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Infantine   Listen
adjective
Infantine  adj.  Infantile; childish. "A degree of credulity next infantine."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Infantine" Quotes from Famous Books



... burrowing pig," signifying the radical destruction of important glands in the body by this undermining constitutional disease. Possibly the quaint lines which nurses have long been given to repeat for the amusement of babies while fondling their infantine fingers bear a hidden meaning which pointedly imports the scrofulous taint. This nursery distich, as we remember, personates the fingers one by one as five little fabulous pigs:—the first small piggy doesn't feel well; and the second ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... Lessons and Hymns we have never forgotten even amidst all the cares and crosses of after life. How often and how fondly too have we lingered over their delightful pages; and it may be questioned whether any works ever produced a better or more lasting impression on the infantine mind—than these unassuming little volumes. Mrs. Barbauld's present article is entitled "the Misses, addressed to a careless girl"—as the Misses Chief, Management, Lay, Place, Understanding, Representation, Trust, Rule, Hap, Chance, Take, and Miss ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various

... blue in the daylight, seemed dark and soft as velvet, and the colour on her neck deepened and whitened with every breath. She seemed smaller and more slender than when he had seen her in the street, and there was now something in the curve of her cheek almost infantine. When at last he turned and caught his own reflection in the mirror behind him, a shock passed through him as though he had seen a shameful thing, and his clouded mind and his clouded thoughts grew clearer. For a moment ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... at the moment that his wife had certainly more than an infantine will of her own. "You ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... can only be said to vegetate like plants, or live, like brutes, according to instinct, and not as human creatures, guided by reason. To those who had the direction of my earliest years I leave the task of relating the transactions of my infancy, if they find them as worthy of being recorded as the infantine exploits of Themistocles and Alexander,—the one exposing himself to be trampled on by the horses of a charioteer, who would not stop them when requested to do so, and the other refusing to run a race unless kings were to enter the contest ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his daughter,—"Luly's ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... surrounded with shelves, on which books and antiquities were arranged in scrupulous order. Here and there, on separate stands in front of the shelves, were placed a beautiful feminine torso; a headless statue, with an uplifted muscular arm wielding a bladeless sword; rounded, dimpled, infantine limbs severed from the trunk, inviting the lips to kiss the cold marble; some well-preserved Roman busts; and two or three vases from Magna Grecia. A large table in the centre was covered with antique bronze lamps and small vessels ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... swimming up behind them on old Van Ammerer's arm. They were headed for the paddock, although it was not quite time for the saddling bell. The Heathflower thing was still invisible—Allys searched the course for her through Hilary's glass, saying the while over her shoulder, with her most infantine smile: "You thought right, Camilla dear. I don't really know anything—have only a parrot faculty of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... the episode of a bed-room on fire passes by unnoticed. Of Maurice Sand, gifted son of an inspired mother, there is an exquisite chapter of literary criticism tempered with maternity. Other papers treat of infantine instruction as practiced by the writer herself, and readers are conscious of a thrill of envy at the thought of that little circle of Dudevantine grandchildren learning the elements of spelling and grammar from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... Vaughan found his secretary with the usual heaps of letters. One envelope, addressed in a large and rather infantine hand, was put aside for him. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... revoke that decision! For it is altogether foolish and not boylike—and I shall, I confess, hate the notion of running over it—yet commented it must be; more than mere correction! I was unluckily precocious—but I had rather you saw real infantine efforts (verses at six years old, and drawings still earlier) than this ambiguous, feverish—Why not wait? When you speak of the 'Bookseller'—I smile, in glorious security—having a whole bale of sheets at the house-top. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... the changes in the rancho and the restoration of the Mission Chapel, and together they had commended Clarence from the level of their superior passionless reserve and years. Clarence felt hopelessly young and hopelessly lonely; the naive prattle of the young girls beside him appeared infantine. In his abstraction, he heard Mrs. Peyton allude to the beauty of the night, and propose that after coffee and chocolate the ladies should put on their wraps and go with her to the old garden. Clarence raised his eyes; she was not looking at him, but there ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... and felt with the enthusiasm of affection. It breathes of healthy open air, of life upon the road, of casual joys and wayside pleasure, snatched with careless heart by men whose tastes are natural. There is very little of the alcove or the closet in this verse; and the touch upon the world is so infantine, so tender, that we are indulgent to the generalities with which the ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... enough to go to the sea-coast to meet her son, and he saw at the same moment the pale and aged face which had visited him at Tonquin in his dreams, and a fair face that he had never before thought so beautiful, more oval than he remembered it, with blue eyes soft and tender, and a mouth with a sweet infantine expression of sincerity and goodness. His mother stretched out her trembling arms, gave a great cry, and ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... consul's hand is beautiful!" "Ah! for heaven's sake, Sir," replied a young nobleman of the ancient noblesse, who was not then a chamberlain, "don't let us talk politics." The same courtier, speaking affectionately of the first consul, said, "He frequently displays the most infantine sweetness." Certainly, in his own family, he amused himself sometimes with innocent games; he has been seen to dance with his generals; it is even said that at Munich, in the palace of the king and queen of Bavaria, to whom no doubt this ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... 