"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glitter of the avenue, The jewelled women holding parasols, The lathered horses fretting at delay, The customary afternoon blockade, The babel and the babble, the brilliant show— And then the dusky quiet of the nave. The pillared space, an organ strain that throbs Mysteriously somewhere, a rainbow shaft Shed from a saint's robe, powdering the spectral air, A workman with hard hands who bows his head, And ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... sympathies, but not in powers, for his powers were superior. This man grew according to the need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... accumulations of private wealth. Defoe's projects were of an extremely varied kind. The classification was not strict. His spirited definition of the word "projects" included Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel, as well as Captain Phipps's scheme for raising the wreck of a Spanish ship laden with silver. He is sometimes credited with remarkable shrewdness in having anticipated in this Essay some of the greatest public improvements of modern times—the protection of ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... however, has been "interpreted" so often, either with condescending pity or nauseous sentimentality, that it is the aim of this book to speak simply and carefully amid a babel of unauthentic utterance. Nevertheless, the contents of this volume do not pretend to exact historical accuracy; this is poetry rather than history, although the legends and facts upon which it rests have been gathered with much ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... sun had representatives there, and the consequent confusion of tongues was equal to that of Babel. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... considering it straitly, behold, he saw written, as a crown over its head, in letters of pearl, these words, "This is the counterfeit presentment of Badi'a al-Jamal, daughter of Shahyal bin Sharukh, a King of the Kings of the true-believing Jann who have taken up their abode in the city of Babel and sojourn in the garden of Iram, Son of 'Ad the Greater.'"[FN389]—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... was full of people newly come from the court, and discussing the trial in all its bearings. In the babel I heard a dozen different opinions given in as many seconds, and learnt enough, too, to make me content with the jury I had had. But the warmth of the place was pleasant, and I elbowed my way forward ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Babel, Rome, those proud Heaven-daring Wonders, Lo under ground in Dust and Ashes lie, For earthly Kingdoms ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... rusty in its age; distant furnaces of it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a Babel of iron sounds. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a big German commercial town was proclaimed by a beating drum, the noisy parade of fire-men, the clanging of bells, and all the hullaballoo that panic and curiosity could make. But last year, in Berlin, looking at houses like the tower of Babel, I said something of fire, and was told that no one felt nervous nowadays, the arrangements for dealing with ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... a lull in the tumult on yonder hill, And the clamour has grown less loud, Though the Babel of tongues is never still, With the presence of such a crowd. The bell has rung. With their riders up At the starting post they muster, The racers stripp'd for the "Melbourne Cup", All gloss and polish and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... amusing account of a house where the Puritan element was still in the ascendant. A numerous company is present, and each little group being occupied with its own subject, the general effect is that of another Babel. While one is engaged in quoting the classics, another confides to his neighbors how ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... volume of Manchester, but could not read it; it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hear and feel the invisible, the inaudible and the intangible, though they cannot relate their experiences to others.' Thus Zohar, the wisest of all the books of wisdom, and therefore one that no one believes. I shall build no tower of Babel, but I shall tempt the Powers into my mousetrap, and send them to the Powers below, the subterranean ones, so that they can be neutralised. It is the higher Schedim, who have come between mortal men and the Lord Zabaoth; and that is why joy, peace ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... fear when Sion prays; Babel, prepare for long distress When Sion's God himself arrays In terror, and ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... to the usual pictorial representations in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than chapters of laboured description. Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure; nothing can be more remarkable than its general ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... that, in Basque, "you spell Solomon, and pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar." Its antiquity is so great that one legend calls it the "language of the angels," and another says that Tubal brought it to Spain before the lingual disaster at Babel! And still another relates that the devil once tried to learn it, but that, after studying it for seven years and learning only three words, he gave it ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... proceeding. But the heat at Ostend was unbearable; the sun just poured down on the strand, and an irresistible longing came over me for my own cool forest home. Thank the Lord, I am rid of the heat and noise of that Babel at last." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... later the castle was swarming with workmen; the banging of hammers, the rasp of saws, the spattering of mortar, the crashing of stone and the fumes of charcoal crucibles extended to the remotest recesses; the tower of Babel was being reconstructed in the language of six or eight nations, and everybody was happy. I had no idea there were so many tinsmiths in the world. Every artisan in the town across the river seems to have felt it his duty to come over and help the men ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... drove the arrow straight to its mark. As the gaily plumaged creature fluttered to earth its companions and the little monkeys set up a most terrific chorus of wails and screaming protests. The whole forest became suddenly a babel of hoarse ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... A babel of voices rose in reply. No one had done it. The door was shut, the windows were fastened, a hasty search was made in the cupboards and under the back desks, in the hope of discovering a lurking enemy; but even while ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... and George, when he entered the public room, heard such a Babel of English voices, and such a clatter of English spoons that he might have fancied himself at the top of the Righi or in a Rhine steamboat. But the subjects under discussion all savoured ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... however, by no means diminished the girls' powers of conversation; and as they banked up plants in corners of the staircase, and rearranged furniture in the sitting-rooms, the babel of voices was as deafening, and seemingly ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... such incessant variation in remoter times? and, if it be true, why not imagine that when one form of speech was lost, another was suddenly and supernaturally created by a gift of tongues or confusion of languages, as at the building of the Tower of Babel? Where are the memorials of all the intermediate dialects, which must have existed, if this doctrine of perpetual fluctuation be true? And how comes it that the tongues now spoken do not pass by insensible gradations the one into the other, and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... instant attention. I busied myself with my plate. The Director assumed his harshest tone, and asked the cause of the altercation. Abonus leaned over and whispered something in his ear. I remember next a room full of confusion, a babel of conflicting voices, and a whirling glimpse of ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, From some far shore the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... such, that scarcely could they shew With greater force or greater rage around, Than if it were this purpose then to blow The mighty tower of Babel to the ground.... Now rising to the clouds they seem to go O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end; Now to the bowels of the deep below; It seems to all their senses, they descend; Notus and Auster, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... huge rock surround; Like heaps of ruined towers which strew the ground, See Babel now deserted and dismayed! Huge witness to the folly of mankind; Four distant mountains when the moonlight shined Seem covered with ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of their number may be formed from the following statement of Mr. Layard, as to the multitudes which are to be found on the western coast. "At Chilaw, I have seen such vast flights of parroquets hurrying towards the coco-nut trees which overhang the bazaar, that their noise drowned the Babel of tongues bargaining for the evening provisions. Hearing of the swarms that resorted to this spot, I posted myself on a bridge some half mile distant, and attempted to count the flocks which came from a single direction to the eastward. About four o'clock in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... is part and parcel of that horrible deep-red-plush nuisance, the Hotel-omnibus. He and it are inseparables, and make up a sort of Centaur between them. Once outside the Railway-station, I am besieged by a babel of these Porter-omnibuses—"Bear Hotel, Sor;" "Grand Hotel, Sor!"—This, from a very dilapidated specimen, which, on inspection, turns out to be "Grand Hotel Du Lac;" a pirate porter-omnibus in fact; at last I find The Grand Hotel vehicle, and functionary. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... on studies, classes and roommates; discussing the advent of new teachers, pupils and improvements, when a tall, gracious woman of, perhaps, thirty-five years suddenly appeared in the doorway, her fair face gleaming with humorous appreciation of the animated scene and babel before her, and enjoined silence with the uplifting of ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... time. The ticket-collector, running from carriage to carriage, was in too great a hurry to discover that the little bit of pasteboard which Joseph Wilmot exhibited was only a return-ticket to Wandsworth. There was a brief scramble, a banging of doors, and Babel-like confusion of tongues; and then the engine gave its farewell shriek and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a loud cry broke from all the officers that they would not permit Wallenstein to be taken from them. Then a babel of talk arose, and after much discussion four of the officers were appointed as a deputation to wait upon the duke to assure him of the devotion of the army, and to beg him not to withdraw himself from them. The four officers intrusted with the commission left the room and repaired ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... he finally exclaimed. "Ah! It will be great and wonderful. But where it will end—who knows! Will it be like the Tower of Babel, great in conception, great in execution, but overreaching in its greatness? Will our destiny be like the snowball, accumulating as it rolls till it becomes immovable in its immensity? Then—stagnation! And yet the start of that snowball ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... some form or other of its various developments, is no new substance in the world's history. More than two thousand years before the Christian era, we read of its existence in the days of the builders of Babel, when men sought to realize the dreams of the Titans, and would scale heaven itself in their insane folly. It may have been used in the building of the ark. Herodotus informs us it was largely used in the construction of the walls and towers of Babylon. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by the slave-merchant, to the Romanized Numidian. The inflow, continually renewed, of traffickers and cosmopolitan adventurers increased this confusion. And so Carthage was a Babel of races, of costumes, of beliefs and ideas. Augustin, who was at heart a mystic, but also a dialectician extremely fond of showy discussions, found in Carthage a lively summary of the religions and philosophies of his day. During these years of study ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... muscular proportions of his own vigorous frame. "We have no less than three from the old countries in our village, here, and yet I do not find them men like to have been sought for at the building of Babel." ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... detained down-town all day in the whirl of our New York Babel, and had not yet been home. He would hand it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... united endeavours to save her fallen sister would be blessed with success. But when they came in sight of the papal towers and gorgeous edifices of St Andrews, which then raised their proud heads, like Babel, so audaciously to the heavens, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of fiery snow, and great blazing fragments of roofs, and boards from lumber yards, sailed over his head, with the ill-omened glare of meteors. The rush and roar of the wind and flames were like the thunder of Niagara, and to this awful monotone accompaniment was added a Babel of sounds—shrieks, and shouts of human voices, the sharp crash of falling buildings, and ever and anon heavy detonations, as the fire reached explosive material. As he looked down into the white upturned faces in the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... crowd of vehicles of every description and the babel that came up to her was as the roar of a great torrent. It seemed to sweep away all coherent thought, for she smiled as she gazed downwards and her look held interest in the busy scene even though the hint of melancholy ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... earth and air; Then feasted they before that cliff-like wall, Ceteian men and Trojans: babel of talk Rose from the feasters: all around the glow Of blazing campfires lighted up the tents: Pealed out the pipe's sweet voice, and hautboys rang With their clear-shrilling reeds; the witching strain Of lyres was rippling round. From far away The Argives gazed and marvelled, seeing the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... mentioned having been up to the convent lately, with a family of Americans, whom he described as a people of peculiar appearance, and peculiar odour. By questioning him a little, we discovered that he had been up with a party of coloured people from St. Domingo. His head was a perfect Babel as it respected America, which was not a hemisphere, but one country, one government, and one people. To this we were accustomed, however; and, finding that we passed for English, we trotted the honest fellow a good deal on the subject of ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... air was heavy with the acrid scent of rubber. Then they turned into a narrow, wildly tumultuous street full of Chinese, scattered all over the road and sidewalk, shouting, calling, beating drums, yelling wares for sale, the babel of the Chinese quarter, only such as the Bishop had never seen it. The rickshaws turned many times, up narrow lanes and alleys, across wider thoroughfares, and finally halted before a dingy house of many storeys, a foreign-style house, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... Steve offered was lost amid the babel of laughter that followed, and the skaters darted away up the pond. Indeed, one could not long have cherished ill humor amid such radiant surroundings. There was too much sunshine, too much sparkle in the clear air; too much jollity ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... parochial customs and traditions are almost worse than none at all—like a Babel of Tongues. National standards have to be set up. We cannot, for instance, deal in Winchester quarts and Cheshire acres, in long hundreds and baker's dozens; we have no use for weights and measures that vary from county to county, or for a token ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... curious pedigree of the Saxon kings from Adam, illustrated with many beautiful drawings in pen and ink, about the period of Henry VIII., representing the Creation, Adam and Eve in Paradise, the building of Babel, the rebuilding of the Temple, &c. &c.; MSS., consisting chiefly of heralds' visitations, records of grants of arms and royal licences; records of modern pedigrees (i.e., since the discontinuance of the visitations ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of past history than of present- day rumour; he records complacently (in 1706) that at Whitchurch, when the dissenters had prepared a great quantity of bricks "to erect a capacious conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoyled them all, and confounded their Babel." Hearne would by no means have approved of the Methodist principles of six members of his hall in the next generation, who were expelled for their religious views (1768). A furious controversy, with many pamphlets, ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... was off. But the count stamped his foot, and nodded imperatively. Thereupon Roland repeated the eloquent demonstrations of Renee, and the count lost patience, and Roland shouted, 'For the love of heaven, don't join this babel; we're nearly bursting.' The rage of the babel was allayed by degrees, though not appeased, for the boat was behaving wantonly, as the police officer pointed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mysterious ending, and anyone who did not know that was lacking in their education. They threaded their way through the press of people to the narrow street, and entered a cab. Then, while the husband and wife talked in subdued tones, Nancy listened to the babel of clanging gongs and footsteps of many people on the pavements over which they were passing. She suddenly bethought herself of questioning Mr. Morris as to his knowledge of her son Cornelius. His ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... tropical breeze was blowing off shore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock carts were dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city of Singapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the natives came out to us in a babel of sound. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... a great portion of its Mohammedan subjects. We are also introduced for the first time to the warlike mountaineers of Bosnia, Albania, Upper Moesia, and the almost inaccessible districts of the Pindus and the Balkan. The different nationalities of that Babel-like country, Turkey in Europe, inhabited by Sclavonians, Greeks, Albanians, Macedonians, the Romani and Osmanli—their various characteristics, religions, superstitions, together with their singular customs and manners, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the First, writing to Buckingham, "The Fleming painter prides himself on being able to pass for an Englishman, but his English is so larded with French, Dutch and Italian that we think he must have been employed on the Tower of Babel." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... taut string across the end of the course. Two big horses carrying two big men shot across it. But the breast of one had struck a dozen lengths ahead of the other, and through the echoing babel the judge's voice was lost as ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... moment, great confusion reigned in the camp. The Rancheros sprang to their feet, and hurried hither and thither, each one asking questions, and giving orders, to which nobody paid the least attention, and the babel of English and Spanish that arose awoke the echoes far and near. The chief was the only one who seemed to know what ought to be done. He examined the beds to satisfy himself that the prisoners had really gone, and then his voice was heard above the ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... ten minutes and Ivy not at all, when all at once hell broke loose. There was a bump that nearly drove my head through a bulkhead; though only half awake I could feel to the cold marrow of my bones that the old Boldero was down by the head. The beasts knew it and the Chinks. Never since Babel was there such pandemonium on earth or sea. By a struck match I saw Ivy running out of the cabin and slipping on her bath-wrapper as she went. I called to her, but she didn't answer. I didn't want to think of anything but Ivy, but ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... as to the taste of Elsmere's intrusion on his parish, or as to the eternal chances of those who might take either him or Edwardes as guides in matters religious. His enmity did Elgood Street no harm, and the pretensions of the Church, in this Babel of 20,000 souls, to cover the whole field, bore clearly no relation at all to the facts. But every little incident in this new struggle of his life cost Elsmere more perhaps than it would have cost other men. No part of it came easily to him. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... anxiety as she lifted up her little pointed chin to watch sturdy frank-faced Felix, who with elaborate slowness dealt with the envelope, tasting slowly of the excitement it created, and edging away from the baluster, on which, causing it to contribute frightful creaks to the general Babel, were perched numbers 4, 6, 7, and 8, to wit, Edgar, Clement, Fulbert, and Lancelot, all three handsome, blue-eyed, fair-faced lads. Indeed Edgar was remarkable, even among this decidedly fine-looking family. He had a peculiarly delicate contour of feature and complexion, though ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... books in their hands, scrambled through the crowd. Little tents and shanties were scattered all about, everybody talked fast and loud—some in one language, some in another. It was like going into the Tower of Babel, with all ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the afternoon the jury retired to consider their verdict, and as the judges at the same moment withdrew to their chamber, the pent-up feelings of the crowded audience instantly found vent in loud Babel-like expressions and interchange of comments on the charge, and conjectures as to the result. "Waiting for the verdict" is a scene that has often been described and painted. Everyone of course concluded that half-an-hour would in any case elapse before the anxiously watched ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... throng of women were in the outer room—fat black women with waists two yards around, canary-colored women laced into low-cut European evening dresses, brown women in native dress; a babel of voices, chattering in curious French, Arabic, Turkish, and Greek. All the women were terribly out of shape from every point of view, and not a pretty one among them. One attendant snatched my bouquet without even a "Thank you" (I had been ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... the confusion of Babel was nothing to it now, every voice was loud, and what between singing, swearing, shouting, arguing, drinking toasts, and howling, of various descriptions, it would not be easy to to find anything in any other country that could be ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Her manners are very fascinating—a little bit too natural to be quite French, and a little too ceremonious to be quite Italian. She would have proved an invaluable acquisition at the downfall of the tower of Babel, for she is mistress of I dare not say how many languages. As a rule, women hate her, and men do just the contrary. This is not to be wondered at, for she is very beautiful even now. Her face has the chiseled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... right side of the enemy's line, challenged only by the end, who made a desperate attempt at a tackle but failed, and, with only the opposing quarter between him and the goal line, raced like the wind. About him was a roaring babel of sound, voices urging him on, shouts of dismay, imploring shrieks from behind. Then the quarter was before him, crouching with out-reached hands, a strained, anxious look ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... excited now. There was a babel of talk from behind each of the eight chairs. "He can't skate;" "He can skate;" "I'll bet ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... I remember—though I was only seven times one—the panting exultation with which I flung into her lap the cheap colored print of the Tower of Babel (showing the hurly-burly of French bricklayers and Irish hod-carriers, and the grand row generally) that I had just won at school by correctly committing to memory, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... breakfast-room. There were others there beside Lady Clansford—most of them the young people—it is, alas! only the young who can sleep through the bright hours of a summer's morn—and a discussion on the programme of the day was being carried on with a babel of voices and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... learned a good deal about them. They were well formed and active, with black eyes, intelligent countenances, dark-olive, or, I should rather say, copper complexions and coarse black hair, but not woolly like the negroes. They appeared to be talking continually. In the forecastle there was a complete Babel. Their language is extremely guttural, and not pleasant at first, but improves as you hear it more, and is said to have great capacity. They use a good deal of gesticulation, and are exceedingly animated, saying with their might ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... south all trails now led to the post. By the end of the third day after the arrival of the company's supplies, a babel of fighting, yelling, ceaselessly moving discord had driven forth the peace and quiet in which Cummins' wife had died. The fighting and discord were among the dogs, and the yelling was a necessary human accompaniment. Half a hundred packs, almost as wild and as savage as the wolves from whom ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... the door of the Gunroom, and James, opening it, motioned his guest to enter. One end of the table resembled a bee swarm: a babel of voices sounded as those nearest the pile of letters shouted the names of the addressees and tossed the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... never been conquered by Caesar, and never been ruled by the wisdom of Gaius or Papinian. By the same step I had journeyed forth out of that comfortable zone of kindred languages, where the curse of Babel is so easy to be remedied; and my new fellow-creatures sat before me dumb like images. Methought, in my travels, all human relation was to be excluded; and when I returned home (for in those days I still projected my return) I should ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her dress came next; and here Christie had a slight skirmish with the mistress of that department relative to the length of her classical garments. As studies from the nude had not yet become one of the amusements of the elite of Little Babel, Christie was not required to appear in the severe simplicity of a costume consisting of a necklace, sandals, and a bit of gold fringe about the waist, but was allowed an extra inch or two on her tunic, and departed, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... moon had just risen above the trees, and by its pale light they saw a small village at the end of the glade. Many lights flashed, and a babel of voices chattered and ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... various hotels were noisy groups of tourists about to set forth on pilgrimages, some bound for the neighboring glaciers and cascades, and others preparing for more distant and more hardy enterprises. It was a perfect Babel of voices—French, Scotch, German, Italian, and English; with notes of every sort of patois—above which the strident bass of the mules soared triumphantly at intervals. There are not many busier spots than Chamouni at early morning in the height of ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Of patch'd and piebald languages: 'Twas English cut on Greek and Latin, Like fustian heretofore on satin. It had an odd promiscuous tone, As if h' had talk'd three parts in one; Which made some think, when he did gabble, Th' had heard three laborers of Babel; Or Cerberus himself pronounce A leash of languages at once. This he as volubly would vent As if his stock would ne'er be spent: And truly, to support that charge, He had supplies as vast and large, For he could coin or counterfeit New words ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... thing he was certain, a great deal had transpired since he had sought the friendly solace of the covers and he had no mind to lose so good a friend as the pink comforter. By the time he had summoned sufficient courage to peep from under its edge, a babel of voices was again drawing near, and he hastily drew back in ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... between the soul and the truth which it seeks. Wretched were we, indeed, if we had no better means of communicating ourselves, no fairer garb in which to array our essential being, than these poor rags and tatters of Babel. Yet words are not without their use even for purposes of explanation,—but merely for explaining outward acts and all sorts of external things, leaving the soul's life and action to explain itself in ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hour after that the place was a Babel of unearthly yells, whistles, and scraps of popular songs, with occasional charges and scuffles and a constant ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... was too interesting for me. I stepped over to the shelves and looked at the titles. Sanskrit and Greek; German and French—the Vedas, Sir Oliver Lodge, Besant, Spinoza, a conglomeration of all ages and tongues; a range of metaphysics that was as wide as Babel, and about as enlightening. As Babel? Over my shoulders came the strangest sound of all, weak, piping, tremulous, fearful—"Now there are two. Now there are two." My heart gave a fearful leap. "Soon there ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... the designs of Providence the time has at last arrived for the dwelling of the children of Japhet in the tents of Sem, and for putting an end to the terrible evils dating from the dispersion at Babel and the confusion of tongues, the object of these great scientific discoveries is still more apparent. At all events, organization and association are clearly needed for the resurrection of Ireland, and the sooner a step is taken in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of our landlord, though they had now set up for themselves in various departments of literature. Not only their talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off by the most discordant vociferation; for as they all spoke together, no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than his fellows. It must be owned, however, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yet had beaten Britain concluded peace—not yet had dried the blood of Victory's field, ere "follies and disputes" confounded all things with their Babel tongues and intoxicated liberty gave loose to license. An unpaid army with unsheathed swords clamored around a poverty-stricken and helpless Congress. And grown at last impatient even with their chief, officers high in rank plotted insurrection and circulated an anonymous address, urging it "to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... go home then. There was a Babel of talk as the little girls were finding their wraps, mingled with pleasant outbursts of laughter. Mr. Dean was to take some of the small people home, and Jim obligingly offered his escort. It had not been so ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... as a dead man's, his voice pealing out above the babel like a bell, Oliver stood to windward of the double furnace, giving quick orders ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... several of his subordinates; ten minutes after Braga and one of the bank officials came, the only passengers in their boat, and at once joined the police on the after deck and stood with them waiting and watching the boats as they arrived. In the mean time babel reigned around the ship. About three score boats surrounded her, the owners selling to the passengers everything from oranges to monkeys, snakes ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... cries issues forth from every direction. In a few seconds it ceases for a momentary lull, and then suddenly breaks forth again, louder than before. The tones of the different ones are so different that the cries of nearby individuals may be plainly distinguished amidst the babel of voices coming from the distance. It sounds as if thousands upon thousands of them were striving to express every emotion with their tiny tenor voices. No words can describe the effect that these sounds produce. One of ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... She picked up a book from the table and began to read, but in spite of her determination to ignore it, her thoughts would wander to the pretty picture outside her window. The shouts and laughter, the gay babel of talk with the undertone of droning music rang in her ears. She slammed down her window, but still she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... confusedly huddled together all around outside. These wagons mostly come from a few miles out of town, and are always on the spot at daybreak. A little after sunrise the crash and jam commences, and continues with little cessation until ten o'clock in the forenoon. There is a babel of tongues, an excessively cosmopolitan gathering of people, a roar of wheels, and a lively smell of beef and vegetables. The soap man, the headache curative man, the razor man, and a variety of other tolerable humbugs, are in full blast. We meet married men with baskets in their hands. Those ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... voice when I bewail thy woes, But when in fancy's dream I see thy freedom, forth its cadence flows Sweet as the harps that hung by Babel's stream. My heart is sore distressed For Bethel ever blessed, For Peniel, and each ancient, sacred place. The holy presence there To thee is present where Thy Maker opes thy gates, the gates of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... room, the boxes were carried off, emptied into the vats, and brought back again; some of the girls swept the floor and tables by which they stood; talking was permitted in this half-hour, and such a Babel as the tongues of forty or fifty girls suddenly unloosed can make may be better imagined than described. The "new hand" took advantage of the interval to divest herself of her cap and apron, and putting on her hat, after washing her hands in one of the row ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... Moses concerning the Creation. And even as God made and created it, even so it was, even so it is, and even so doth it stand to this present day. And although King Alexander the Great, the kingdom of Egypt, the empire of Babel, the Persian, Grecian, and Roman Monarchs, the Emperors Julius and Augustus, most fiercely did rage and swell against this Book, utterly to suppress and destroy the same, yet notwithstanding, they could prevail nothing; they are all gone and vanished; but ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... of his strength and the unscrupulous way in which he uses it. He knows us too, but he is not well pleased to see us! Nevertheless, he accedes to our request for "just a look round." So through a large passage we pass, and he ushers us into the lodging-house kitchen. As the door opens a babel of many voices greets us, a rush of warm air comes at us, and the evidence of our noses proclaims that bloaters and bacon, liver and onions, sausages and fresh fish are being cooked. We look and see, we see and taste! ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... contracted passage-ways is curious, represented by faces yellow, bronze, white, and black. Add to all the crowd of donkey-boys, camels, goats, and street peddlers, crying, bleating, blustering, and braying, and you have a modern Babel of sights and sounds such as greet the stranger in the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... continue to make some progress for an hour or two amidst a noise caused by the rumbling of the vehicle, the creaking, jingling, rattling, and clanking, of the atalage, the unceasing crack of the whip, and the chattering of your companions, to which the sounds at Babel were music. The movement then becomes adagio, and soon afterwards the conducteur's voice is heard, begging the passengers in all parts of the vehicle to descend. Wondering what is the matter, you get out with the rest, and find the cause of this commotion to be a grande Montagne—anglice, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... catamaran raced at once for the launch; a Babel of strange oaths jarred the brooding silence; alarm, almost panic, stirred men's hearts and bubbled forth in wild speech. Under pressure of this new peril the instinct of self-preservation burst the bonds of discipline. The first law of nature may be disregarded ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... short, he was able to evolve a law, a universal principle, out of the confused babel of common life and thought and speech, strong enough and wide enough on which to build a new order for this world, a new hope ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... long before the building of Babel, man discovered that he was an associative animal, with the universal motto, 'L'union c'est la force;' and that association, to be of any use, requires talk. A history of celebrated associations, from the building society just mentioned down to the thousands which are ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... have just seen the most cunningly organized and daintily bedizened specimen of a world, which ever flaunted on the earth since men began to build their towers of Babel, collapse and crumble at a single blow, may take God's hint, that the fashion of this world passeth away. Let the idle, the frivolous, the sensual, and those who, like Figaro's Marquis, have earned ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Captives by Babel's limpid streams, We hung our harps on willows there; Wept over Zion; and our dreams, Waking or sleeping, she ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... change is enjoyable, as you cannot fail to be amused at the eccentricities of your neighbours; perhaps finding your own weaknesses reflected in them. Often you will find a dozen nationalities represented, and a perfect Babel-like talk, each little exclusive party, like crows, intent only ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... certainty, they had arrived at a cross-roads where there was no policeman to take charge. They had broken up into little groups, gathered about their own vociferous stump-orators. The result was babel. Of orators there were a plenty. They abused one another across the Irish Sea. They tried to shout one another down across the Atlantic Ocean. But the hammer-head men of righteousness were gone. After the apocalyptic splendor of mailed knights of ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... was strengthened by about forty as ugly Christians as I ever set eyes on. They were of all ages, countries, complexions, and tongues, and looked as if they had been kidnapped by a pressgang as they had knocked off from the Tower of Babel. From the moment they came on board, Captain Vanderbosh was shorn of all his glory, and sank into the petty officer while, to our amazement, the Scottish negro took the command, evincing great coolness, energy, and skill. He ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... voices of children asking for drinks and carrying them away in their mugs made me feel profoundly unhappy. I followed one little girl through the doors out into the street and saw her give the mug to a cabman and run off delighted with his tip. When I returned I was deafened by a babel of voices; there was a row going on: one of the men, drunk but good-tempered, was trying to take the flower out of Phoebe's hat. Provoked by this, a young man began jostling him, at which all the others pressed forward; the barman shouted ineffectually to ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... and fussed with the strap of his catching mask, which did not need any attention whatever to begin with, but somehow became strangely tangled in the wire meshes. From his appearance one might have fancied Eliot stone deaf to that babel of sounds, and he seemed utterly blind when Larkins rushed out from the bench before him, flourishing his arms, and demanding that he should get back into his position and let ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... her dinner alone, such a dinner as a healthy skin and body demanded. And she watched tall young Englishwomen with fine shoulders go out with English officers in khaki, and listened to a babel of high English voices, and—felt extremely alone and ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... looks of simple subtlety,—where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them;- -they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men of words to swell pages about it—it is enough in the present ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... time and place, are given without a blunder. The ruins of cities of Assyria, Egypt and Babylon have been unearthed and tablets found that prove the accuracy of the Bible narrative. These tablets corroborate the stories of the creation and fall of man, of the flood, the tower of Babel, the bondage in Egypt, the captivity, and many other things. This accuracy gives us confidence in ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... on muslin dresses and carried fans and smelling salts, and Jimmie had to use force to make us carry wraps for the return. The journey, lovely in itself, was rendered hideous to us by the heat, but when we arrived at Bayreuth the babel of English voices was so delightfully homelike, American clothes on American women were so good to see, and Bayreuth itself was so picturesque, that we forgot the heat and drove to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... grotesque-looking houses, lit up with large paper-lanterns, of gaudy colours, and Chinese inscriptions or monsters on them, and the long rows of Chinese characters up and down the door-posts, or over the windows. After the quiet of the sea, our senses were confused by the strange cries, and the Babel of languages which resounded in our ears from the crowds of people who swarmed along the streets in every variety of Eastern dress. There was the half-naked coolie; the well-clothed Citinese, in a loose white coat, like a dressing-gown; the Arab ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... What a Babel of tongues it is in this splendid hall with gleaming marble pillars: a ceaseless rushing whisper as if the band were playing its music by a waterfall! The British lawyers are all got together, and my friend Lankin, on his arrival, has been carried ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1204. The passage is as follows: "It is evident both from the letters of Rambam (Maimonides), whose memory be blessed, and from the narration of merchants who have visited the ends of the earth, that at this time the root of our faith is to be found in the lands of Babel and Teman, where long ago Jerusalem was an exile; not reckoning those who live in the land of Paras and Madai, of the exiles of Schomrom, the number of which people is as the sand: of these some are still under the yoke of Paras, who is called the Great-Chief Sultan by the Arabs; others live in ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... expostulated Lady Willow, 'you can't think in this babel; besides, the police will not allow the hansom to stand here unless one of us is shopping, or ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the first extending from Hit to a little below Babylon, the second from Niffer to the shores of the Persian Gulf. In each of these districts we have a sort of tetrarchy, or special pre-eminence of four cities, such as appears to be indicated by the words—"The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." The southern tetrarchy is composed of the four cities, Ur or Hur, Huruk, Nipur, and Larsa or Larancha, which are probably identified with the Scriptural "Ur of the Chaldees," ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... nearly half-an-hour later that there arose a sudden fierce uproar in the bar, and the silent watcher straightened himself up sharply. The turmoil grew to a babel of voices, and in a few moments two figures, struggling furiously, appeared at the open door. They blundered out, locked together like fighting beasts, and behind them the door crashed to, leaving ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars? Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying over her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean walls, —in the dust where men lie, dust also,—on the mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel-heap,—still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The Amen! of Nature is always ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... A babel of talk broke out in the great hall, and with it some vivas and clapping of hands, for Hugh had spoken boldly and well; moreover, the spectators read truth in his grey eyes. A dark figure in priest's robe—it was that of Father Nicholas, the secretary who had brewed Red Eve's potion—glided up ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... of Baal, or Baalbek, is between the desert and the deep sea. It lies at the foot of Anti-Libanus, in the sunny plains of Coele-Syria, a day's march from either Damascus or Beirut. It is a city with a past as romantic as Rome's, as wicked as Babel's; its ruins testify both to its glory and its shame. It is a city with a future as brilliant as any New-World city; the railroad at its gate, the modern agricultural implements in its fields, and the porcelain bath-tubs in its hotels, can testify to this. It is ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... crust or two with us. I believe it will be only my wife and myself; and she will go over to England, but not I, or possibly incog. to Southampton, and then to Boscombe to see poor Lady Shelley. I am writing - trying to write in a Babel fit for the bottomless pit; my wife, her daughter, her grandson and my mother, all shrieking at each other round the house - not in war, thank God! but the din is ultra martial, and the note of Lloyd joins in occasionally, and the cause of this ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... the babel of voices, he hurried up the road. The unpolluted air was refreshing and he became calmer. Presently an idea flashed into his mind, which brought a flush to his cheeks and caused his eyes to kindle with a new hope. "Strange I didn't think of it before," ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody |
