baby. Neither disapproval nor black looks availed; unchecked the merriment went on until exhausted by its own violence. I knew she was laughing at me, but what mattered? To her I was a comical old figure in a strange museum. To me she stood for all I had ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... and foreign powers a broad hint that the North was no longer a unit. The coincidence of the meeting with the Federal reverses before Richmond made its professed object all the more ridiculous. The babbling and bawling of the speakers about "the rights of the South," and "the infamous Abolitionists who disgraced Congress," were but faint echoes of the Confederate cannon which had just ceased to carry death into the Union ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... now that no one has been babbling to you. We will never quarrel any more. You will do as I wish, and we will have no more disputing. Are they bringing ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... things to hear,—the birds singing and the bees humming; and so many beautiful things to see,—the flowers and butterflies and green grass! And after a while he came to a wood, where every tree wore a green dress; and through the wood, under the shade of the trees, flowed a babbling creek. ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... the wilderness! I love The earth and sky! Look at those birds, Far as the fleecy clouds! And here Are flowers with which to wreathe my bow. With it I'll bring thee deer and fowl to dress, When by and by we reach a babbling stream Where we may ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... well content, if men would learn to be content, and to refrain from vain babbling. They glory not of their own merits, seeing they ascribe no good unto themselves, but all unto Me, seeing that I of my infinite charity have given them all things. They are filled with so great love of the Divinity, and with such overflowing joy, that no glory is lacking to them, neither can ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she saw Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Palladin asked. "Two whole caravans have vanished on the way to Estka beyond the mountains." And he told us more, reports that had arrived from other cities. Survivors had arrived, with the light of madness in their eyes, babbling some nameless fear. Others had died from ghastly wounds—great burns that refused to heal, but spread a kind of disease through the tissues. I, Braanol, examined some of these ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... Fails at last, for his senses reel, His nerves collapse, and, with sleep-sealed eyes, Prone and helpless a log he lies! A hundred hearts beat placidly on, Unwitting they that their warder's gone; A hundred lips are babbling blithe, Some seconds hence they in pain may writhe. For the pace is hot, and the points are near, And Sleep hath deadened the driver's ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... is why we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook. Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we dimly view them through ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... that divine charity toward the Church (which covers the multitude of sins) with which they are resplendent, neither they nor their country would be, by the carnal judgment, counted worthy of so great labor in their behalf. For they themselves are given much to lying, theft, and drunkenness, vain babbling, and profane dancing and singing; and are still, as S. Gildas reports of them, 'more careful to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair, than decently to cover their bodies; while their land (by reason of the tyranny of their chieftains, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... work abroad, but she became aware that she was in the grip of an unreasonable emotion that prevented her from this. It was as horrible to her to see the coldly logical apparatus of her mind churning out these irrational conclusions as it would have been for her to find her mother babbling in drunkenness; and this feeling that for Yaverland to know of her misery would be a culminating humiliation that she could not face seemed disgustingly mad. So she threw herself into a black drowse ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... warbler; the Brazilian king thrush; the rock thrushes: the imitative Australian thrush; the blackbird; the North American mimic thrush; the Chinese and South American thrushes, celebrated for their babbling; the yellow orioles, of Europe and the east; and here also are the short-legged ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... say seemed to do any good. He was always prattling, anyhow. She could no more stop his flow of grunts and squeals than she could have kept the water in the brook from babbling down ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tear there in the flesh, but Raf could see little difference between it and those left by the feasters. However the officer, holding a strip of cloth over his nose, bent stiffly above it for a closer look and then made some statement which sent his command into a babbling clamor. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... soil. The evening wind was blowing, and the sycamore above him cast its bronze leaves into the flood which sucked them under, or bore them with it on its way to the larger river and the ultimate sea. This stream had no babbling voice; its note was low and grave. Youth and mountain sources forgotten, it hearkened before the time to ocean voices. The boy, idle upon the lichened stone, listened too, to distant utterances, to the sirens singing beyond the shadowy cape. The earth soothed him; he lay with half ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... if all dinners were as wearisome as this. Rollins finally followed Trennahan's example and devoted himself to Caro Folsom, a yellow-haired girl with babyish green eyes, a lisp, and an astute brain. On Magdalena's left was a blond and babbling youth named Ellis, who made no secret of the fact that he was afraid of his intellectual neighbour; he stammered and blushed every time she spoke to him. He had gone in with Rose Geary, a blonde fairy-like little creature, as light of foot as of wit, and ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... gloomy and convulsive history of my departed brother, his crime and his insanity? What! bring that history, connected as it was with the fate of Isora, before the curious and the insolent gaze of the babbling world? Bare that awful record to the jests, to the scrutiny, the marvel and the pity, of that most coarse of all tribunals,—an English court of law? and that most torturing of all exposures,—the vulgar comments of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glanced at his wife, then they laughed together. Peter stepped over a snake fence, went carefully down a hill, crossed the meadow to the shade of a tree, sat on the bank of the brook and watched Peaches as she studied first the clear babbling water, then the grass trailing in the stream, the bushes, trees, and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... With babbling tongues you go about, And only scheme how to make out The lies you scatter round. Hear me—Be careful what you say; People ere long your words will weigh, And liars you'll ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... young fellow did not convince him. He had showed the white feather once on impulse, without a chance to reason out the thing. But if he deserted this wounded man now he would be a yellow coyote—and he knew it. There was something in him stronger than fear that took him back to the helpless outlaw babbling disjointed ravings. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... Pharaoh Daggs thrust his scarred face out of the companion, and with a fierce roar of laughter waved a black bottle above his head. The others followed, drinking and babbling curses, and last of all Stede Bonnet, pale, dishevelled, mad with blood and liquor, stood bareheaded by the hatch. He raised his hand in a gesture of silence and all the hubbub ceased. "We have beaten them!" he cried between twitching lips. "I Captain Thomas, the chiefest ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... noisy and rush precipitately; and babbling brooks fill the rivers till they rise in floods, demolishing bridges and overwhelming cities. So men, when thrilled by a new idea, are sometimes impatient; and, when public sentiment is aroused, are liable to be borne on by the current of feeling. ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek songbook babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak—the more shameful, because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... There was nothing dull about this girl. On the contrary, she had intelligence and feeling. There had been a rich vibrance in her voice as she told of that frightful ordeal; a dimness had come into her eyes as she spoke of her mother gabbling feverishly of the green hills and babbling brooks; she had yearned maternally at mention of those wretched little children. No, there was a sincere emotional quality concealed in this young giantess, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... mad Queen, Babbling of him, amid thy vacant halls, Whose ears have long been heedless of thy calls; Sad monument of pomp that once hath been, Thy staring eyes mark ever the same scene Of levelled muskets, and a corpse which falls, Dabbled in blood, beneath the city walls— Though twenty years have rolled ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... it is one of the precepts of good breeding ever to let anger control the spirit, Virginia had made a breach indeed. Her little hands clenched, and she had a fierce and insane desire to beat those babbling lips with her fists. Then she struggled to regain ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... from birth, in a dungeon where no light or sound from the outer world, could reach him. At seventeen he was still a mental infant, crying and chattering without much apparent intelligence. When released, the light was disagreeable to his eyes; and, after the babbling youth had been taught to speak a few words, he begged to be taken back to the dungeon. Only cold and dismal silence seemed to satisfy him. All that gave pleasure to others gave his perverted senses only pain. The sweetest music was a source of anguish to him, and he could eat only ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... wood all day. No man or woman passes my cabin in a month. But I am never lonely. I love these vast red canyon walls towering above me. And the silence is so sweet. Think of the hellish din that filled my ears. Even now—sometimes, the brook here changes its babbling murmur to the roar of war. I never understood anything of the meaning of nature until I lived under these looming ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... home-details of Sunnyside, further than to say that this delightful visit of three or four days gave us the impression that Mr. Irving's element seemed to be at home, as head of the family. He took us for a stroll over the grounds,—some twenty acres of wood and dell, with babbling brooks,—pointing out innumerable trees which he had planted with his own hands, and telling us anecdotes and reminiscences of his early life:—of his being taken in the Mediterranean by pirates;—of his standing ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Beaucaire; a moody and peremptory Peer, Lord Times; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of preposterous revue beauties with their caps set at the Prince, against an all-gold background with the orphans babbling in a royal box above the throne. Of course you have the heroine's belated entry, her triumph and her abrupt flight, and the voice of the distraught Prince crying after her, which is of course the voice of her own policeman, who finds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... day in summer weather—almost too hot, in the middle of the day, to be pleasant. Sheepskin and bourka are dispensed with, as we ride lazily along under a blazing sun through pleasant green plains of maize and barley, irrigated by babbling brooks of crystal-clear water. A few miles from Abadeh is a cave-village built into the side of a hill. From this issue a number of repulsive-looking, half-naked wretches, men and women, with dark scowling faces, and dirty masses of coarse black hair. Most ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... to me, but she doesn't understand me. You'll like her. I'll tell you what sort of a person she is." She did so at such length that the lunch hour passed before she finished, and a hush fell upon all the babbling voices about, as the monitor came back ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... glory of the lighted mind. How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind! The station brook to my new eyes Was babbling out of Paradise, The waters rushing from the rain Were singing, 'Christ has ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... a critic may consider too much that has been set down here is disconnected, yet if he will let a gramophone record an animated conversation, he will find that it ebbs and flows with the uncertain babbling of a brook—and so it has been with me. Only the other day, in the preface to Camden's History of the British Islands, I came ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Such ancient babbling still passeth for "wisdom"; because it is old, however, and smelleth mustily, THEREFORE is it the more honoured. Even ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... more and a forest of venerable oak trees; meadows with canals of freestone where the spring-tide flowed along under bowers of trees, a veritable wilderness where the vegetation had been left to itself since the Revolution; springs babbling along in the shade; wild flowers, cattle-tracks, the remains of a garden and the ruins of buildings. Here and there a few stones had survived. The door was still to be seen, and the benches were there on which the beggars used to sit while taking their soup; ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... evening; we were like so many boys released from school, jostling each other as we reeled or ran down the flight of seven or eight stairs that led from the colonnade into the garden,—some laughing, some whooping, some scolding, some babbling. The wine had brought out, as it were, each man's inmost character. Some were loud and quarrelsome, others sentimental and whining; some, whom we had hitherto thought dull, most mirthful; some, whom we had ever regarded as discreet and taciturn, most garrulous and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the carpet, Beeton ultimately succeeded in conveying the glass to me. Hale, never taking his gaze from Smith, gulped a little of the water and then thrust my hand away. As I turned to place the tumbler upon a small table the resumed the wordless babbling, and now, with his index finger, pointed ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... pinned against the seat opposite, transfixed by a long splinter as with a javelin, was the dapper young man, horribly writhing and mowing, and then stark dead in an instant, staring with wide open eyes and distorted face like a ghastly mask. Moans and shrieks, grindings and roarings, howlings and babbling cries that were human yet were piercingly inarticulate filled the air with an inhuman din which drove him to a frenzy. It seemed as if the world had ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... "Thou prince of all babbling braggarts!" cried Conrad, when the story was ended: "Can't you open your mouth, man, without lying? and yet you are already come to years. Folks that hold traffic for any time with spirits, grow shar-pwitted. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... through the compound singing, and a hyena stood afar off and mocked them. A hyena would convince a Sadducee of the Resurrection of the Dead—the worst sort of Dead. Then came the ratub—a curious meal, half native and half English in composition—with the old khansamah babbling behind my chair about dead and gone English people, and the wind-blown candles playing shadow-bo-peep with the bed and the mosquito-curtains. It was just the sort of dinner and evening to make a man think of every single ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... he stopped her. 'I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I was dying, too, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... my knees, staring up at this beloved shape through blinding tears and babbling I know not what. And then arms were about me, tender yet strong and compelling, a soft cheek was pressed to mine and in ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... anything to surpass the reality which he had just witnessed. Awed and breathless he advances; when lo! the light of the afternoon sun welcomes him as he leaves the tunnel, and behold a smiling valley—a babbling brook, a village with tall belfries, and meadows of brilliant green—these are the things which greet him, and he smiles to himself as the terror passes away and in another ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... go past the rock, and that the thread was leading her straight up to it. A shudder ran through her from head to foot when she found that the thread was actually taking her into the hole out of which the stream ran. It ran out babbling joyously, but she had ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... the wood-dove calling in the lone stillness of the summertime; you have found the unheeded brooklet singing and babbling where no ear comes to hear. Under dead leaves and snow-banks the delicate arbutus unfolds its simple blossom, answering some heavenly call for color. So, too, this other ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... it, if disagreeable, half-way. I never meet anything half-way. But it's a cruel trick time plays on us, this making of body and brain a withered, wrinkled thing, whimpering for warmth and food and sleep, and babbling of the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... cutoff. He saw things in the shop windows that he had forgotten, but he had no desire for them. And over everything came the incessant yammer of voices saying nothing, radios blaring, television babbling, and ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... 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 at ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... still cling to me. Though I castrated myself, they would remain—five invisible testicles. It is impossible to possess. Folly to attempt. As long as the senses remain life clings like a dead whore to my darkness. Even my madness that I prided myself upon is a babbling witch astride a phallus, her lips bending over it with ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... rid of him. The gumming up of the horses' manes and the braiding of their tails have already made the innkeeper look strangely at us. Had he not set it down as the trick of some malicious groom, it had been worse for us. And I do fear the old man's babbling tongue. I will sound him to see how much will content him, and perchance from thy pouch and mine the sum may ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... pretty those icicles are, That are seen so near,—that are seen so far; —Those dropping waters that come from the rocks And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. That silvery stream that runs babbling along, Making a murmuring, dancing song. Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's side, And men, that, like specters, among them glide. And waterfalls that are heard from far, And come in sight when very near. And ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... the landing. Our feminine passenger sprang ashore and ran up the steps, to be seized in her father's arms. Mrs. Colton was there also, babbling hysterically. I watched and listened for a moment. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bread and bacon, Smoke the pipe of peace, And, ere we be drowsy, Give our boots a grease. Homer's heroes did so, Why not such as we? What are sheets and servants? Superfluity. Pray for wives and children Safe in slumber curled, Then to chat till midnight O'er this babbling world. Of the workmen's college, Of the price of grain, Of the tree of knowledge, Of the chance of rain; If Sir A. goes Romeward, If Miss B. sings true, If the fleet comes homeward, If the mare will do,— Anything and everything— Up there in the sky ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... by his two arms; she was half hysterical in that moment of her release, and was babbling an incoherent string of words; a description of her capture—her fear—her gratitude—all in an inextricably confused rush ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace |