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, innocent, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... I was overlooked! I am unfit for the office! I am but little wiser than the booby brother! Whereas Solomon himself, and the seven sages to boot, are but so many men of Gotham, when he is present. The quintessence of all the knowledge, wit, wisdom, and genius that ever saw the sun, from the infantine days of A B C and king Cadmus, to these miraculous times of intuition and metaphysical legerdemain, is bottled up in, his brain; from which it foams and whizzes in our ears, every time discretion can be induced to draw the cork of silence.—Once ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... infantine complexion which only accompanies red hair; his eyes were brightly blue; his features well chiselled, with the exception of the lips, which were clumsily cut and loosely held together. He came down to breakfast in a not very agreeable mood, for ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... strange indeed that an invitation to court should have caused a fluttering in the bosom of an inexperienced young woman. But it was the duty of the parent to watch over the child, and to show her that on one side were only infantine vanities and chimerical hopes, on the other liberty, peace of mind, affluence, social enjoyments, honorable distinctions. Strange to say, the only hesitation was on the part of Frances. Dr. Burney was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Delburg got out of the chair and stood up in a dignified way; her soft cheeks were the color of a glowing pink rose, and her violet eyes shone with fun and excitement, her little, irregular features and perfect teeth seemed to add to the infantine aspect of the picture she made in her unfashionable pink cotton frock. Dress had been strongly discouraged at the Convent, and was looked upon by Aunt Jemima, a strict New Englander, as a snare of the devil, but even the garment, in the selecting ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... a child sheds its first hair, like its first teeth? I've never given much thought to infantine phenomena of any kind; still, I'm inclined to believe now that there must be such cases. Of course, we know a type of blond, nee brunette; for instance, Mrs. Senter, young Burden's fascinating aunt, whom we ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... Bayle was unblemished even by calumny; his executor, Basnage, never could mention him without tears! With simplicity which approached to an infantine nature, but with the fortitude of a stoic, our literary philosopher, from his earliest days, dedicated himself to literature; the great sacrifice consisted of those two main objects of human pursuits, fortune and a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... by the men's extraordinary isolation of mind; you may not understand his thought now, but, when you visit the North Sea, the meaning will flash on you. Isolation—that is the word; the men know little of the world; they are infantine without being petty; they have no curiosity about the passage of events on shore, and their solid world is represented by an area of 70 feet by 18. They are always amusing, always suggestive, and always superhumanly ignorant of the commonest concerns that affect the lives ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... but one, may indeed be useful to gardeners; but—although I know my good father and mother did the best they could for me in buying this beautiful book; and though the admirable plates of it did their work, and taught me much, I cannot wonder that neither my infantine nor boyish mind was irresistibly attracted by the text of which this page is one of the most favourable specimens; nor, in consequence, that my botanical studies were—when I had attained the age of fifty—no farther advanced ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... had, certainly, a spell that was something in excess of what may be called their "face-value." Though legal manhood was so soon to be his status, he had still some of the radiance of childhood about him. His hair was of the same pure and infantine gold that it had been when he charged down on the Eldest Statesman on the stepping-stones of the Ownashee; his blue eyes had lost none of their candour; the touch of gilding on his upper lip was effective only at short range, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... baby that clung to thy knee, And prattled around thee in infantine glee, Has grown up, she's married and two blooming boys Have stirred in her bosom ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... lustrous majolica that was destined to acquire later on so wide a ceramic fame. Jars and bowls and platters, oval dishes and ewers and basins, and big-bodied, metal- welded pharmacy vases were all made and painted at Urbino whilst Raffaelle Sanzio was running about on rosy infantine feet. There was a master-potter of the Montefeltro at that time, one Maestro Benedetto Ronconi, whose name had not become world-renowned as Orazio Fontane's and Maestro Giorgio's did in the following century, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... and I will beg you to let me know if effectual, is," etc. etc.—and here followed the prescription, which thou didst not take, O my son, my heir, and my pride! because thy fond mother had her mother's favourite powder, on which in his infantine troubles our firstborn was dutifully nurtured. Did words not exactly consonant with truth pass between the ladies in their correspondence? I fear my Lady Theo was not altogether candid: else how to account for a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... out to him various objects, which they accustom him either to love or to hate, to desire or to avoid, to esteem or to despise. It is thus opinions are transmitted from fathers, mothers, nurses, and masters, to man in his infantine state. It is thus, that his mind by degrees saturates itself with truth, or fills itself with error; after which he regulates his conduct, which renders him either happy or miserable, virtuous or vicious, estimable or hateful. It is thus he becomes either contented or discontented with his destiny, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... added by the Pope to his ducal title; and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The duke at length forbade his writing ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... person entirely different from his sisters. For Annet and Linnet merely looked puzzled; to them the book was a book, just as the hill upon which they sat was a hill, and they had never troubled their heads about such a thing as an author. But Matthew Henry opened his infantine eyes ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... satin and contrasted charmingly with the pompous rigidity. Clad respectively in crimson, white and blue, these small scions stand up in their ruffs and fardingales in dimpled serenity, squaring their infantine stomachers at the spectator with an innocence, a dignity, a delightful grotesqueness, which make the picture a thing of close truth as well as of fine decorum. You might kiss their hands, but you certainly would think twice before ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... lived happily with his youthful esposa; all the happier that in due time a son and daughter—the former resembling himself, the latter a very image of her mother—enlivened their home with sweet infantine prattle. And as the years rolled by, a third youngster came to form part of the family circle—this neither son nor daughter, but an orphan child of the Senora's sister deceased. A boy he ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... woman, who displayed unexampled energy throughout the whole of this war, was about five feet three inches in height, and was distinguished by an almost infantine character of face, and a voice low and soft as the tones of a flute. It was thought that she habituated herself to that style of speaking to conceal her really masculine nature, and to interest her audience. Her voice, notwithstanding its sweet inflections, was broken, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... more than briefly mention the minor sculptors of this group would be impossible. Mino di Giovanni, called Da Fiesole, was characterised by grace that tended to degenerate into formality. The tombs in the Abbey of Florence have an almost infantine sweetness of style, which might be extremely piquant, were it not that Mino pushed this quality in other works to the verge of mannerism.[104] Their architectural features are the same as those of similar ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... powerful that it positively threw the little fellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and watched the waving of the insect's wings with infantine delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that made Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovenden, partially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard scepticism into ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... calling her girl in derision The Lady Anna,—when Lady Anna had been more poorly clad and blessed with less of the comforts of home than any of them. Years would roll by, and they should live to know that the Lady Anna,—the sport of their infantine cruelty,—was Lady Anna indeed. And as the girl became a woman the dream was becoming a reality. The rank, the title, the general acknowledgment and the wealth would all be there. Then came the first great decisive triumph. Overtures of love and friendship were made from the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... and children earned for him the sobriquet of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which is ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... you will receive not only enough, but a great deal too much; and an indulgence to every inattention, awkward habit, and expression, which may lead you to imagine them to be so many ornaments: as to your language, I shall expect to find it perfectly infantine. As to studies or lessons, I do not know which of them you allude to, as you do not say what books you have taken up. If Mr. Leshlie is your only master, as I suppose, your lesson must be larger than ever heretofore. Your translation of the comedy into ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... Lord with an eye full of care, and could scarcely spare attention for the lovely child who clung to her side, and whose brilliantly fair complexion, wavy flaxen hair, high brow, and perfectly formed though infantine features, already promised that remarkable beauty which distinguished the countenance of Richard II. On the other side of the Prince sat his sister-in-law, the Countess of Cambridge, a Spanish Infanta; and her husband, Edmund, afterwards Duke of York, was beside the Princess ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the shore, with the abandon of a little child. Mary could not but wonder whether this indeed were she whose strong words had pierced and wrung her sympathies the other night, and whether a deep life-wound could lie bleeding under those brilliant eyes and that infantine exuberance of gayety; yet, surely, all that which seemed so strong, so true, so real could not be gone so soon,—and it could not be so soon consoled. Mary wondered at her, as the Anglo-Saxon constitution, with its strong, firm intensity, its singleness of nature, wonders at the mobile, many-sided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... a window smashed aie! aie! clatter! clatter! screams of infantine rage and feminine remonstrance, feet pattering, and a general hullabaloo, cut the soft recital in two. The ladies clasped hands, like ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... to something among the apple-blossoms,—and now a Java dove comes whirring down and settles on her finger,—and we, that have seen pictures, think, as we look on her girlish face, with its lines of statuesque beauty, on the tremulous, half-infantine expression of her lovely mouth, and the general air of simplicity and purity, of some old pictures of the girlhood of the Virgin. But Mrs. Scudder was thinking of no such Popish matter, I can assure you,—not she! I don't think you could have done ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... this way had not lain dormant or been injured by want of practice. In Pauline this finesse was partially concealed by a languor and indecision of manner and an occasional assumption of 'niaiserie'; or almost infantine simplicity; but this only threw people the more off their guard, and made her finesse the more sure in its operation. Pauline was handsome too, uncommonly graceful, and had all that power of fascination which has been attributed to the Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... simplicity was an article of belief with La Cibot (and be it noted that this faith in simplicity is the great source and secret of the success of all infantine strategy); La Cibot, therefore, could not suspect Schmucke of deceit when he came to say to her, with a face half of distress, half ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... whom Are still too infantine to take to heart A loving father's absence, when I come To town ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... the work of another; and proof on the opposite side from the open and clamorous charge of his rivals, whose imputations can be made to bear no reasonable meaning but this by the most violent ingenuity of perversion, and who presumably were not persons of such frank imbecility, such innocent and infantine malevolence, as to forge against their most dangerous enemy the pointless and edgeless weapon of a charge which, if ungrounded, must have been easier to refute than to devise. Assuming then that in common with other young poets of his day he was thus engaged during the first years ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... end of their journey. Little innocent children played about in the cabin, and would run to the guards—the guards of an American steam-boat are an extension of the deck on each side, beyond the paddle boxes, which gives great width for stowage—now and then, to wonder, in infantine language, at the next boat, or the water, or something else that drew their attention. "Oh, look here, Henry—I don't like that boat, Lexington."—"I wish I was going by her," said Henry, musingly. The men too were urgent in their arrangements of the trunks, and getting on ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... years of my infantine tyranny till, when at the age of fourteen, I became possessed with a strong desire to be sent to a public school. My father was sitting in his large arm-chair, in the porch, after tea, when I made this request, which, at first, he ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill

... in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under our appetite, all that ceremony and those obstacles? For there is not only matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that soft sweetness and infantine modesty."[14] The masculine attitude in the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse. Restif de la Bretonne, describing his own shame and timidity as a pretty boy whom the girls ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs: And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remember'd agonies, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... certain apish drollery and humour which exhibited itself in the lad, and a liking for some of the old man's pursuits, the first of the twins was the grandfather's favourite and companion, and would laugh and talk out all his infantine heart to the old gentleman, to whom the younger had seldom a word to say. George was a demure studious boy, and his senses seemed to brighten up in the library, where his brother was so gloomy. He knew the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to give way: but, you must resist them all; or, your ruin, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... the happiness he had known since his retirement, were occasioned by the death of his two sons. He lost them at that age when infantine simplicity is so fascinating; and though, in consideration of Madame St. Aubert's distress, he restrained the expression of his own, and endeavoured to bear it, as he meant, with philosophy, he had, in truth, no philosophy ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... truly said, that the infantine disease excited by milk of a deleterious, or simply impoverished quality, "grows by what it feeds on;" and we shall witness the internal debility and the infantine disorder running their course together. Tabes is the natural consequence of this ...
— Remarks on the Subject of Lactation • Edward Morton

... but Aunt Mary used to impress upon me when I was small that two could not be called "people." "People" must mean a "company or crowd"; and I used to addle my infantine brain wondering how it could be that "two was a company," if two couldn't be a crowd, yet a company and a crowd were the same thing. Two must be spoken of as "persons" according to Aunt M., and I can't address you as "Dear Persons," ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add that the rosy tint of morning reminds me of a suffusion which will never more charm my ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Ariel belongs to the delight the mind is capable of receiving from the most lovely external appearances. "Coleridge is the Ariel of English Poetry: glittering in the song from "Zapolya," translucent in the "Phantom," infantine, with a note of happy infancy almost like that of Blake, in "Something Childish, but very Natural." In these poems, and in the "Ode to the Rain," and the "Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath," there is a unique way of feeling, which he ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... Frank managed to change the conversation, and to induce Lady Scatcherd to speak on some other topic than his own infantine perfections. He affected an indifference as he spoke of her guest, which would have deceived no one but Lady Scatcherd; but her it did deceive; and then he asked ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... the sportive mischief of the idle urchins, who prowled about the silent chambers in fear of the silence, and in ecstasy at the space. The bedroom in which Caleb had died was, indeed, long held sacred by infantine superstition. But one day the eldest boy having ventured across the threshold, two cupboards, the doors standing ajar, attracted the child's curiosity. He opened one, and his exclamation soon brought the rest of the children round him. Have you ever, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... complexion is of dazzling whiteness, heightened by the liveliest colors: her eyes are pale blue, and not of much promise for spiritual gifts. Mouth small; features generally small,—dainty (MIGNONS) rather than beautiful:—and the countenance altogether is so innocent and infantine, you would think this head belonged to a child of twelve. Her hair is blond, plentiful, curling in natural locks. Teeth are unhappily very bad, black and ill set; which are a disfigurement in this fine face. She has no ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... is not always harsh and deadly sin, When love for boundless beauty makes us pine; The heart, by love left soft and infantine, Will let the shafts of God's grace enter in. Love wings and wakes the soul, stirs her to win Her flight aloft, nor e'er to earth decline; 'Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine Of Him who slakes the thirst that ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... good-natured or caustic, Horace or Juvenal, Swift or Rabelais, at his pleasure. He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth. He was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call naivete, which never fails to charm, in Phaedrus and La Fontaine, from the cradle ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... these general truths appear, when we remember that they hold throughout adult life as well as throughout infantine life. It is by an experimentally-gained knowledge of the natural consequences, that men and women are checked when they go wrong. After home-education has ceased, and when there are no longer parents and ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... the third, we advance farther and farther into the experience of motherhood. At the same time there is an increase in the dignity of the Madonna and in her importance as an individual. In the Mater Amabilis she is subordinate to her child, absorbed in him, so to speak; his infantine charms often overmatch her own beauty. When she rises to the responsibilities of her high calling, she is, for the time being, of equal interest and importance. AEsthetically, she is now even more attractive than her child, ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... Wiedemann is the second baptismal name of Mr. Browning's son; and, in his infantine mouth, it became (we do not exactly guess how), the "Penini," shortened into "Pen," which some ingenious interpreters have ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... scarcely will replace! Where, Madam, lay the harm in sucking them? The dog will lick his foot, the cat her claw, his paws sustain the hibernating bear—and you decree no law to punish them! Yet, in your rage for infantine reform, you rushed this most ridiculous enactment—its earliest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various

... regard for O. vexillarium. Cattleyas are so obtrusively beautiful, they have such great flowers, which they thrust upon the eye with such assurance of admiration! Theirs is a style of effect—I refer to the majority—which may be called infantine; such as an intelligent and tasteful child might conceive if he had no fine sense of colour, and were too young to distinguish a showy from a charming form. But I ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... besides, are generally brighter—they shelter a more liquid light than the blue or grey. Southern eyes have generally most beautiful whites. And as to the charm of the childish figure, there is usually an infantine slenderness in the little Southener that is at least as young and sweet as the round form of the blond child. And yet the painters of Italy would have none of it. They rejected the dusky brilliant pale little Italians all about them; they would ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell

... enthusiasm in his young child's mind, and saw in it a foreshadowing of his future eminence. He pressed a penny into his hand, and gave vent to his feelings (as did his exemplary wife also), in a shout of approving laughter. The infantine appeal to their common sympathies, at once restored cheerfulness to the conversation, and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... all sorts were treated at the Hotel Dieu: surgical maladies, chronic maladies, contagious maladies, female diseases, infantine diseases, &c. Every thing was admitted, but all presented an ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... understood that I am perfectly willing to undertake the expedition, nay, to extend it into Spain, to visit the town and country, to discourse with the people, especially those connected with institutions for infantine education, and to learn what ways and opportunities present themselves for conveying the Gospel into those benighted countries. I will moreover undertake, with the blessing of God, to draw up a small volume of what I shall have seen and heard there, which ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... sublimity of Aeschylus became the scoff of every young Phidippides. Lectures on abstruse points of philosophy, the fine distinctions of casuistry, and the dazzling fence of rhetoric, were substituted for poetry. The language lost something of that infantine sweetness which had characterised it. It became less like the ancient Tuscan, and more like the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... My first assertion of infantine existence, that innocent and feeble wail that claimed the name of life, was met by the command, "Take care of him! take care of him!" said my mother to the doctor; "Take care of him!" said the doctor to the nurse; and "Take care of him!" added my delighted father to every individual ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various

... brother and myself were playing one evening in a sandy lane, in the neighbourhood of this Pett camp; our mother was at a slight distance. All of a sudden, a bright yellow, and, to my infantine eye, beautiful and glorious object made its appearance at the top of the bank from between the thick quickset, and, gliding down, began to move across the lane to the other side, like a line of golden light. Uttering a cry of pleasure, I sprang ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... vices were the disgrace, of three nations. Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of that superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up with the vivacity of France. Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been early removed from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme. His ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full, white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low forehead, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... childhood days, for they had enjoyed hours of his companionship as a constant pastime. I was, moreover, much younger than the others, and was never allowed to grow, as I wished, out of the appellations of Rosebud, Baby, and Bab (as my father always called me), and all the infantine thought which those pet names imply. I longed myself to hear the splendidly grotesque fairy tales, sprung from his delicious jollity of imagination, which Una and Julian had reveled in when our father had been at leisure in Lenox and Concord; ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... muscles, Saint Andrew and Saint Mark, real colossi like those of Rubens. There is a Saint Christopher by Titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed Atlas with his four limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing bambino, whose infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. Above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by Tintoret and Veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... Parisian demi-monde, that exaggerated elegance of a fashion plate which only the most exquisite of women could redeem from vulgarity. Plush, brocade, peacock's feathers, golden bangles, mousquetaire gloves, a bonnet of purple plumage set off by ornaments of filagree gold, an infantine little muff of lace and wild flowers, buttercups and daisies; and hair, eyebrows and complexion as artificial as ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Piccadilly, on 23 June, the first portion of the "Napoleon Museum," collected by Mrs. Sainsbury, and which had long been on exhibition. The prices fetched were ridiculously low, as the following examples will show. Among the bronzes, an infantine bust of the King of Rome, formerly in the possession of Josephine, at Malmaison, cost 20 guineas, sold for 1 pound 10s. A drawing in sepia, by Debret, of Napoleon visiting the wounded on the field, after the battle of Eylau, 5 pounds 5s. The ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... attracted to her, not by her beauty, though that was marked, but by her cordial, unaffected manner of placing her two hands in ours, and by her infantine sweetness of expression. Whatever she might have gone through, I saw she had not suffered. There was no line or track of experience, on her broad, tranquil brow, nor was there the hushed, restrained expression left in all eyes that have deeply mourned and bitterly wept. The look ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... small boy; the first a lodger, the second a production of Mrs. Bardell's. The large man was always home precisely at ten o'clock at night, at which hour he regularly condensed himself into the limits of a dwarfish French bedstead in the back parlour; and the infantine sports and gymnastic exercises of Master Bardell were exclusively confined to the neighbouring pavements and gutters. Cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout the house; and in it Mr. Pickwick's will ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... sadly ogling out of the bars of her convent cage, in which, poor prisoned bird, she was moulting away,—Dorothea of Don Quixote was washing her eternal feet:—in fine, it was such an elegant gallery as became a gallant lover of the sex. And in Sibwright's sitting-room, while there was quite an infantine law library clad in skins of fresh new-born calf, there was a tolerably large collection of classical books which he could not read, and of English and French works of poetry and fiction which he read a great deal too much. His ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... star who shone O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass; A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded; * * * * * * * "Early in years, and yet more infantine In figure, she had something of sublime In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine. All youth—but with an aspect beyond time; Radiant and grave as pitying man's decline; Mournful—but mournful of another's crime, She look'd as if she sat by Eden's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... should the Muse employ her verse, The peril of our labors to rehearse? Oft has your kind, your generous applause, E're now, convinc'd us, you approve our cause: Conscious it will again our task attend, The Critic stern, we ask not to commend, Who like inclement Winter's hostile frown Would beat th'infantine ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... with unchanged tenderness. Aye, the past, the long past, is all fairyland. Where our little feet were bruised we now see only springing flowers; where childish lips drank from some Marab verdure and garlands woo us back. Over the rustling leaves a tiny form glided to Beulah's side; a pure infantine face with golden curls looked up at her, and a lisping voice of unearthly sweetness whispered in the autumn air. Here she had often brought Lilly and filled her baby fingers with asters and goldenrod; and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... he saw was of a delicate little fairy form; a complexion of pearly white, with a cheek of the hue of a pink shell; a fair, sweet, infantine face surrounded by a fleecy radiance of soft golden hair. The vision appeared to float in some white gauzy robes; and, when she spoke or smiled, what an innocent, fresh, untouched, unspoiled look there was upon the face! John gazed, and thought of all ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... still is, the fashion among the intellectuals of the Continent to regard us as barbarians in most aesthetic matters. Ah! If they only knew how infinitely barbarous they seem to us in their naive contempt of our barbarism, and in what we regard as their infantine concern with things as they are. How far have we not gone past all that—we of the oldest settled Western country, who have so veneered our lives that we no longer know of what wood they are made! Whom generations have so soaked with the preserve "good form" that we are impervious to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... showed a joy that was almost infantine, agreed to catechize the old man and confer with him twice a week. Thus the conversion attributed to Ursula and to a spirit of sordid calculation, was the spontaneous act of the doctor himself. The abbe, who for fourteen years had abstained from touching the wounds of that heart, though ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... magnetism, that is only a matter of fancy. You sometimes need just such a field in which to wander vagrant, and if it bear a higher name, yet it may be that, in last result, the trance of Pythagoras might be classed with the more infantine transports ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... any formidable antagonist. As we got up we saw the shaggy tails of our dogs wagging vehemently outside a cavern, within which it did not seem possible that any large animal could be hidden. Now Boxer would rush further in, now Toby, while a whimpering sound, mingled with an occasional infantine growl, showed us that the cave was alone occupied by the cubs of which we were in search. Fearing that the animals would be injured, we called off the dogs, when their bloody mouths and the brown hair sticking to their jaws, proved that they had had a ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... for you, came suddenly upon a queer bit of architecture, a many-sided sort of landing wherefrom there were three staircases and three landings; which was I to choose? I was meditating, when from the wall close beside me proceeded a most plaintive wail, rather, on my honour, like an infantine donkey. I listened going close to the wall, when I discovered the mellifluous accents proceeded from the throat of the missing giant, Sir Tilton. I put my ear to the wall and told the poor boy to speak in accents loud; he confessed that seeing a spring in ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... about the room, assumed infantine airs, played with Euphemia's lap-dag, fondled it, seated herself on the floor and swept the carpet with her fine flaxen tresses; but she performed the routine of captivation in vain. Thaddeus recollected having seen this pretty full-grown baby, in her peculiar character of a profligate ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... and, as this year happened fortunately to be ushered into existence by a sharp frost and a bright sunny sky, the boulevards were not the black rivers of mud and slush that they are apt to be in the first days of the infantine year. Prince Louis Napoleon Buonaparte was only First President as yet; and Paris was by no means the wonderful city of endless boulevards and palatial edifices that it has since grown to be under the master hand which rules and beautifies it, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... appropriate him in feminine fashion, as a chosen idol and graven image. She gave him at once all her slender stock of infantine treasures, and seemed to watch with an ecstatic devotion his every movement,—often repeating, as she looked delightedly around, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... dignity with which he wears the doctoral fur, renders his absurdities infinitely more grotesque. The old Tuscan is the very language for such a being. Its peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... infantine thoughts and actions when they wait; the battle-field of life is temporarily fenced off by a hard and fast line—the interview. Cytherea fixed her eyes idly upon the streak, and began picturing a wonderful paradise on the other ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... up. For the moment she was puzzled. To her, Hugo's speech sounded insincere. But the glance of the eye that she encountered was so caressing, the curves of his mouth were so sweetly infantine, that she accused herself of harsh judgment, and remembered Hugo's foreign blood and Continental training, which had given him the habit, she supposed, of saying "pretty things." She could not doubt his sincerity when she looked at the peach-like bloom of that oval face, the impenetrable softness ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... hand, is conducting the child. This child is, in my opinion, the most wonderful of all the creations of Murillo; the form is that of an infant about five years of age, and the expression of the countenance is quite infantine, but the tread—it is the tread of a conqueror, of a God, of the Creator of the universe; and the earthly globe appears to tremble beneath ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... As if by some infantine instinct, the darling turned in her sleep, and came unconsciously nearer me. With a half-feeling of self-reproach, I drew around my neck, inch by inch, the little arms that tightened with a delicious thrill; and so I half reclined there till I myself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... questions of metaphysics and religion; we will even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six years ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... suffering, on Sunday night at nine o'clock. I don't think I have ever been so much overcome or distressed by anything, almost, as by the death of this my earliest friend; it is the first link that has been broken of my first and infantine affections. I always loved Louie, and shall cherish her memory as that of the purest and best of mortals as long as I live! I took leave of her before I left London on Wednesday, and never, never shall I forget the blessing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... still suffer the infantine throes, When my flesh was a cushion for any long pin— Whilst they patted my body to comfort my woes, Oh! how little they dreamt they were driving ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... small mouth curved and quivered as for some denied caress, And the fair young brow was knitted in an infantine distress. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... an eye which is prepared to look forward also, and especially with relation to what we know and can predict regarding the sun, these past six million years may reasonably be held to comprise only the infantine period ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... establishment," as Mr. Dombey said—the very duplicate of that to which little Paul was sent. "'It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should I express my meaning,' said Miss Tox with peculiar sweetness, 'if I designated it an infantine boarding-house of a very ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius, have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness almost infantine. Such was the gaiety of Hume, such the bonhomie of Fox; and one who had long lived in a circle of men of genius in the last age, was disposed to consider this infantine simplicity as characteristic of genius. It is a solitary grace, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... pretty domestic idyl, but the marvelous confusion between conceptual thought and the inarticulate signs of the affections, will, Ifear, remind logicians of infantine prattle with no mark of reason about it, rather than of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... the character of Louis which equally demands our admiration, and proves that the indomitable firmness may be sometimes associated with the most sensitive and—I had almost said—infantine sensibility. Of course, it will be perceived that I allude to the peculiar tenderness by which that amiable prince was often betrayed, even into tears, upon occasions when ordinary minds would have manifested comparative nonchalance. I have been assured that Louis absolutely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... The vesper bell tolling, the loud thunder rolling, The bees that humm'd round the tall vine-mantled tree: The smooth water's margin whereon we were strolling When evening painted its mirror for me? And shall I return to this scenery never? These objects of infantine glory and love,— O tell me, my dear Guardian Angel, that ever Floats nigh me,—safe guide ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... did not want society. To small infantine gayeties they were unaccustomed. They were all in all to each other. I do not suppose that there ever was a family more tenderly bound to each other. Maria read the newspapers, and reported intelligence to her younger sisters which ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... witnesses of the represented actions. These compositions were, there is no doubt, designed for the theatre; and they were represented at Ferrara and at Turin with great pomp, and we may presume with eminent taste. This fact, however, serves to give us an idea of the infantine state of the theatre at that time; although, as a whole, they have each their plot and catastrophe, the action nevertheless stands still in some scenes. Their popularity, therefore, would lead us to conclude that the spectators, little accustomed to theatrical amusements, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Plantagenet Palliser? The British Constitution, indeed! Had she married Burgo they would have been in sunny Italy, and he would have told her some other tale than that as they sat together under the pale moonlight. She had a little water-coloured drawing called Raphael and Fornarina, and she was infantine enough to tell herself that the so-called Raphael was like her Burgo—no, not her Burgo, but the Burgo that was not hers. At any rate, all the romance of the picture she might have enjoyed had they allowed her to dispose as she had wished of her own hand. She might have sat in marble ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... your future is smiling, my Jenny; I see you, except for those infantine woes, Little changed since you were but a small pickaninny— Your cheeks were so dimpled, so ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... those that we cling to, has its root deepest in our heart. And in our eagerness to restore this confidence we are content deliberately to ignore the fact that the result would have been exactly the same had the cause of our excess or imprudence been—to use the terms of our infantine vocabulary—heroic or innocent. If on an intensely cold day I throw myself into the water to save a fellow-creature from drowning, or if, seeking to drown him, I chance to fall in, the consequences of the chill will be absolutely the same; and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... bandaged for water on the brain; and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and made from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient or complaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovely. It happened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes rested upon mine with that wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little children. They remained fixed on mine, and never turned from me ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... remained for a few seconds as if he had been petrified. The figure that stood before him had neither the height nor the rich shape of Alice Bridgenorth; and, though perfectly well made, was so slightly formed, as to seem almost infantine. Her dress was three or four short vests of embroidered satin, disposed one over the other, of different colours, or rather different shades of similar colours; for strong contrast was carefully avoided. These ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... flocks graze and shepherds pipe and dance. But every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. I do not make it; I arrive there, and behold what was there already. I make! O no! I clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert. And what a future it opens! I feel a new heart beating with ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... party were looking ahead with the most intense eagerness at a bear which their sudden advent had aroused from a nap in the crevice of the iceberg. A little cub was discerned a moment after standing by her side, and gazing at the intruders with infantine astonishment. While the muskets were being loosened and drawn out, Meetuck let slip all the dogs, and in a few seconds they were engaged in ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... etymological dictionary, that by the Rev. W.W. Skeat, we read under the word babe, "Instead of babe being formed from the infantine sound ba, it has been modified from maqui, probably by infantine influences. Baby ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... cared for and protected by God gives a special dignity and beauty to life. Monotheism lightens the struggle for existence. But does the study of nature allow of the maintenance of those local revelations which are called Mosaism, Christianity, Islamism? These religions founded upon an infantine cosmogony, and upon a chimerical history of humanity, can they bear confronting with modern astronomy and geology? The present mode of escape, which consists in trying to satisfy the claims of both science and faith—of the science which contradicts ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... daughter Veronica[56], then a child of about four months old. She had the appearance of listening to him. His motions seemed to her to be intended for her amusement; and when he stopped, she fluttered, and made a little infantine noise, and a kind of signal for him to begin again. She would be held close to him; which was a proof, from simple nature, that his figure was not horrid. Her fondness for him endeared her still more to me, and I declared she should have five ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God—in despite ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... palace he overtook the Cavaliere, who had stopped at the porter's lodge to say a word to his little girl. She was a young lady of very tender years and she wore a very dirty pinafore. He had taken her up in his arms and was singing an infantine rhyme to her, and she was staring at him with big, soft Roman eyes. On seeing Rowland he put her down with a kiss, and stepped forward with a conscious grin, an unresentful admission that he was sensitive both to chubbiness and ridicule. Rowland began to pity him again; he had taken ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... Madame George or Rudolph of her position. This concourse of circumstances could not leave the slightest hope to the prince. A last proof was reserved for him. At length he cast his eyes on the miniature, which he had almost feared to look at. The blow was frightful. In this infantine and charming face, already radiant with that divine beauty which belongs to the cherubim, he recognized in a striking manner the features of Fleur-de-Marie; her Grecian nose, her noble forehead, her little mouth; already slightly ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... next to her was the youngest of her two daughters, and might be about thirteen years of age. Her name was Matilda, but infantine circumstances had invested her with the nickname of Mimmy, by which her mother always called her. A nice, pretty, playful little girl was Mimmy Thompson, wearing two long tails of plaited hair hanging, behind her head, ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope

... earth-visiting ME; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. And now from without, what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even to the centre; especially in those plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? Could I unfold the influence of Names, which are the most important of all Clothings, I were a second greater Trismegistus. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... dated from his stay with his parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811 or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who showed some slight kindness towards him ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... involuntarily lead me to moral conclusions—there is a fine picture—Nature blowing Bubbles for her Children, from the pencil of Hilton; in which is united the simplicity of art with allegory, the seriousness of moral instruction and satire with the charms of female and infantine beauty; the graces of form, action, colour and beauty of parts, with those of collective groups; and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... choose for the embodying of his ideal of the best blending of modesty with complete beauty; and her throat and arms—oh, with what an inexpressible pathos of loveliness, so to speak, was moulded, under an infantine dewiness of surface, their delicate undulations. No one could be in her presence without acknowledging the perfection of her form as a woman, and rendering the passionate yet subdued homage which the purest beauty fulfills its human errand by inspiring; but, while Palgray ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... innocent and sunny hours of childhood.[A] As to innocence, the remark of a certain ancient and reverend man, though sour, was critically accurate,—that "it is the weakness of infants' limbs, and not their minds, which are innocent." It is most true. Many an impotent infantine screech or slap or scratch embodies an abandonment and ecstasy of utter uncontrolled fury scarcely expressible by the grown-up man, though he should work the bloodiest murder to express it. And what adult manifestation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... 2445. The infantine management of children, like the mother's love for her offspring, seems to be born with the child, and to be a direct intelligence of Nature. It may thus, at first sight, appear as inconsistent and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... junior by one year; while the grace of all the attitudes of his slender lissome figure showed to advantage beside Felix's more sturdy form, and deliberate or downright movements; while Clement was paler, slighter, and with rather infantine features, and shining wavy brown hair, that nothing ever seemed to ruffle, looked so much as if he ought to have been a girl, that Tina, short for Clementina, was his school name. Fulbert, stout, square, fat-cheeked, and permanently rough and dusty, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Mimi and gives her the muff. Helped by Musetta, she sits up in bed, and, with almost infantine glee, seizes the muff) ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica



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