"Babyish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am afraid it would have maddened me beyond hope of reclamation. I have made shipwreck; but a yet sadder fate might have overtaken me, and at least my soul has outridden the storm, thanks to your frail babyish hands, so desperately strong when they grappled that awful night with suicidal sin. Few women have suffered more keenly than I, and yet, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... young people, but for the little Belgravians to come; and if these are the necessaries of life (and they are with many honest people), to talk of any other arrangement is an absurdity: of love in lodgings—a babyish folly of affection: that can't pay coach-hire or afford a decent milliner—as mere wicked balderdash and childish romance. If on the other hand your opinion is that people, not with an assured subsistence, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "People might be frightened without making such a fuss. Molly declared she would rather not go to Paris at all. That's what I call being babyish—it isn't the feeling frightened that's babyish—for people might feel frightened and still be brave, ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... word. 'Loving! Did anybody ever hear the like! I might just as well talk of loving the miller who comes once a year to buy our corn. Pretty loving, indeed! and both times together you have seen Linton hardly four hours in your life! Now here is the babyish trash. I'm going with it to the library; and we'll see what your ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... to cry, by way of getting out of the scrape; but having begun as a counsellor and peacemaker, it would never do to be babyish; and on his repeating the question, she said, in a tone which she could not prevent from being lachrymose, 'You make Guy almost angry, you tease him, and when people praise him, you answer as if it would not last! ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tolerance, in power, and in laughter. All the health and buoyancy of her was in her mouth, as well as in her eyes. She rarely exposed her teeth in smiling, for which purpose she seemed chiefly to employ her eyes; but when she laughed she showed strong white teeth, even, not babyish in their smallness, but just the firm, sensible, normal size one would expect in a woman as ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... recital, inches of inside measure, all the western window wet and no smoke settling, all this and a hurricane, is a flight simple, it is not babyish, it ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... group of supplicants. "I'm sure I don't know why I have not ordered you all soundly thrashed for your imbecility and cowardice. I shall send you my surgeon to examine your wounds, and see whether the thumps you make such a babyish outcry about really were as violent and overpowering as you represent. If they were not, I will have you skinned alive, every mother's son of you, like the eels at Melun; and now, begone! out of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... knew also he should not be allowed to get speech with him, if by cunning or force it could be prevented. He kept his door ajar. Presently Nurse Hannah came bustling along with an apronful of things, and let herself into a vacant room hard by. This Hannah was a young woman with a pretty and rather babyish face, diversified by a thick biceps muscle in her arm that a blacksmith need not have blushed for. And I suspect it was this masculine charm, and not her feminine features, that had won her the confidence ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Agatha knelt by the sofa, Miss Valery leaned over her, twisting her curls and stroking down the lids over her brown eyes in the babyish, fondling ways which all good people can condescend to at times, especially ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... she danced across the grass, executing a fairy-like step as she came. The tiny girl's tinkling laughter mingled with hers. Her little hands were fondly clasped about the girl's neck; she looked down into her face with babyish adoration while Eileen, the elder child, gazed upward with ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... skin of the palm showing under the bent fingers, rested half open on the leather patch that covered the knee of his overalls. A picture of toilworn age, of the inevitable end of all mortal labour, he had sat for hours in the faint sunshine, smiling with his sunken, babyish mouth at the brood of white turkeys that ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... people to divide into parties, or to shut each other from church communion; though from greater points, and upon higher pretences, than this of water baptism; hath heretofore been counted carnal, and the actors herein babyish Christians. Paul and Apollos, Cephas and Christ, were doubtless higher things than those about which we contend: yet when they made divisions for them; how sharply are they rebuked? Are ye not CARNAL, CARNAL, CARNAL? For whereas there are among you, envyings, strife, divisions, or factions: ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... running contraband and about the minds of a certain class of people, but as to Rose's mind let me tell you that in comparison with hers yours is absolutely infantile, my adventurous friend. It would be contemptible if it weren't so—what shall I call it?—babyish. You ought to be slapped and put to bed." There was an extraordinary earnestness in her tone and when she ceased I listened yet to the seductive inflexions of her voice, that no matter in what mood she spoke seemed only fit for tenderness and love. And I thought suddenly of Azzolati ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Glory's chin was partially turned and the babyish hand pointed outward in a very imperative way. Glory construed that she must travel in the direction indicated and, also, that even "Angels" liked their commands to be immediately obeyed. For when she lingered a moment to exchange compliments with Nancy, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... draw their souls to the appreciation of the Redeeming Love there shown. She saw in Fay's deep eyes and thoughtful brow that the child was taking it in, though differently from Amy, who wanted to kiss the picture, while Letty asked those babyish material questions about Heaven that puzzle wiser heads ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... works—one a comedy that in a very short time must bring me wealth and fame, and an entry into those circles whither I wished to return, to exercise the royal privileges of a man of genius. You all saw nothing in that masterpiece but the blunder of a young man fresh from college, a babyish fiasco. Your jokes clipped the wings of a throng of illusions, which have never stirred since within me. You, dear Emile, alone brought soothing to the deep wounds that others had made in my heart. You alone will admire my 'Theory of the Will.' I devoted most of my time to that long work, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... had been allowed a bit of glimmer, a tiny wick floating in a silver dish of lard-oil, for a night-light. But after his eighth birthday that had been done away with, Miss Braithwaite considering it babyish. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to me like playing at lumbering! It's all so tiny—so babyish. Oh, yes, there's plenty of work—for the moment. But it'll be all done, in one more season; not a stick left. England can't grow ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arms. For old Mrs. Hawtry's "beloved granddaughter Cecelia Anne" was not yet too big to find solace in sleep when she was tired and uninterested, being indeed but nine years old and exceedingly small of stature and babyish of habit. So she slept on and missed hearing all the provisions which were meant to protect her in the enjoyment of her estate but which were equally calculated ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... woman, who stood beside the tray, who fed her and warmed her while she was yet weak and babyish from sleep! Beyond her the white plains of beauty shone outside the window.... She sat up and smiled: ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... reached the Oaks and went in. Luncheon was on the table, at which Belle was sitting. She was, as usual, dressed in black, and beautiful to look on; but her round babyish face was pale and pinched, and there were black lines ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... was well enough to go out, and I really began to think she was going to be kind enough to forgive me, with a free forgiveness. But that day she called me to her, and spoke very seriously, and said, that to punish me for my misconduct, and to try and cure me of the babyish nonsense I gave way to about things, she had decided to have all the Sunflowers destroyed at once, and not to have any seed sown for new ones, any more. The gardener was to do it next morning, and I was to be there to see. She hoped it would make me remember the occasion, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... her hand with a gesture that claimed a sympathetic examination of the purchase. Festus Clasby hesitated, looking into the eyes of the woman. Was she to be trusted? Her eyes were clear, grey, and open, almost babyish in their rounded innocence. Festus Clasby handed her the tin can, and she ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... in on him he was fast asleep, a rosy flush on his babyish, tearstained cheek, his red lips half parted, his curly head pillowed on his arm, and close against his soft, young throat there nestled the left hind foot ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... pent up rage. He dashed into his study and out again, he threw the chairs about with increasing irritation, then giving up the search, he started hatless toward the hallway. It was then that a soft babyish voice ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... last shake of his dingy finger monkeywards, salaamed low to the party, then shouldering his burden stalked on once more, the little captive looking after him for a minute, and then wrinkling up his mummy visage to give a weak, babyish cry. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in, and young and old With smiling eyes its smiling eyes behold, And artless, babyish joy; A playful welcome greets it through the room, The saddest brow unfolds its wrinkled gloom, To greet ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... was less than five feet long and quite babyish in its ways, but it gave Dick a lot of trouble as he was leading ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... a babyish meekness that contradicted a wicked laughing imp in her eyes, into one of the chaises longues which I had brought up from its knees to a sort of "stand and deliver" attitude. But the tall white girl (the name of "Maida" suited her singularly well) did ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at first, Jack kept her busy in this respect. But she wanted to hear about lions and tigers and men killing them and Indian fights and matters that didn't please the little girl at all. Mother Goose was babyish. ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... and should not suffer was Henry. Then he began to look at Sabine furtively, and caught the outline of her sweet, averted head. How irresistibly attractive she was! The exact type he admired; not too intellectual-looking, just soft and round and babyish; there was one little curl on her snowy nuque that he longed to kiss there and then. What a time she was talking to the other man! He would not ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... were immediately liked and speedily loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes, pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement asserted that she was tired, often that ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... reached the edge of the group which had closed in about the three arrivals, Marjorie's searching eyes spied a small, flaxen-haired young woman with wide-opened blue eyes and a babyish expression, coming toward her. The latter was burdened with a heavy seal traveling case and a bag of golf sticks. She had evidently emerged from the coach behind the one from which Nella and her two companions had come. As she advanced, ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... times, was never found fault with. How finely, how, clearly, has Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto pointed out beforehand the power of Antichrist, the times of Luther! They call him, therefore, "a most babyish writer, an owl." Cyprian, the delight and glory of Africa, that French critic Caussee, and the Centuriators of Magdeburg, have termed "stupid, God-forsaken corrupter of repentance." What harm has he done? He has written On ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... ghosts around here I wish one of 'em would pick you up in a sheet, take you away and drop you in your own home in Gridley," declared Tom, becoming decidedly irritated by this babyish ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... appreciate that he belonged to this order of artists. He had a wild, stormy, November eye, a wealth of loose, brownish-black hair combed upward from the temples, with one lock straggling Napoleonically down toward the eyes; cheeks that had almost a babyish tint to them; lips much too rich, red, and sensuous; a nose that was fine and large and full, but only faintly aquiline; and eyebrows and mustache that somehow seemed to flare quite like his errant and foolish soul. He had been sent away from Denmark (Copenhagen) ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... were you able, you crafty rogue, to flay two cows, new-born and babyish as you are? For my part, I dread the strength that will be yours: there is no need you should keep growing long, Cyllenian, son ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... great admiration for her, the pretty creature, and when she had spoken of the illuminated manuscript I had a sudden vision of her with her head of curls, and her pink, babyish face against ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... never thought about it at all, but now it seemed a very babyish and helpless thing. She determined to dress herself in future. To change the subject she said, "Why don't you come down into the garden? I want to show you my playhouse ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... because Bobbie was so fond of them. She did not care for them herself, for she thought that as she was ten years old they were too babyish, but Bobbie was only eight, so of course it was not to be expected of him that he would care ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... it is not strange that my Thought Book seems so babyish and foolish to me when I think of all I have gone through and the millions of things I have learned, and how much better I spell than I did ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was well, business prospering, would be home in the time specified, and I was sorry that I had been so foolish; the days were pleasant, and he needed change; he might have made a pleasant excursion of it if I had not been so babyish; and I told Willie of all my weakness, and I promised I would never give way again. I knew my husband was never so happy as when at home; he was ambitious in his profession, a stirring business man; it would be ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... was quite wise, from his own point of view. There was very open admiration in his face as he studied her now. He noticed the tiny curls at the back of her neck, warm from dancing to be twisted in the tightest little rings; they were the most babyish looking little curls he had ever seen, he thought. And he distinctly liked that proud little way she carried her head. He moved just a trifle, then, so that he could see more of her face; how her extraordinarily long lashes swept her cheek, and ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... English do things—all their customs, I mean. They're so different from ours! Why, when I first saw Barbara that day at the train, I thought it was the funniest thing that her hair was all hanging loose down her back. I wouldn't think of being so babyish! I thought perhaps she'd lost off her ribbon maybe, but she's worn it that way ever since. And her little sailor-hat looks so countrified as she has it,—'way down ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... heard enough. My heart seemed as if it was going to stop. Mother going away—to have to live without mother—it didn't seem to me so much a grief, as an impossibility. I think I was rather a babyish child for my age in some ways. I was very fond of the boys, and I was very unhappy if ever I was away from them, but I don't think I had ever thought much about whether I loved anybody or not. And I know that sometimes people said I wasn't affectionate. Things hadn't ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... flared up fitfully and as he turned to lower the wick his eyes fell on Connie's picture. The uplifted babyish face came back to him as he had first seen it under floating cherry-colored ribbons, and his anger of the last half-hour melted and vanished utterly away. For the sake of those few months, when the waning fire within him had leaped despairingly toward the flame of life, he knew that he ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... or not, the next Sunday was eminently unsuccessful; the Collects were imperfect, the answers in the Catechism recurred to disused babyish blunders; Fergus twisted himself into preternatural attitudes, and Valetta teased the Sofy to scratching point, they yawned ferociously at The Birthday, and would not be interested even in the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came—splendid. If not—what did she care? She wasn't going to yield to the village and let down; she was going to keep up a belief in the rite of tea, to which she had always looked forward as the symbol of a leisurely fine existence. And it would be just as much fun, even if it was so babyish, to have tea by herself and pretend that she was entertaining clever men. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... forward. But she had lost direction. 'I'm going round and round,' she thought. 'They always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the "bushed" clutched at her again. 'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be near the road. But it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot struck something soft. A voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle. She leaped, and dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly unnerved, she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to look at—a black-eyed lass with regular features and lots of pink and white complexion. Pearl, languidly sipping her beer, nodded in the affirmative. This person, evidently the younger of the two, had a babyish face, big innocent blue eyes, and a profusion of fluffy yellow hair. She did not appeal as much to my sense of the beautiful as the dark one did; but I have always been partial to brunettes. She told me later that she was twenty—which figure was enough ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... time. She's an orphan and a great heiress. You mustn't tell anybody for the world, but I overheard ma say that she wanted John to marry Mabel, she's so rich—but pshaw! he won't for she's awful babyish and ugly looking. Captain Atherton is related to Nellie, and during the holidays she and Mabel are coming up to spend a week, and I'll bet Durward is coming too. Cad teased him, and he said may be he would if he didn't go to college this fall. ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... her eyes wide in astonishment. Her motor-bonnet gave her a very babyish appearance. She hugged her favourite to her as she might ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... I could come and see it," said Hadria. She was waving a twig of lavender, and little Martha was making grabs at it, and laughing her gurgling laugh of babyish glee. Professor Theobald stood in the road facing up hill towards Craddock, whose church tower was visible from here, just peeping through the spring foliage of the vicarage garden. He only now and again looked round at the picture that he ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... one, and wiping her mouth). No, most certainly not. (To herself.) The worst of being so babyish is—one does have to tell such a lot of taradiddles! (To H.) See what I've bought—it's been ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... I could keep you always," she said, poutingly. "You look so nice and babyish!" But she knew that she could not keep him, and after a time she stood up again and sighed, and fell to stroking him thoughtfully. "I'll have you to-day, anyway," she declared, finally, with promise of enjoyment in ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... looked down for a moment at the puppy—which was making sundry advances of a shy but friendly nature toward him. Then he looked at the boy, and noted Dick's hero-effort to choke back the onrush of babyish sobs. And then, with a roughly tolerant gesture, he silenced the two raucous women, who were beginning the tale over again ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... backward and forward and nursing your foot seem rather foolish,—indeed you have perhaps often been told that they are both foolish and babyish,—but, as you say, you "can't help it," and there is a good reason for it. The howl is a call for help; and if the hurt were due to the bite of a wolf or a bear, or the cut had gone deep enough to open an artery, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... them; but to see them deeply marked while he mouthed earnest nothings with Laetitia! There was an odd, nice smell about him, of peat, of tobacco, of soap, of heather with the wind across it, of things like that most agreeably mixed, and actually she had heard Laetitia say to him in the babyish way she spoke to him, "You smoke too much. You do." And he, like a moon calf: "Oh, you're not going to ask me to give up smoking, are you?" And she with a trailing eye and hint of a blush, "Perhaps I shall—some day." And he—a sigh! Positively a love-sick sigh straight out of a novel! Ah, positively ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... his convalescence as among the golden memories of his boyhood, no school and endless goodies. For Hubert, sixteen years old and five feet, ten inches, in height, it was reserved to go through the disease alone. He was not seriously ill; but his whole soul revolted at the babyish nature of his complaint, and at the tedium of ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Democratic newspaper of Alabama, recently said: "But it is a weak cry when the white man asks odds on intelligence over the Negro. When nature has already so handicapped the African in the race for knowledge, the cry of the boasted Anglo-Saxon for still further odds seems babyish. What wonder that the world looks on in surprise, if not disgust? It cannot help but say, If our contention be true that the Negro is an inferior race, then the odds ought to be on the other side, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of those good people, Miss Lambert, who think it their duty to cultivate cheerfulness. I was quite surprised to see you look so tranquil, when I had been indulging in a babyish fit of crying, from sheer fright and misery; but it made me feel better only to look ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... without her. She is awfully slow. I saw you playing with Dick on the grass. He makes too much noise, screaming out like that, and you only make him worse cutting up with him as you do. Between you and that boy and father, with his constant, babyish complaints, I am driven ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Beresfords, and she was six years old when the baby came, so she was quite a responsible person and ready to be a great help to nurse. Her round face and form assumed airs of dignity, and she strove valiantly to put away all babyish weaknesses ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at—something which— well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish. I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and worrying them in all sorts of ways. Hatty just enjoys it; ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... After all, it was Katherine who made the first break when she got up to say good-bye. She was in the middle of some conventional sentence when she suddenly stopped short, and her voice trailed off in a babyish quiver. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... half a tear in each of her babyish eyes; kisses me with her full red lips, which always leave a wet ring on my cheek; then quickly draws from her wide sleeve a square of tissue-paper, wipes away her stealthy tears, blows her little nose, rolls the bit of paper in a ball, and throws it into ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... had gone, however, and they turned homewards, Frances felt that if she had not promised Barbara to help her mother she would have hidden herself in the attic and cried, although that would have been so "horribly babyish" for a girl of twelve that she knew she would have felt ashamed of herself afterwards; though perhaps, her pillow could have told tales of a grief confided to it that the gay-hearted Frances ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... getting rather tired of this," said Fitz, at last. "I suppose it's very nice to them, and they feel very grateful to your father for bringing the guns and ammunition to beat off this other President fellow; but keeping on with all this seems so babyish and silly. Why can't they say, 'Thank Heaven!' ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Yuzgat's pretensions, by the damsels of one family connection, not even the great and numerous Pampasian-Pamparsan family, but still they ought to be at least a fair average. They have beautiful large black eyes, and usually a luxuriant head of hair; but their faces arc, on the whole, babyish and expressionless. The Yuzgat maiden of "sweet sixteen" is a coy, babyish creature, possessed of a certain doll-like prettiness, but at twenty-three is a rapidly fading flower, and at thirty is already beginning to get wrinkled and old. Happening ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... if the child were an inanimate object and she had, by this time and by this means, managed to sweep from Robin's mind all the old, babyish worship of her loveliness and had planted in its place another feeling. At this moment the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... part could see that there was any disgrace in being a mother-boy. But I suppose a boy thinks he is called babyish, if the name is fastened on him. As Harry went on his errand, he no longer whistled, at least he didn't whistle much. And as he went to school next day, and next day, and next day, and found himself left out in the cold, he would have been more than the usual twelve-year-old laddie ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... see them. And now look over to the grocery. Big sister has come out and climbed on the vegetable-stand, and is sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap. Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with the shawls over their heads are talking together, crooning over the spectacle ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... water? Revolving these things, he might have lived to a venerable age but for that noble ambition to teach, which is fatal to even the wisest. A young fish, an insolent whipper-snapper, jumped in his babyish way at the palmer, and missed it through over-eagerness. "I'll show you the way to catch a fly," said the big trout to him: "open your ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... joke, and, above all, to bind him to silence, for Tritton and Dusautoy would never have ventured so far, could they have imagined the possibility of such terms as those on which he lived with his parents. They attacked the poor child on the score of his manly aspirations, telling him it was babyish to tell mamma and sisters everything, a practice fit for girls, not for boys or men. These assurances extracted a pledge of secrecy, which was kept as long as his mother was absent, and only rendered ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Van Clupps are listening to the conversation with straining ears. What strange person is this? She does not talk bad grammar, though her manner of expressing herself is somewhat quaint and foreign. But she is babyish—perfectly babyish! The idea of any well-bred woman condescending to sing the praises of her own husband in public! Absurd! "Deserves every-one's good wishes!"—pooh! her "great desire is to make him always ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... nurses scoffed at his moans, and thought it babyish, for a muscular man over six feet to show so many signs of pain. I think that from some cause, the surgeon felt vindictive toward him, and that his subordinates took their cue from him. When I went to give him lemonade, he would clutch my hand or dress, look ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... table, and then smiting it suddenly on the mahogany, "understand this: it is vulgar and puerile to confound generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are the exceptions. Your questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if you ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... babyish, dear; it's right and womanly to feel grief at losing Gladys; but since it has to be, I want you to conquer that grief, and not ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... but of course, as you didn't find her, you were not so babyish as to sit down and cry ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... though little more than seven years old, he was too much of a boy quite to enjoy his position on the master's shoulder. He felt it too babyish to be altogether honorable to the protector of Lenichen and incipient bread-winner of the family. And, therefore, he was relieved when he found himself once ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... the whimpering, babyish-like complaint of the porcupine that had made the sound, and still chuckling over his nervousness he seated himself on a white drift-log that had lain bleaching for half a ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... or the folio music-books on the stand, or the book-shelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself. (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously- -one might almost say, revengefully—like ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... you feel well yourself. I was in good spirits, and quite a number of 'em. The boy wus feelin' well too. He had a little black velvet suit and a deep lace collar, and his gold curls was a hangin' down under his little black velvet cap. They made him look more babyish; but I believe Cicely kept 'em so to make him look young, she felt so dubersome about his future. But he looked sweet enough to kiss right there in ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... girl lost her high fortitude, and a babyish quiver shook her lips. Her glance wavered and fell, and with a pathetic gesture she turned from Christopher to Cynthia and from Cynthia ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... unrepentant sinner. She could not help it: she loved him; he needed her. Since that day when she had offered him friendship and help, he had been depending on her more and more, a big man like a neglected baby. She had strenuously fixed her mind on the babyish side of him, but all the time her senses had been attracted by the man, and now, by the mere physical experience of the force of his arms, she could never see him as a child again. She clung to the idea of helping him, to the thought of his misfortunes, for that was imperative, but ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... young and nervous; his little, round, girlish face is pale and void of expression; he squints as if he were near-sighted, although his eyes are good, and his voice is soft and babyish. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... shorter, slimmer, paler than her sister: of a certain babyish prettiness. She had Mrs. Oldrieve's ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... never wooed at all, does not marry him, but gives her hand (why should she not?) to the man who sues for it. Did Witchaire expect that the lady was to propose to him? The poem opens with some very babyish verses descriptive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... rather red hair, and merry-sad eyes, if you know what I mean; and in summer, because his skin is so very fair—"quite lost on a boy," nurse says—he has a great many freckles, especially on his dear little nose. He is a great pet, of course, but not in a very babyish way—he seems too sensible for that; and he is very gentle and thoughtful, but not at all "soft" or cowardly. Our Baby has a brother—he is really, of course, brother to us all; but Baby seems to think he is only "budder" to him—a very big, almost grown-up brother, Baby considers him, for he is ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of Cain. If they shorten their lives, they will dig and fight and kill and die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the Voice ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... could not handle people successfully, or because he lacked the courage to face the constant reiteration of complaints and suffering by his patients. Sick people are selfish, peevish, whimsical, and babyish. It takes tact, patience, understanding, and good nature to handle ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... three years later these games are apt to seem "babyish" to a child and to lose interest for him. His games then work through a longer evolution before reaching their climax, as where an entire group of players instead of one has to be caught before the game is won, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... lambkin[obs3]; aurelia[obs3], caterpillar, cocoon, nymph, nympha[obs3], orphan, pupa, staddle[obs3]. girl; lass, lassie; wench, miss, damsel, demoiselle; maid, maiden; virgin; hoyden. Adj. infantine[obs3], infantile; puerile; boyish, girlish, childish, babyish, kittenish; baby; newborn, unfledged, new-fledged, callow. in the cradle, in swaddling clothes, in long clothes, in arms, in leading strings; at the breast; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... She was a soft, babyish creature, downy and clinging, soft-eyed and gentle, the beggar folk had received gifts at her hand, the dogs knew of her largesse. Men looked on her with approval, and women liked her. Her husband belonged to the type known as "fine men," tall, generously-proportioned, with the free and easy ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... one thing that I am sorry to see many boys doing every spring, and which they cannot defend by any such excuses. I often wonder who was the first to begin such a disgraceful custom, the most cruel, senseless, and babyish piece of folly: I mean what is called bird-nesting. God said to the creatures, "Be fruitful and multiply,"—"let fowl multiply in the earth." At the same time, He gave them a wonderful instinct and skill, such as man's reason cannot imitate. The birds must keep their eggs very warm for a certain ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... was against it: I said to the peasants, 'For you it is easy, 330 But how about me? Whatever may happen The Elder must come To accounts with the Barin, And how can I answer His babyish questions? And how can I do ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... with their assumed roles, their table manners were not impeccable, and many fists pounded on the table, while babyish voices said: "Me wants me thupper," or "Div me some beddy-butter!" But though the bowls and mugs betokened infantile fare, the supper really served included dainty salads and sandwiches, followed by ices, jellies and cakes, and was fully enjoyed ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put on the aspect of interpreting between them. What shall I say to him first? said he. Why, said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, you may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me, though I don't pretend to be a judge. He says, Monsieur, said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his captain, that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... men. Skene and his wife and daughter looked in in the evening. I suppose I am turning to my second childhood, for not only am I filled drunk, or made stupid at least, with one bottle of wine, but I am disabled from writing by chilblains on my fingers—a most babyish complaint. They say that the character is indicated by the handwriting; if ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... you get that far, will you come with me to the Riviera, or to Florence, or Sicily—or Cairo?" the other asked, adjusting her gold- brown wig with her babyish hands. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to write even of staleness freshly; and though he is treating of the world as seen by eyes darkened or blood-shot with evil experience, his own eyes look out upon the scene with a clarity that is almost babyish. Through all runs that curious Russian sense that every man is only a man, which, if the Russians ever are a democracy, will make them the most democratic democracy that the world has ever seen. Take this ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... accepted Granny and Maida as the mother-in-law and daughter of a "traveling man." From the beginning Granny had seemed one of them, but Maida was a puzzle. The children could not understand how a little girl could be grown-up and babyish at the same time. And if you stop to think it over, perhaps you can ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... was sufficiently recovered to think of her—and she tried to attend faithfully to her studies, but more than once Miss Day had seen the tears dropping upon her book or slate, and reproved her sharply for not giving her mind to her lessons, and for indulging in what she called her "babyish propensities." ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... great rage, and could almost have cried, if it had not been babyish, for they were his best regiments which he could see dropping down in great glittering stars on the ashes below. 'That's a caddish thing to do,' he said, with difficulty; 'I didn't give them to you to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building, and a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers ran down the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, babyish eyes; his features were insignificant, but his manner extremely pleasant and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, perhaps the largest landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... own voice was vaguely comforting: but the moment he began to run, he felt as if some one—or Something—was running after him. He knew there was nothing. He knew it was babyish. But what could you do if your legs were in a fearful hurry of their own accord? Besides, Tara was waiting. Somehow Tara seemed the point of safety. He didn't believe she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... know," she said. "He couldn't always be as gentle and loving as when he was a child. A young man would think that so babyish. He wants, as he says, to be independent, and not tied to a woman's apron-string. But in his heart of hearts he loves me best in the whole world, and he wouldn't have been ashamed to let me see it at such a moment. And I should have had a precious memory of him for ever. You shake your ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... girl who was singing badly a small role in a certain comic opera at the time of these occurrences. She had a babyish manner across the footlights, and she was thought to be a blonde, for she was wearing a yellow wig over her own short black hair that season. Her first name ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said, inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty dimple ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... out inasmuch, I should have said nevertheless. When I am not quite sure of a word, I look it out, for I always have my little dictionary close at hand, and that is a great conveyance, you know. I am trying to get over my babyish way of talking, or at least of writing, and hope I ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... things I am capable of believing, but which everybody else knows to be fallacies, and compares me to Sir I. Newton writing on the prophets! Yet of course he praises my biology up to the skies—there I am wise—everywhere else I am a kind of weak, babyish idiot! It is ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... peacefully on the ground when another boy, climbing a wall, fell on him and did the damage. When I returned him, duly bandaged, to his father's arms, the child bent forward and put out his lips for a kiss, saying good-night with babyish pronunciation. The father and the attendant nurse laughed, and I, being young, was confused and blushed profusely. They went away and somehow or other I never saw them again. I wonder if the pretty child, (he must be eight or ten now,) remembers ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... glistened upon her lashes in the fulness and joy of her deliverance from doubt and fear, and before she could twinkle them back, broke into smaller brilliants upon her cheeks and the bosom of her dress. It was very babyish and foolish, but it is to be questioned whether she could have contrived a more telling situation had she studied it for ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... himself for his momentary panic; it was stupid and babyish. Of course fellows had been lost in the Bush, but they couldn't have been such a short way in as he must be by now. True, he had heard a story of a chap who had gone round and round like a squirrel in a cage not a mile from the outskirts of the scrub. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... certainty of a syllogistic deduction, that such will be the outcome to our hundreds of thousands of years of pain upon earth. In the face of that, speculations upon a comet or gaseous emanations hitting the planet, or the sun growing cold, become babyish fancies. How clearly the possibility is pointed in the discussions about the use in the next War of bacterial bombs containing the bacilli of cholera, plague, dysentery and many others! What influenza did in destroying millions, they can repeat a thousand times ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D. |
