"Boyishness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bewilderment at so wholly unpremeditated an act gave way to consternation as she considered its consequences. She knew that Burning Daylight was not a man to be trifled with, that under his simplicity and boyishness he was essentially a dominant male creature, and that she had pledged herself to a future of inevitable stress and storm. And again she demanded of herself why she had said yes at the very moment when it had been farthest ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... an incident truly French and delightful in its boyishness, as mon capitaine hinted that I should ask mon colonel if he would permit mon capitaine to go into town and have dinner with my friend and the admiral and myself, returning in my friend's car in time to proceed to the firing-line ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... I had been congratulating myself on the spirit of enterprise and daring that had led me to be the witness of such great and stirring events, I now despised it all as a silly boyishness which had brought me into what seemed like to prove something more than a foolish scrape. Nor could I help reflecting that whether death or disgrace (which seemed to me far worse than death) awaited me, it would ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... ever," as he says, "a fighter." His faults, a certain occasional fierceness and grossness, were the faults that are counted as virtues among navvies and sailors and most primitive men. His virtues, boyishness and absolute fidelity, and a love of plain words and things are the virtues which are counted as vices among the aesthetic prigs who pay him the greatest honour. He had his more objectionable side, like other men, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... visit, Jasmin wrote regularly to his wife and friends at Agen, giving them his impressions of Paris. His letters were full of his usual simplicity, brightness, boyishness, and enthusiasm. "What wonderful things I have already seen," he said in one of his letters, "and how many more have I to see to-morrow and the following days. M. Dumon, Minister of Public Works" (Jasmin's compatriot and associate at the Academy of Agen), "has ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and seasoned as he poured out his plans; and together with the maturing tan and breadth from his rough life, there was an unconquerable boyishness in the lift of his head and the light of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... spell was broken. Hugging his parcel dangerously close he raced back to the shelter of the trees and waited. High over head the house opened a bright eye at him. He waved back at it with an absurd, incredible boyishness. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... something to take the boyishness out of me, and this has come and swept it away at one stroke and for ever.—Look here," he said aloud; "look round and see whether it is possible for you to get out—I mean, just think the matter over so that you may be able to contrive ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Mrs. Wrottesley, 'Jane's shortcomings in this respect are due to the fact that she is lamentably unaffected. Affectation, in the case of girls who ride straight and don't know what it is to have a headache, very often takes the form of boyishness. Let us console ourselves with the fact that, being perfectly natural, Jane has ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Surely Gilbert's own tone of respect must here have embarrassed even undergraduates. The uncertainty of success or failure only troubled him as it might affect his supporters. The sporting element in the contest appealed to his undying boyishness. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... young man, reverently. Then a bright smile broke over his face, and he held out his hand. "I'm no end grateful to you, sir," he said, a certain attractive boyishness of manner suddenly coming uppermost and putting to flight the dignity which was at times a heavier weight than he could carry. "No end. Don't you remember how it used to be, when you first went into the work, and tackled a job now and then that seemed too big for you? Then you caught ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... recognition meant nothing, yet it gave Pan a start, a twinge, and then sent a slow heat along his veins. He laughed to find the boyishness of old still alive in him. After eight years of hard life on the ranges! By that sudden resurging of long forgotten emotion Pan judged the nature of what the years had made him. It would be interesting to see how Dick Hardman ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... then really interested. I had never seen a shipwrecked person before. All the boyishness in me was aroused. I considered a shipwreck as an unavoidable event sooner or later ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... what hell meant till I met him. He taught me practically everything I know in that line. He was like an awful rotting disease. He ruined everyone he came near. Everything he touched went bad." He paused a moment. Then, with a sudden boyishness, "There, it's done with, darling," he said. "Will you forget it all—and let me start afresh? I've ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... to the entertainment of the public. Perhaps it may be thought that she has seldom written anything more brilliant; and that, independent of the original manner in which the denouement is brought about, the pictures of Charles Musgrove's good-natured boyishness and of his wife's jealous selfishness would have been incomplete without these finishing strokes. The cancelled chapter exists in manuscript. It is certainly inferior to the two which were substituted for it; but it was such as some writers ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... appeared at dinner he was as quiet and courteous as if nothing had happened; but his mother was compelled to note that the boyishness had departed out of his face, and in its strong lines she recognized his growing ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... His boyishness annoyed Carlotta. She did not want the situation to get out of hand. Moreover, what was so real for her was only too plainly a lark for him. She began to doubt ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... first moment, he had supposed. It was a woman who faced him—a mere girl of twenty, whose slender figure looked somehow boyish in its knitted sports coat and very short, workmanlike skirt. The suggestion of boyishness was emphasized by her attitude, as she stood squarely planted in front of Black Brady, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, her straight young back very flat, and her head a little tilted, so that her eyes might search the surly face beneath ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... them, telling what are their weight and value, plain for every one to see. But of course there are many ways in which a book, sermon, or essay may be bad without being Vealy. It may be dull, stupid, illogical, and the like, and yet have nothing of boyishness about it. It may be insufferably bad, yet quite mature. Beef may be bad, and yet undoubtedly Beef. And the question now is, not so much whether there be a standard of what is in a literary sense good or bad, as whether there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... that he considered him an agreeable romancer, or a little mad, or no more than a relief to the tedium of a wet Sunday morning. But his incredulity did not survive one glance at Saskia as she stood in that bleak drawing-room among Victorian water-colours and faded chintzes. The young man's boyishness deserted him. He stopped short in his tracks, and made a profound and awkward bow. "I am at your service, Mademoiselle," he said, amazed at himself. The words seemed to have come out of a confused memory of plays ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... now his mouth and jowls were dark with beard, yet written all over his sunburned face was a kindliness and gentleness that could not be denied. There was strength and good humor in plenty; and it was hard to reconcile these qualities with an unquestioned wistfulness and boyishness in his eyes. They were dark eyes, the eyes of a man of action who could also dream, kindly, thoughtful eyes which even the deep shadows of the forest had ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... new grip on the earth." When they were seated, however, a sort of awkwardness developed. To Dick, Bassett had been a more or less shadowy memory, clouded over with the details and miseries of the flight. And Bassett found Dick greatly altered. He was older than he remembered him. The sort of boyishness which had come with the resurrection of his early identity had gone, and the man who sat before him was grave, weary, and much older. But his gaze ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... met those eyes so full of eagle boldness yet so tempered with kindness, and to his own expression came a responsive flash of that winning boyishness which these men had not seen ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... of the matrons shook their heads. They did not altogether approve of him. He was well enough known for a certain unsteadiness; then, too, there was a boyishness about his look, an irresponsibility which was not general among the hard features of the men they knew. Most of these thought that Eve was rather throwing herself away. They all believed that she would have done far better to have chosen ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... as I came out and shook him into attention, "there is naught within more dangerous than shadows, or perchance a rat. Nor have I any time longer to dally over such boyishness. I had supposed you a soldier and a brave man, not a nerveless girl to be frightened in the dark. Come, there is ample hiding-space behind the walls, and I purpose leaving you here to regain some measure of your lost courage while I try a ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... And the poet's boyishness demands still further consideration. He has a crude violence of expression which is apt to shock the mature person—some of the descriptions of wounds in the two Battles of Hastings would sicken a butcher; while in another vein such ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... a hot bigot. He would not hear of religion. I have seen him waste hours of time in argument with all sorts of poor human creatures who understood neither him nor themselves, and he had had the boyishness to dissect and criticise even so small a matter as the riddler's definition of mind. He snorted aloud with zealotry and the lust for intellectual battle. Anything, whatever it was, that seemed to him likely to discourage the continued passionate production of corn and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a few paces off to fasten a flower in her girdle. A small youthful figure, in a pale yellow dress, lacking even the maturity of womanly outline. The full oval of her face, the straight line of her back, a slight boyishness in the contour of her hips, the infantine smallness of her sandaled feet and narrow hands, were all suggestive of fresh, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte |
