"Babble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Britt began to babble; there was a suggestion of partial mania in his tones. Vaniman could not understand what he was saying, but the sharp questions that were interjected by the manager of the affair—the queries that gimleted for additional information—suggested ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... more alive to the big events of a clashing world, repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of them fresh from fields of slaughter ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... The babble of voices sounded strange as the oars dipped fast, and for a time they were allowed to pursue their way in peace, but at last it was seen that the wounded had all been transferred to certain of the canoes, and with a fierce yell the Indians ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... a highly amusing study—in moderation, and for boys. But protracted too long, it becomes a perfect plague. Your philosopher is a complete novice in the life comme il faut.... I like very well to see a child babble and stammer; there is even a grace about it when it becomes his age. But to see a man continue the prattle of the child, is absurd. Just so with your philosophy." The consequence of this prevalent spirit of universal skepticism ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... as her elbow and down again to the tips of her fingers. She did not even attempt to draw her hand away, she was still in that state of apathy, where all her senses seemed dulled; and so she let him babble on, murmuring his adoration and his rose-colored dreams ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... long tongue. Besides, he'll see the Westerleys and my other friends in Paradiso, and babble to them." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... about this," commanded Leonard, thrusting a hand under the prostrate man's shirt and feeling for his heart. The request set loose a babble. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... these matters, trying to find out the truth about them, writing books and building churches—our civilization is going to drift just precisely as those other civilizations which have been guided by the same dreadful fatalism have drifted—towards the Turkish goal. "Kismet. Man is a fool to babble of these things; what he may do is of no avail; all things will happen as they were pre-ordained." And the English Turk—the man who prefers to fight things out instead of thinking things out—takes ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... hair with her baby hand. That was her own word, and her own way of showing sympathy and pity. The little one's vocabulary was, at this period of her life, very limited, but equally significant of all that she saw and felt. She possessed no extraneous babble. The only words she was capable of uttering came from her heart; hence they fell upon her hearers with all the beauty and strength of truth. "Poorest, poorest," she again repeated; "dorn seep; papa ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... to babble to Anna. "You know, I just thought I never would get this old thing on." She was speaking of her dress. "Aileen wouldn't help me—the ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... labour or look on. And though the White Pig was allowed to be three-quarters of a mile from the nearest point, the mighty voice of Captain Zeb rode over the flickering breadth of sea, and through the soft babble of the waves ashore. The wind was light from southwest, and the warp being nearly in the same direction now, the Blonde began to set her courses, to catch a lift of air, when the tide should come busily working under her. And this would be the best tide since she took the ground, last Sunday week, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover, Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... youth has plainly become a man, a man showing the skill and courage of his father, and with the sense of wrong burning in his breast. Already he has declared that he would wreak vengeance upon them, the day of reckoning seems to have dawned. Previously they despised his warnings as the helpless babble of a mere boy; now they have to meet him, returning, possibly, with help from his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... only broken when the lips of the invalid moved to murmur some loving words or to babble of the flowers in the Valley. She was in no pain but she was very tired. She was not unhappy, for the two whom she loved and who loved her were with her and though she was tired she soon would rest—in Heaven. When she spoke of going the man's ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Babble of comment and argument! It was a picked fight—anybody could see that. Why should Lapierre come north in the Flagg interests? Lapierre had never worked in a Flagg crew. It was begun so suddenly and was ended so soon! A minute's flash of drama against the background ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... letter from his father contained a revocation of all that had pleased him in the former one. Beecot senior wrote many pages of abuse—he always did babble like a complaining woman when angered. He declined to sanction the marriage and ordered his son at once—underlined—to give up all thought of making Sylvia Norman his wife. It would have been hard enough, wrote Beecot, to have received her ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... columns, part of it falling again to the earth. Around the fires, and through the smoke, flitted the forms of the Indians. They appeared to be cooking and feasting. Some of them staggering over the ground, kept up an incessant babble—at intervals varying their talk with savage whoops. Others danced around accompanying their leaps with the monotonous "hi-hi-hi-ya." All appeared to have partaken freely of the fire-water of Taos. A few more seriously disposed were grouped around four or five prostrate forms—evidently the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the least," Jeanne answered frankly. "I am tired of mirrors and electric lights and babble. I prefer our present surroundings, and I should not mind at all if some of those disapproving ancestors of yours stepped out of their frames and took their ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put the following episode down to the months of strain culminating in an intense irritation wrought by the babble of Ali 'Assan's meaningless chatter, and the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... fashion. And ever and again Lawford would find himself intercepting fleeting and anxious glances at his face, glances almost of remorse and pity; and thought he detected beneath this irresponsible contradictory babble an unceasing effort to clear the sky, to lure away too pressing memories, to put his doubts and ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... People will get hungry." This was how people reasoned in the town. I must admit that Yulia Mihailovna did much to confirm this disastrous rumour by her own heedlessness. A month earlier, under the first spell of the great project, she would babble about it to anyone she met; and even sent a paragraph to one of the Petersburg papers about the toasts and speeches arranged for her fete. What fascinated her most at that time was the idea of these toasts; she wanted to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in passing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below this ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... were all talking, to their partners, across the table, even to Aunt Ellen. The exhilarating sound of voices rose to a hum, then a concerted babble broken by laughter. It grew animated, it grew sparkling, it grew brilliant. Chrystie, with parted lips and glistening eyes, became as artlessly amusing as she was in the bosom of her family. She was delightful, her frank enjoyment a charming ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... commenced, and Sibyll was still listening—or, perhaps, listening not—to the soothing babble of the venerable servant. They were both seated in the little room that adjoined the hall, and their only light came through the door opening on the garden,—a gray, indistinct twilight, relieved by the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rather shocked Mrs. Grier; but though the guest scarcely listened, the little sharp babble of talk was kept up, until they ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... drowned in a velvet gloom. Here and there sharp lamps stung the dusks. There was a babble of voices. The lights of the orchestra gleamed subtly. The pit was a mist of lilac, which shifted and ever shifted. A chimera of fetid faces swam above the gallery rail. Wave after wave of lifeless heads rolled on either side ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images which his own ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... Above the babble of excited voices, rose a shout of command, the bugle shrilled "Sauve qui peut! Sauve qui peut! Sauve qui peut!" and the crew began leaping over the side; and then, straight in front of where stood the breathless watchers, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love,—the love which manhood has half ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... turned, a brown figure darted toward him from the end of the wing. A voice known long ago was calling to him—a voice that penetrated high and clear above the babble of the beaters. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and I have sung Much song of matters vain, And a heaven-sweetened tongue Turned to unprofiting strain Of vacant things, which though Even so they be, and throughly so, It is no boot at all for thee to know, But babble and ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... long a sojourn in Belait.[14] And to her incitements and his own inclination and desires was added that which made revenge and my brother's death the chiefest things in all the world to Ibrahim Mahmud, and it happened thus.... But do I weary the Sahib with my babble?" ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... a momentary silence among the people while they listened to the ringing voice of the man walking in the center ground. Then broke forth a rippling, laughing babble among the cone-shaped teepees. All were glad to hear of the chieftain's grandson. They were happy to attend the feast and dance for its naming. With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy braids ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... a babble of exclamations and conjectures. Murmurs of interest rose even from our captive band. Then came Slinker's voice, loud ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... reprobate and godless, and brought forward all the comforting arguments which a pious Christian can command for the edification and encouragement of those who mourn a beloved friend; but to Gorgo all this well-meant discourse was as the babble of an unknown tongue; and it was only when, at length, Marianne went up to her and drew her to her motherly bosom, to kiss her, and bid her be welcome under Clelnens' roof till Porphyrius should be at home again, that she understood that the good woman meant kindly, and honestly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Country, a babble of black spume . . . Faith, an eyeball in the sand . . . Mother, a nail through a broken hand— A kissing fume— And out of her breast the bloody bubbling ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... face was gradually taking on a deep flush, for those flaming spots on her cheeks were spreading to throat and temples—to her very hair. She kept her hands in constant motion. Next, the small tongue began to babble uninterruptedly. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... without weight of meaning. Nor perhaps to Picture-Collectors and Cognoscenti generally, of whatever country,—if they could forget, for a moment, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the learned babble of the Sale-room and varnishing Auctioneer; and think, "Why it is, probably, that Pictures exist in this world, and to what end the divine art of Painting was bestowed, by the earnest gods, upon poor mankind?" I could ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... unhappy condition, exerted her divine power, and changed him into a grasshopper, which is, as it were, all voice, and whose monotonous, ceaseless chirpings may not inaptly be compared to the meaningless babble of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... found this little cottage, hid in the oak copse; had prepared it with her own hands; had gone to the hospital to fetch her husband. That never ending journey from the hospital to the cottage! His ceaseless babble, the foul overflow from his feeble mind, had sapped ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... wild babble of questions and answers, and it was a long time before all had calmed down ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers. Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by these librarians are wide as the poles asunder. Some of them babble like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, and sorting borrowers' cards; others, scorning such mechanical details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... sense, can we not talk English instead of German, and say school of arts, union of arts, &c.? I suppose we shall soon go a step farther in imitation of our Germanic neighbours, and call poetry by the appellation of poet-art. In the last century, it seemed likely, as Johnson said, that we should babble a dialect of France; in this, there is more danger of our talking a Teutonic jargon. Let us stick to the middle course—for our language is essentially half way between the German and the French, the Teutonic and Romance tongues, and any attempt to approximate too ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... name of Peace Bind down a people to be racked and slain; The emulous armies waxing without cease, All-puissant all in vain; The pacts and leagues to murder by delays, And the dumb throngs that on the deaf thrones gaze; The common loveless lust of territory; The lips that only babble of their mart, While to the night the shrieking hamlets blaze; The bought allegiance, and the purchased praise, False honour, and shameful glory;— Of all the evil whereof this is part, How weary is our heart, How weary is ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... it appears to me that he might have addressed them pretty nearly thus: 'Gentlemen, it is not the arguers who do harm; philosophy can gang its ain gait without risk;' the people either do not hear it at all or let it babble on, and pay it back all the disdain it feels for them. I do not argue myself, but others argue, and what harm comes of it? We have arranged that my great influence in the court and my pretended omnipotence should serve you as a pretext for allowing a free, peaceful ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... darkness pouring out on the still air the scent they withheld during the sunlight. Sometimes the lightning and the thunder, sometimes the moon-rainbow, sometimes the aurora borealis, is busy. And the streams are running all night long, and seem to babble louder than in the day time, for the noises of the working world are still, so that we hear them better. Almost the only daylight thing awake, is the clock ticking with nobody to heed it, and that sounds to me very dismal. ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... was lost in an incoherent babble, and with a deep sigh she fell lax into Cleggett's arms. The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted. High-strung ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... nurse leaned forward in eager expectation. They all recognized that a crisis was at hand. Would the stricken girl give an answer that would be a clue to her identity—the identity she had denied? Or would her words trail off into the meaningless babble ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour. Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never seemed a shade ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wife—starting again, he calls it—while he earns a salary and we live in a poky house and I do the cooking. I'd think it awfully funny if it was happening to any of my friends—but this is terrible! Well, goat-tending tells, doesn't it? And after all we have done for him—to babble on about honesty and earning and all those socialistic ideas. He is a dangerous man, papa; really. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... breakers round the bay, That the good old barque of England May in safety sail away: Though the tongue of fiercest Faction In its Folly may deride, Still he stands in lofty learning Like a giant o'er the tide, While the murmuring wavelets passing Far beneath his kingly hand, Looking upward, blindly babble Where they cannot understand. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... bitten. The man allowed her two bites, but denied a third, being unable to contain himself for pain. The author goes on to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child, and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk, and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her. I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams; it gnawed me like a vulture. A ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now?" cried Dorothy, as the copper man continued to babble these unmeaning words, which no one could understand at all because ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... brethren ... gabble-gabble!' My window glimpses larch and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... Mr. Lincoln and his Aide, Halleck, went to Acquia Creek to visit Hooker, to have a peep into his plans, and, of course to babble about them. I hope Hooker will most ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... lost in a babble of voices as a bevy of "Swimming Girls" descended from the enchanted regions above and scurried out upon the stage. Through the double curtain the orchestra could be faintly heard; ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the true poet. Its teachings drop in tears, and the heart receives them kneeling, and is in no hurry to babble to the world all their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... the order of sociable drunkards, for whom drink has no flavour without company, and who can no more drink alone than men can smoke in the dark. Ada was an ideal companion, rarely breaking the thread of her ceaseless babble, and never forgetting to pay for her share. It was little enough she could squeeze out of Aaron, and often she drank for ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... there is more cause than that," said Susan. "It may be that I should have taken more heed to their babble at first; but I have questioned Cis while you were at the lodge, and I find that even before Mate Goatley spake here, this Tibbott had told the child of her being of lofty race in the north, alien to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... God's beautiful world! With the sky so blue and white; the woods so—so every wonderful color; the river so dark and babble-y, chattering over the stones that it had more to say than it had time to say it in; the birds singing and flying; the air so soft and warm; and nobody here but me! Well, I'm glad that even I am here, just a little girl ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... consider them as written to myself, and subtract so much from your bill. Nay, I will accept a line from Lady Ailesbury now and then in part of payment. I shall continue to write as the wind sets in my pen; and do own my babble does ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... responding imitatively to the voices of other people. It seems to be one form of the random activity that goes with euphoria. The child derives satisfaction not so much from the muscular activity of vocalization as from the sounds that he produces, so that deaf children, who begin to babble much like other children, lag behind them as the months go by, from not deriving this auditory satisfaction from the vocal activity. Though whistling, blowing a horn, shaking a rattle and beating a drum are not native responses, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... know, Frenchy," continued the Englishman, in a thick, aggrieved voice, "is how long you've been at this trade, and how much you know about it—you and the other Frenchy. But there's none of us speaks the other's lingo. It is a regular Tower of Babble we are!" And Uncle Ben added to his mental confusion a further alcoholic fog. "That's why I showed yer the way out of the works over the iron fence by the empty casks, and brought yer by the beach to this 'ere house of entertainment, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... shook her head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces, and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down into the valley of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose into the air like a perennial laughter. On the far-away hills, sun-burst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped from peak to peak. Earth, air and water, each seemed in better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them than upon ordinary ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon a solid, dull, upper-middle-class dining-room, empty and silent, the electric lights burning, the tray with whiskey, siphon and cigarette-box marking the midnight hour. Then we have the stumbling, fumbling entrance of Jack Barthwick, beatifically drunk, his maudlin babble, and his ill-omened hospitality to the haggard loafer who follows at his heels. Another example of a high-pitched opening scene may be found in Mr. Perceval Landon's The House Opposite. Here we have a midnight parting between a married woman and her lover, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... refined, and his Court the Model for Opinions in Pleasure, as well as the Pattern in Dress; which might prevail so far upon an undiscerning world as (to accomplish it or its approaching Slavery) to make it receive a superfluous Babble ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... passed in a babble of talk and exchange of explanations almost before they were aware, and then Mrs. Gray suddenly realized that Bob had ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... when Valentine heard Julian babble incoherently the name of the lady of the feathers, he said to himself that the battle should be his, and he leaned upon his will to feel its power and its glory. That night he forgot its fury, the intense ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my arms.... Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed.... It was tremendously still there, the sun high, and the shadows still; ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... furnished youthful adorers eager to sit at the feet of the pretty new mistress, and bring her offerings of chocolates and flowers; for five long days there was always a crowd, always a hum and babble of voices, but at the end of the ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... JULIA. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me. Here is a coil with protestation!—[Tears the letter.] Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie: You would be fingering them, to ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... rage for buying, impatience to get in and impatience to get out, the fragrance of pine and holly decorations, the smell of hot varnish and hot people and cheap furs, the babble of excited voices and shrieks of exhausted children, it was the true Christmas spirit. Peter Rolls's store in general, and the toy department in particular, were having what would be alluded to later in ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... out; I am too weak to stir abroad: Tell my mind to the Council—to the Parliament: Proclaim it to the winds. Thou art cold thyself To babble of their coldness. O would I were My father ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... far as even the invention of the plot or the composition of a single scene. The memorandum-book alluded to—on the first leaf of which he had written in his neatest hand (as if to encourage himself to begin) "Affectation"— contains, besides the names of three of the intended personages, Sir Babble Bore, Sir Peregrine Paradox, and Feignwit, nothing but unembodied sketches of character, and scattered particles of wit, which seem waiting, like the imperfect forms and seeds in chaos, for the brooding of genius to nurse them into ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... they hurried through the village, crossed the dark bridge and approached a ramshackle house from which a babble of voices rose in strident argument. The excited chorus abated at Terry's sharp knock and the door was thrown open to disclose the belligerent figure of Tony Ricorro, the leader of the Italian colony. Recognizing the reefered figure ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... speaking, Mrs. Dennistoun did not observe, what she remembered afterwards, that again it was much more of places than of people that Elinor talked, and that though she named Phil when there was any occasion for doing so, she did not babble about him as brides do, as if he were altogether the sun, and everything revolved round him. It is not a good sign, perhaps, when the husband comes down to his "proper place" as the representative of the other half of the world too soon. Elinor looked ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... why do you laugh and weep and sing, And why do you hurry by, For you're only a noisy little thing, While a great strong oak am I; A hundred years I shall stand alone, And the world will look at me; While you will bubble and babble on And die at ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... of similar apartments. He neither knew nor cared where he was. The feeling of imprisonment was no greater than he had felt on the endless, cheerless streets. He laid himself on the bench that ran along a side wall, and, closing his eyes, listened to the babble of the clear stream and the thunder of the "drive" on its journey. How the logs hurried and jostled! crushing, whirling, ducking, with the merry lads leaping about them with shouts and laughter. Suddenly he was recalled by a voice. Some one handed a narrow tin cup full of coffee and a thick ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... and noon He sits upon the great white throne, And listens for the creature's praise. What babble we of days and days? The Dayspring he, whose ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... do with rabble? Froth is better than their babble; Let him toss them flakes of froth, To pronounce his ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... clears! O, but the daylight grows! Soon shall the pied wind-flowers Babble of greening hours, Primrose and daffodil Yearn to a fathering sun, The lark have all his will, The thrush be never done, And April, May, and June Go to the same blythe tune As this blythe dream of ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... in their malefaction, not at all. Your grocer and my butcher have at heart The selfsame aims as he to whom we pay Tribute for every pound of coal we burn. Their scope is narrower, but their act the same As his—against whose millions all the tongues Of little tricksters in each corner store Babble and ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes, To hear the row the actor-manager Had with the author or the leading lady, Then to recount the story at the Garrick, Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies, They babble over chestnuts and their punch And stale ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and one great buttercup nodded in the doorway like a sleepy sentinel. Nelly stared and smiled, listened, and looked about on every side. Nothing was seen but the quiet meadow and the shady grove, nothing was heard but the babble of the brook and the cheery music of ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... eyes shone like rolling fireballs; their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences, and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... He chuckled, repeating their babble. "That's what I thought too, until I remembered those data tables on gravity and Escape Velocity and such—how, on the Moon, the Escape Velocity is much less than on Earth. And on that tiny second moon—well, ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... vehemence, that I wanted no charm, nor did I fear mortal weapon or mortal foe, for in God was my trust, and He was able to hold me scathless, or to take me when He would. And then, John, a fancy seized me, a foolish fancy of romance perhaps, but still I mind not thy knowing, so thou 'lt not babble of it to others. I asked the old man could he put what I had just said into the same tongue with that heathen charm, and so shape it that I could have it carved upon my blade above the sun and moon ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... crown, and dropping lightly to the shoulders. Later I saw these comely maidens crouching on the ground in the market-place, and selling their wares, with much glitter of eyes, teeth, and earrings, and a continual babble of bargaining. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... are you then, if it be not to rouse in us the discontent that is alone divine? Would you have me go fat and happy, listening to your babble of kingfishers and cuckoos, while my brothers and sisters in the world ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... any one ever see such an angel!" he cried, and he began to babble over the child until Ellen was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... am ashamed to say that selfishness took me by the soul, and that my heart turned as heavy as lead within me. I stammered out some few halting words of congratulation, and then sat downcast, with my head drooped, deaf to the babble of our new acquaintance. He was clearly a confirmed hypochondriac, and I was dreamily conscious that he was pouring forth interminable trains of symptoms, and imploring information as to the composition and action of innumerable quack ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... collapse produced an emergency meeting of the leading sheep. The mid-day dinner-hour was chosen as the slackest. A babble of suggestions filled the Parnass's parlour. Solomon Barzinsky kept sternly repeating his Delenda est Carthago: 'He must ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... adore Aunt Celia. I didn't care for her at first, but she is so deliciously blind. Anything more exquisitely unserviceable as a chaperon I can't imagine. Absorbed in antiquity, she ignores the babble of contemporaneous lovers. That any man could look at Kitty when he could look at a cathedral passes her comprehension. I do not presume too greatly on her absent-mindedness, however, lest she should turn unexpectedly and rend me. I always remember that inscription ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... might apply that description to Browne's poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals'; that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles? of rustic bridals ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... staring out at her husband; and a quick babble of talk and exclamations from behind made itself audible in spite of the roaring ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... eternity; in actual time it was exactly ten minutes. Then a cavalcade tramped down the hall. He heard their voices, and Hal Dozier was among them. About him flowed a babble of questions as the men struggled for the honor of a word from the great man. Perhaps he was coming to his room to form the posse and issue general ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... a mound? That's our life, yours and mine; and Fate grudges that even these few poor hours, which make the sum of it, should be spent together. Think how long a man and woman can live side by side at best. Yet every Sunday of your life you go to church and babble about a watchful, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... room appeared to her even less inviting than the street. It was the afternoon of the first drawing-room, and a debutante was exhibiting herself to her friends. She stood in the centre, a figure from a Twelfth-Night cake, amidst a babble of congratulations, and was plainly occupied in a perpetual struggle to conceal her moments of enthusiasm beneath a crust ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... without revealing Montano. He started to hold up his badge, realized the Lhari captain could not see color, and dropped it again, while Vorongil bent over to pick up the fallen gun. "Are you sunstruck or mad, Bartol? What's this babble?" ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... "Don't babble like a fool!" Kennon said with disgust. "How could I land a spacer here without being spotted? You sound like a two-credit novel. And even if I did—would it be a can like this?" Kennon played the torch over the blue-black durilium ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... the north, we find, with a diminishing aridity, the hillsides covered with richer crops, and the valleys decked out with a more luxuriant and warmly coloured vegetation. Shechem lies in an actual amphitheatre of verdure, which is irrigated by countless unfailing streams; rushing brooks babble on every side, and the vapour given off by them morning and evening covers the entire landscape with a luminous haze, where the outline of each object becomes blurred, and quivers in a manner to which we are accustomed in our Western lands.* Towns grew and multiplied ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... delighting in the unconscious fashion in which the sonorous phrases of convention rolled off from her son's baby lips. And then, one day, Scott's memory failed him in his invocation. There came a familiar phrase or two, and then a babble of meaningless syllables, ending in a long-drawn and relieved Amen. An instant later, Scott lifted ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... began to remember the evening all over again, dusting with lasciviousness each of the gestures that had shone with such clear colours in his sight, dulling each of the sentences by which she had displayed to him her trimly-kept mental accoutrement until they became simpering babble, falsifying his minute memory of the scene until it became a record of her lust instead of his. Something deep in him stated quietly and glumly that he was now doing a wrong far worse than the thing that ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... from below kept up a constant babble of, "Three men to be set aboard Thames... three men to be set ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... time there was silence. From within the house came the continuous babble of voices and laughter, the clink of cutlery on china. The young people spent a long time over their supper. By-and-by the waiter returned to the veranda, deposited a plate of colored ices upon Ariel's knees with a ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... live, they will surely wipe us out!" put in the Frenchman, staring in the gloom. "What meaneth this old woman's babble, son ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Babble babili. Babe infaneto. Baboon paviano. Baby infaneto. Bachelor frauxlo. Back (of body) dorso. Back (reverse side) posta flanko. Back (behind) poste. Backbite kalumnii. Backbone spino. Backslider rekulpulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... babble like parrots. Oh! how they love! At the end of five years they feel as if their first happiness were a thing of yesterday, they cannot give you up, they are magnificent in their indignation, despair, love, grief, dread, dejection, presentiments. In short, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... an honest woman, show thyself to thy worshippers, who are worn with regretting thee all these thirteen years. Hush the noise of battle, be a true Lysimacha to us.[361] Put an end to this tittle-tattle, to this idle babble, that set us defying one another. Cause the Greeks once more to taste the pleasant beverage of friendship and temper all hearts with the gentle feeling of forgiveness. Make excellent commodities flow to our markets, fine heads of garlic, early cucumbers, apples, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... later by a sudden uproar. The camp was in confusion. Sleepy voices tossed back and forth in inextricable babble. Hilary was on his feet in an instant, instinctively slipping his automatic into his blouse. Grim looked huge at ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... muttering with their lips, their faces steeped in a strange, unholy rapture. Sometimes they would rise and walk a few paces with outstretched arms, till the arms closed as though they clasped something invisible, to which they bent their heads to babble awhile. Then they walked back to their rugs again, where they ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... the breaking strain. His constitution gone, his mind and body weakened. For twenty years, no one had ever heard him speak the name of that Saxon Alice whose death was the death of his soul. Now, he began suddenly to babble to his daughter of her mother. In his last ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... later by a courteous fellow-passenger—courteous, but with a smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name. "Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never believed me. He knew that he would have said something ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... afterwards she awakened suddenly and looked around her. A rosy glow through the trees proclaimed the dawn. The forest was wonderfully still, and there seemed no reason whatever for the sudden awakening. Then a stream of meaningless babble came through the canvas wall of the tent. She sat up instantly, and listened. Plainly, the patient was delirious, and the sound of his delirious babble must have broken through her sleep. Three minutes later she was inside the tent, her brow ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... The babble increased in volume, for the first team had drawn up between the stands to wait for the final moment, and Charles Johnson stood ready, with his noted Siberians, to begin the contest. They made a charming appearance, and their ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... there was such a babble of exclamations that hardly a word of what was said could be understood. And in the midst of this the cadets gave a rousing cheer for Clearwater Hall and everybody ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... with the outward calm that became a young man of nearly three and twenty, but one was alive to one's finger-tips with pleasing little stimulations. The custom house examination excited one, the strangeness of a babble in a foreign tongue; one found the French of City Merchants' and Cambridge a shy and viscous flow, and then one was standing in the train as it went slowly through the rail-laid street to Boulogne Ville, and one looked out at the world in French, porters in blouses, workmen in enormous purple ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... that's one of the reasons why I want to keep him here. He's Russian, for all his Oxford English and his Italian gestures; and from his babble I imagine he's been through seven kinds of hell. Torches and hobnailed boots and the incessant call for a woman named ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... went she seemed to carry with her an atmosphere of subtle seclusion, of a cloistered lusciousness, of dim, green, guarded gardens, where the sighs of love's novices are stifled by the drip of stealthy fountains and the babble of fantastic birds. I suppose it was no more than my fancy, or a trick of my memory confusing later things with earlier, that makes me now, as I write, seem to recall what seemed like a smile on the face of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of sorts, I'm afraid, Mr. Falfani. Sad that. Too many emotions, want of sleep, perhaps. You would do too much last night." He still kept up his hateful babble, and Jules maddened me by his ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... others think of him, unthinkingly to lead the life and hold the principles of the majority of his contemporaries, you must discredit in his eyes the one authoritative voice of his own soul. He may be a docile citizen; he will never be a man. It is ours, on the other hand, to disregard this babble and chattering of other men better and worse than we are, and to walk straight before us by what light we have. They may be right; but so, before heaven, are we. They may know; but we know also, and by that knowledge ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble. The very tricks—mechanical dots, dashes, aposiopeses—which offend us now and then in Sterne; the unfamiliar Latinisms which frighten some and disgust others in Browne, drop from Lamb's lips or pen like the pearls of the Fairy story. Unless you are born out of sympathy ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... with it the gurgling of the old woman. It was impossible and incredible, that mingling in the fetid air of those two sounds, as if the babble of clear spring water had suddenly broken into and merged with the turgid roll of a city sewer. Mick sat up. "But this ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... have just heard? I can explain it in a few words. There are two kinds of music: one, petty, poor, second-rate, always the same, based on a hundred or so of phrases which every musician has at his command, a more or less agreeable form of babble which most composers live in. We listen to their strains, their would-be melodies, with more or less satisfaction, but absolutely nothing is left in our mind; by the end of the century they are forgotten. But the nations, from the beginning of time till our own ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... discovery of the dead and the wounded hound. Then followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and the hunted ones were making the most ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... nice in his victuals. Another is indeed wise, but apt to slight inferiors; hardly at the pains to answer, if they argue with him too foolishly. And so each aliquis concerning his aliquo,—through whole pages of electioneering babble. 'For,' says Jocelin, 'So many men, as many minds.' Our Monks 'at time of blood-letting, tempore minutionis,' holding their sanhedrim of babble, would talk in this manner: Brother Samson, I remarked, never said anything; sat silent, sometimes smiling; but he took good note of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... yawned the ravine, bristling with half-burned saplings, and but partially illumined by the moon. The babble of the brook flowing through its hidden depths ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... on—let me babble, Duane. I've years of silence to make up for. Let me talk like a fool; you know I'm not one.... Oh, the happiness of this one night!—the happiness of it! I never shall have enough dancing, never enough of pleasure.... I—I'm perfectly mad ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... The babble continued, but diminished gradually in volume. Through the trees, as I waited, I caught a glimpse of the sea. I wished I was out on the Cob, where beyond these voices there was peace. My head was beginning to ache, and I felt ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St. Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittle-tattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign-manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lap-dog, stretched ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... wings to cleave the air, swift-foot she treads the earth: 180 A monster dread and huge, on whom so many as there lie The feathers, under each there lurks, O strange! a watchful eye; And there wag tongues, and babble mouths, and hearkening ears upstand As many: all a-dusk by night she flies 'twixt sky and land Loud clattering, never shutting eye in rest of slumber sweet. By day she keepeth watch high-set on houses of the street, Or on the towers ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... work is. There is generally abundance of direction for us if only we are content with the one-step-at-a-time direction, which we get, and if another condition is fulfilled, if we try to suppress our own wishes and the noisy babble of our own yelping inclinations, and take the whip to them until they cease their barking, that we may hear what God says. It is not because He does not speak, but because we are too anxious to have our own way to listen quietly to His voice, that we make most of our blunders as to what the duty ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ask her if there were any one he could kill for her that day —a little joke at the expense of the abbots. With the exception of the potentates among the high clergy with whom Madame Imperia managed to accommodate her little tempers, she ruled everyone with a high hand in virtue of her pretty babble and enchanting ways, which enthralled the most virtuous and the most unimpressionable. Thus she lived beloved and respected, quite as much as the real ladies and princesses, and was called Madame, concerning which the good Emperor Sigismund replied to a lady who complained of it to him, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac |
