"Childlike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wind. It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but after that disruption what did anything matter? And she had gone through five years of gradual training of which no one knew. The tears and terror, the plea, "I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride," of her first childlike alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and their meaning. They were now her familiar friends guiding her at every step; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar of laughter, to Jeanne? She went to her audience with ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... friends and emissaries from this city went out to prepare, but which perhaps neither he nor they in the beginning ventured to hope for, seemed to promise him at last the crown and consummation of a life's longings, and he received it with almost childlike joy. The election was, therefore, a crushing blow. It was not, perhaps, the failure to get the presidency that was hardest to bear—for this might have been accompanied by such a declaration of his fitness for the presidency as would have sweetened the remainder of his years—it ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... at leisure and to see the look of puzzled and pained surprise that came into his face when she said anything more than usually shocking to his delicate sensibilities. With impulses of tremendous force, there was at the root of her character a youthful and almost childlike indifference to consequences. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... characteristic of a person of will, therefore, is to be able to deliberate intelligently upon any different lines of action which may present themselves. But in the case of many individuals, there seems a lack of this power of deliberation. On every hand they display almost a childlike impulsiveness, rushing blindly into action, and always following up the word with the blow. This type, which is spoken of as an impulsive will, is likely to prevail more or less among young children. It is essential, therefore, that ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... to good men a guileless and holy second childhood, in which the soul becomes childlike, not childish, and the faculties in full fruit and ripeness are mellow without sign of decay. This is that songful land of Beulah, where they who have travelled manfully the Christian way abide awhile to show the world a perfected manhood. Life, with its battles and its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... thunderous comment; and he carries his readers through stirring adventures of storm and battle with a business-like precision that silences doubt. He breathes the spirit of the sea, himself a genuine sailor, almost as childlike and simple as one of his own creations. His books are real voyages, in which a day of bustle and danger is followed by peace and quiet, yarns on the quarter-deck, and some practical joking ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... evident enough that in those old times when men were very ignorant, slavish, easily led, impulsive (childlike we might almost call them), everything they undertook like the building of a house, was a serious matter, a labour of love, and the work of many years; to be an architect and a builder was the aspiration of their boyhood, the natural growth of artistic ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... show of organized resistance, and this young man's playing is what I call impertinently poor, as if he did not think it worth while to try. Winifred seems just as well satisfied to be beaten as to beat, and the Professor takes a guileless and childlike satisfaction in his triumph which is quite pitiable. I take pains to let Mr. Flint see that I at least am not taken in; but he only smiles in that exasperatingly non-committal way of his, as if it mattered little enough to him what I thought one way or the other. After the game is over he gets ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... on the object which arouses feeling and the sentimental places the emphasis on the feeling, sincerity demands that in using Andersen's tales, one lessen the sentimental when it occurs by omitting to give prominence to the feeling. Andersen's tales reflect what is elementary in human nature, childlike fancy, and emotion. His speech is characterized by the simplest words and conceptions, an avoidance of the abstract, the use of direct language, and a naive poetic expression adapted to general comprehension. He is not to be equaled in child ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... held in Washington in 1908, a sanatorium in England, which won a prize, presented among many good features a system of graded work with graded tools, almost childlike implements for the weak and unskilled, gradually advancing toward the normal as the strength and health of the man grew. So it should be with the material we should ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... and sorrowful as so much of this poetry is, with its praise of slaughter and its lament over death, there is much also of a gentle beauty, a childlike saying over of wind and wave and the brightness in the tops of green things, as a child counts over its toys. In the 'Song of Pleasant Things' there is no distinction between the pleasantness of sea-gulls playing, of summer and slow long days, of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Jimmy's round childlike face. With Alfred away there would be no further investigation ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... the true Sajouins; and of these the Saimiri or Titi is the most distinguished species. This pretty little creature is about equal in size to a squirrel, and possesses all the playful disposition of the latter. Its childlike innocence of countenance, as well as its pleasing and graceful manners, render it a favourite pet wherever it can be obtained. Its rich robe of yellowish-grey, mixed with green, adds to the attraction of its presence. There are several species of Sajouins, known ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... moments beside the chapel in which the Dean and his beloved wife are slumbering. Greater than all his books or literary achievements was Arthur Penryn Stanley, the modest, true-hearted, unselfish, childlike, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Bride.[12] Both represent family scenes among village people, and contain, as their most charming features, some delightfully natural children. One could scarcely find anything more deliciously childlike than the mischievous little ones who gather about the table to listen to the Father Explaining the Bible, and whose love of fun even this solemn occasion cannot repress. Equally attractive are the young people gathering affectionately and tearfully ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... "It's preposterous, childlike!"—he brought the frail trifle down to the table with an emphasis which was all but its destruction—"imbecile! I tell you I'm going ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... of the frogs in the swamp dulling down into the remoteness of sleep. The Doctor slackened his sharp, jerking stride, and fell into the monotonous gait of his companion, glancing up to him. McKinstry, he thought, was going out to battle to-morrow with just as cool phlegm and childlike content as he would set out to buy his merino ewes; but he would receive no pay,—meant to transfer it to his men. And he would be in the thickest of the fight,—you might bet on that. Umph! his quick eyes darting over the big, leisurely frame, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... body showing through, the hair, platted for the night, in two pig-tails that hung forward, one over each small breast, the tired face between the parted hair made Alice look childlike and pathetic. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... number of scientific memoirs and papers, including two on the integration of partial differential equations (Jour. Ecole Polytechn. x., xi.). He died at Marseilles on the 10th of June 1836. The great amiability and childlike simplicity of Ampere's character are well brought out in his Journal et correspondance (Paris, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... scenery is Sicilian, and does not truthfully describe the tame neighborhood of Mantua. In fact, these poems are imitations of Theocritus; but, divesting ourselves of the idea of the outward form which the poet has chosen to adopt, we are touched by the simple narrative of disappointed loves and childlike woes; we appreciate the delicately-veiled compliments paid by the poet to his patron; we enjoy the inventive genius and poetical power which they display, and we are elevated by the exalted sentiments which ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... speech and behavior of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything—I mean in a dog-fightless interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... freshness and openness of mind, combining in an extraordinary degree extreme intellectual subtlety with a childlike simplicity of outlook, Butler was one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century. He was not a professional biologist, and much of his biological work is, for that reason, imperfect. But he brought to bear upon the central ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... my reader suppose that Mysie's mind was corrupted. It was so simple and childlike, leaning to what was pure, and looking up to what was noble, that anything directly bad in the books she happened—for it was all haphazard—to read, glided over her as a black cloud may glide over a landscape, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... excessive regard to acquired wisdom, and it may be urged that by his allegorical method he tried to find in the Bible the sanction of two degrees of religious faith, the higher for the philosopher and the lower for the ordinary man. At the same time, however, before his God he retains the childlike simplicity of the most un-Hellenic rabbi, and the perfect humility of the Hasid. His conviction of the dependence of all upon God's grace is the perfect corrective of his intellectual exclusiveness. The idea of God as the unity which comprehends everything and causes everything is the great ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... well-shaped, with long fingers, widened at the tips. Florry had said that he was a "Sheeny," but there was nothing of the Jew about him apart from his colouring, his brilliant dark eyes; unless it were a sort of inner glow, an ardour, curbed by his almost childlike shyness, lack of self-confidence in everything apart from his music: that something, at once finer and more cruelly persistent, vital, than is to be found in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... Eternal Voice Pronounce, "Let there be Light!" And, shrieking, fled, beneath the wings Of the escaping Night. We saw the earth arise, Childlike, from Nature's womb, And flew to it, with joyous cries,— We knew it ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... thrust his plate away from him and pushed back his chair. But Nan's calmness defeated his almost childlike subterfuge. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and childlike animal spirits of Shakespeare's Comedies need not deceive us. Why should we not forget the whips and scorns for a while, and fleet the time carelessly, "as they did in the golden age?" Such simple fooling goes better with ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the fashion of a time long past. It was so archaic in cut, with a little ruffle at neck and sleeves, that it did more than adequate service toward maturing her. Indeed, there was no youth about Miss Amabel, except the youth of her eyes and smile. There were childlike wistfulness and hope, but experience chiefly, of life, of the unaccounted for, the unaccountable. She had, above all, an expression of well-wishing. Now she sat and ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... colored the Biblical account. Christianity must also treat its document historically, and not be disturbed if the temporal vessels of its religious truths are not shaped scientifically. Were they thus shaped, they would fail in their very purpose. It is general, popular, descriptive, childlike language, which is universal and lasting. But Christianity must make certain great reservations over against any theory of evolution. It must demand that the doctrines of a personal God, of the final spiritual character of life and ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... cxxiii., cxxvi., cxlvi., are as practically true for us as they were for the Jews of old, and that it is the faithlessness of this day which prevents men from accepting God's promises in their literal sense with simple childlike faith. ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... beautiful and bright he stood, As born to rule the storm; A creature of heroic blood, A proud, though childlike form. ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... through the streets the professor, seated on the front seat, bobbed about from right to left, looking out at the windows and gazing at the houses, the shops, and the crowds of people. Nothing could exceed the surprise and delight of the intellectual but childlike old man, who now for the first time in his life looked upon a large city. His enthusiasm at the sight of the Capitol ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... lonely night. My heart was hard as granite. I could not have prayed, had I known that Peggy's life would be given in answer to my prayer. I could not say, "Our Father, who art in heaven," as I had so often done at my mother's knee, in the sweet, childlike spirit of filial love and submission. My Father's face was hidden, and behind the thick clouds of darkness I saw a stern, vindictive Being, to whom the smoke of human suffering was more acceptable ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... sound that she made, the young man—it was Te—filo —turned and saw her. Her eyes were fixed upon him, wide with wonder, and her hands half raised in childlike rapture, while her slender figure, so different from the heavier forms of the Indian girls, gave her, to his eyes, the look and bearing of one of the very angels he had been copying. It was a marvel on his side, too; and for a few ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... change on the general sexual development is shown not merely by its occurrence at puberty, but by the fact that in eunuchs in whom the testicles have been removed before puberty the voice retains its childlike qualities.[116] ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper had then stirred her ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... a strength of faith and love in him that carries him through all," said Mr. Wilmot. "His childlike nature seems to have the trustfulness that is, in itself, consolation. You said how Cocksmoor had been blessed to Margaret—I think it is the same with them all—not only Ethel and Richard, who have been immediately concerned; but that one object has been a centre and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was coming composedly up the path between the sunflowers and the overloaded rose-bushes was already within hearing distance. She was a heavy, well-developed young person upon closer view, with light-lashed eyes of a guileless, childlike blue, rosy cheeks, and a mass of bright, shining hair, protected now only by a parasol. Through the embroidery insertion of her fresh, stiff dress she showed glimpses of a snowy bosom, and under her crisp skirt ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... succeeded in rising to her seat without awakening her keeper, she made a gesture of childlike joy which revealed the touching naivete of her nature. But the half-formed smile on her burning lips was quickly suppressed; a thought came to darken that pure brow, and her long blue eyes resumed ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... there was little in common. In 1860, the latter speaks of meeting Hawthorne shortly after his return from Europe, and says, "He is as simple and childlike as ever." ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... world to her at any chance breath altering shape or hue: a different world from the one of her old ambition. Her fall had brought her renovatingly to earth, and the saving naturalness of the woman recreated her childlike, with shrouded recollections of her strange taste of life behind her; with a tempered fresh blood to enjoy aimlessly, and what would erewhile have been a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it. He had carried her off as the rough, old-fashioned pirates bear away feminine prizes from a town they have looted. From dog-tender to bucaneer—he appealed to her imagination. She experienced a childlike desire to sit down where he had left her and play with the shells. But instead she looked toward Betty Dalrymple. That young girl, however, did not return her regard, though the golden head, a few moments before, had lifted once, with ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... coloured pastel style) had made him such a favourite in his own town, that he had been induced by his financial successes to come to Paris for a time to finish his art studies. He had now been working in Delaroche's studio for about a year. He had a curious and almost childlike disposition, and his lack of all serious education, combined with a certain weakness of character, had made him choose a career in which he was destined, in spite of all his talent, to fail hopelessly. I ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Marsden came from Australia to carry the Gospel to their inhabitants, and formed settlements in the Northern districts, in days when the lives of settlers were in constant peril from the Maoris. But nothing could daunt his courage; and whenever they came into personal contact with him, these childlike savages felt his power and responded to his influence, and he was able to lay a good foundation. In 1841 the English Church sent out George Augustus Selwyn as first Missionary Bishop of New Zealand, giving him a wide province and no less wide discretion. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... good here." And, asking for some food, which he ravenously devoured as soon as it was set before him, he drew near to the fire and took his place at my elbow. In the same spot, as soon as he had eaten, he stretched himself out, and fell into a childlike slumber, from which I must arouse him, some hours afterwards, to take his part as one of the mourners at the double funeral. It was the same throughout; he seemed to have outlived at once, and with the same effort, his grief for his master and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the integrity from foreign invasion of the rights of Chinkie's Flat nodded "Good evening" to Ah San, and walked back across the road to the "Digger's Best," and the Chinamen, with silent, childlike patience, resumed their loads and trotted along after their leader. They disappeared over the hill, and ere darkness descended the glare of their camp fires was casting steady gleams of light upon the dark waters of the still ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... low walls hung with Imari plaques and with pretty little Swiss brackets bearing blue Kaga ware, or the pure white Coalport china. In a low chair beneath a red shaded standing lamp sat Ida, in a diaphanous evening dress of mousseline de soie, the ruddy light tinging her sweet childlike face, and glowing on her golden curls. She sprang up as her sister entered, and threw her arms ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... character was as childlike as his face, and because—if stupid and slothful by nature—he was also of so submissive, susceptible, and willing a temper that he disarmed the justest wrath; or because he was, as he said, not such a fool as he ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... first time Miss Levering bent her head forward slightly as though to see how far he was conscious of the fatuity of his climax. But his flushed face showed a childlike good faith. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... half-frightened look—as of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike, coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Her childlike nature shed happiness upon me, her gentle innocence stilled me. It is quite true that I felt her influence upon my senses like ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... man was so ignorant, so childlike, or so weak in those days that it was necessary to disguise plain facts in ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... or ill-success of such an attempt as this to combine the two styles, the heroic and the childlike, depends on questions of linguistic tact, and can hardly be judged with any confidence by foreigners. But I think we can see Euripides here, as in other places, reaching out at an effect which was really ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... let me lead you a little more into the detail of his thought. Inevitably one does him miserable injustice by summarizing and abridging him. For altho the type of reasoning he employs is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions can be written on a single page, the power of the man is due altogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the multitude of the points which he considers successively, to the cumulative ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... says"—I found that she has a childlike confidence in the redoubtable Dawson—"that by birth I am a British subject. My Swedish father doesn't count, as I never adopted Sweden when I came of age. My domicile before marriage was France, but by marriage I became an Italian. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... went by, slowly at first, then quicker, for the young native woman whom he had married a year before had aroused in him a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and sometimes, as he worked at his old trade of boat-building—learned before he joined the King's service—he would feel ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... not one elephant, but half a dozen. I had a feast of roaring and a flow of circus. In fact I indulged in the wildest dissipation. I visited Barnum's circus and sucked peppermint candy in a way most childlike and bland. The reason seems obscure, but circuses and peppermint candy are as inseparable as peanuts and the Bowery. Appreciating this solemn fact, Barnum provides bigger sticks adorned with bigger red stripes than ever Romans sucked in the palmy days of the Coliseum. In ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... Bessie's engrossing preoccupations with herself, her looks, her fancies, her love affairs. Bernard at George Boult's little branch shop in the country town of Ingleby, chained body and soul to the heavy drudgery of uncongenial occupation, thought of his father only with rage and resentment. Franky, childlike, ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... were crushing all with their relentless, iron tread—the athletic man was hearing the crashing of his broken ribs, the nursing babe was writhing at its mother's breast, and the aged and feeble were closing their eyes forever with a childlike sob. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impressing his auditors with the vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study. He had, moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel that he was not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior, even when they got him to talk on their own subjects. This habit was especially pronounced ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the silk-shaded lamp her hair gleamed wonderfully. She had matured since that day in Bluebell Hollow, when Paul and Don had first seen her. The world had not hardened her and the curves of her face were almost childlike, yet there was something gone from her eyes and something new come to replace it. Resourcefulness was there, but no hint of boldness and her moods of timidity were exquisite. Now, having naively confessed her dreams, her ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... them all, as it seemed to her, with a new value, with a fresh knowledge of what might be found and won there for others and herself. So with the very eagerness of love Faith read the Bible to Miss Dilly; and so as she had done before, many a time, early and late, in childlike simpleness prayed at her bedside and by her chair. And as before when she was at Pequot she won Madame Danforth's heart, she intrenched herself there now. She was all over the house, carrying a sunbeam with her; but Faith never thought it was her own. She was a most efficient maid of all work, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... into my eyes, as though I made part of her study. What sat on her face was perplexity, wonder, amazement, and something else, I know not what. Something of her perfect poise and confidence, her quality as woman of the world, seemed to drop away. A strange and childlike quality came into her face, a pathos unlike anything I had seen there before. She took ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... down all the observations that he made concerning her, and all that she told him about her life, whether interior or exterior. Her words were characterised alternately by the most childlike simplicity and the most astonishing depth of thought, and they foreshadowed, as it were, the vast and sublime spectacle which later was unfolded, when it became evident that the past, the present, and the future, together with all that pertained to ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... away—and he would have to take her with him. It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike ignorance with this Amazonian quality. He had made his arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years, and they departed together. The young fair-haired lawyer came to the stage-coach office to see them off. Peter could detect no ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... after all, not very voluminous. She is best known by her hymns for children and her early lessons, than which nothing more childlike has ever been devised; and we can agree with her brother, Dr. Aikin, when he says that it requires true genius to enter so ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... wide as the ocean. I was particularly impressed with this fact when I met the Rev. Dr. Ewer of New York, who had been accused of being disputatious and arrogant. Truth was, he was a master in the art of religious defence, wielding a scimitar of sharp edge. I never met a man with more of the childlike, the affable, and the self-sacrificing qualities than ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river. And he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... girl did not speak at all, but stood motionless, staring in bewildered, pitiable, childlike fashion, and the color had ebbed from ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... odd, to say the least, they should act so differently from the others. She, I knew, was very different from the "ruck" that surrounded her; and yet one would have thought that curiosity would have tempted her forth—that simple childlike inclination, natural in one so young, to witness our wild attire—to gaze on our plumes and our paint? I could less wonder at Holt himself being insensible to such attraction; but in her it seemed strange. My astonishment increased, as form after form passed out ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are—how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,—but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Edward hadn't any brains. I married him without love, and in face of his attitude towards Schopenhauer, you may guess what chance it had of springing up. During the brilliant years of my widow-hood—eight in number—my heart has remained positively untouched by anybody but you. It's your childlike helplessness that fascinates me." ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is the childlike spirit; but the childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... with the usual experience of cultivated Germans,—unbounded admiration for its works of art and sunny skies and historical monuments. He was as enthusiastic as Madame de Stael over St. Peter's and the Pantheon. In his private letters to his wife and children, so simple, so frank, so childlike in his enjoyment, no one would suppose he was the arch and cruel enemy of all progress, with monarchs for his lieutenants, and governors for his slaves. His journey to Hanover was a triumphant procession. The King George IV. embraced him with that tenderness which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... he prayed that he might die like a brave man, yet with a right feeling and reconciled conscience with all mankind. Then throwing himself upon his coarse straw bed, that barely served to separate him from the damp earthen floor, he had fallen asleep-a calm, deep, quiet sleep, so silent and childlike as almost to resemble ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... him her really lovely colouring of skin and eyes and hair; here at her little table by the window her face seemed almost a condensation of the warm, ruddy light which poured in from the sea. Her eyes, with the queer childlike depths behind their feminine hardness, her eager mouth and splendid teeth, the scatter of freckles over her nose, all combined to hold him in a queer enchantment of youth. There was a curious, delightful freshness about her ... and she was a ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... In a manner almost childlike, the novelist obeyed the will of the stronger man, throwing himself into an armchair, and burying his face ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... any discourse upon long heels and small brains. The great, the only object of this Reader was to nourish in the children of the State the feeling which the boy expressed-when he proudly said that his country was South Carolina. Nothing can exceed the innocent, childlike manner in which this design is carried out in Number III. First, the children are favored with a series of chapters descriptive of North Carolina, written in the style of a school geography, with an occasional piece of poetry on ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... that the creatures of his mind become things, as clear to the memory as if we had seen them. But Spenser's are too often mere names, with no bodies to back them, entered on the Muses' musterroll by the specious trick of personification. There is likewise, in Bunyan, a childlike simplicity and taking-for-granted which win our confidence. His Giant Despair,[296] for example, is by no means the Ossianic figure into which artists who mistake the vague for the sublime have misconceived it. He is the ogre of the fairy-tales, with his malicious wife; and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... in the constant companionship of his father, grew up without boys or play. His face was old and wistful, and he had an old-fashioned way of sitting, brooding in his little arm-chair beside his father, looking into the fire. He used to ask strange, wise questions, and the only time he seemed childlike at all was when he was with Florence. He was never strong and well, like her, but he grew tired easily, and used to say that ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the eye of the Big City, which is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands." For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... But, because of all these things, when Hurstwood called he had found a young woman who was much more than the Carrie to whom Drouet had first spoken. The primary defects of dress and manner had passed. She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidity born of uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyes which captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser among men. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the stale. If there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the bloom and unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because you would have done it for any one! But you have done it for us; and as long as I live I shall remember that! Oh"—She broke off; and dropped her face with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of encouraging them; of rescuing her from the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... childlike, credulous affection We behold their tender buds expand; Emblems of our own great resurrection, Emblems of the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... leaves from the geranium, observed his quick movement, and, as he left the room, she turned toward their visitor and said, in a childlike, confidential sort of way: "Our dear Mamita used to call this room the Temple of Flora. She had a great passion for flowers. She chose the paper, she made the garlands for the curtains, she embroidered the ottomans, and painted that table so prettily. Papasito likes to have things ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... rooms; he prowled around the chamber—entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her body. Then the master passed the rest of the night in an armchair, smoking, his eyes staring but his brain drowsy ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be abhorred Who round with darkness gulf her, 170 And think no word can please the Lord Unless it smell of sulphur, Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed The Father's loving kindness, Come now to rest! Thou didst his hest, If haply 'twas ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... jewels, the size of their hats, or the smallness of their waists, and the eccentricity of their costumes, it was perhaps rather a new note to wear no jewels at all, and appear in ready-made frocks bought in bargain-sales; while, as for the young woman's air of childlike innocence and inexperience, it might be a tribute to her cleverness as an actress, but it was not a tribute to his intelligence as a man, that he should have been taken in by it. Always, he told himself, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... indifferent to those manipulations of the externals of life which are dear to the lovers of executive power. They know less but they understand more than their scholastic brethren. As a class they are sometimes disreputable but nearly always unworldly; more distinguished by an intuitive and childlike than by an ingenious or sophisticated quality of mind. Ideas and facts are perceived by them not abstractly nor practically, but in their typical or symbolic, hence their pictorial and transmissible, aspects. They read dogma, whether theological or other, in the terms of a living process, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... to say that nobody in the Menuet elicited more sympathy and admiration than Pauline Belmont. The perfection of her dancing, the sweetness of her face, the modesty of her demeanour, and the childlike reliance which she seemed to place on the cooperation of her stalwart partner, Roderick Hardinge, were traits which could not pass unobserved, and more than once when she swung back into position after the culmination ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... every trick of facial expression, and every little touch of Swiss gesture which helps his breezy and warm-hearted talk. I determined to dower Sir Charles Young's admirable scoundrel with all my dear old J—— G——'s tricks and manners; and I was the less remorseful in copying his cheerful and childlike bonhomie because our recalcitrant had been in the habit of giving the Baron away at his very entrance, and had stamped him from the first as a ruffian of the deepest dye, whereas I was disposed to think that a really successful adventurer would be ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... childlike," he said in ecstasy. "I have long thought of it, sure. An' thar is a big store of whisky thar, eh, boss? Good—good! And what ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... droop at the corner of his mouth as he spoke, which might have been thought characteristic of him. He was an odd-looking boy, not ill-made, though very thin and not tall. His pallor was clear and even, as though constitutional; the features were delicate, almost childlike, but they were very slightly distorted, through nervous habit, to an expression at once wistful and humorous; one eyebrow was a shade higher than the other, one side of the mouth slightly drawn down; the eyelids twitched a little, habitually; the fine, blue eyes themselves were almost comically reproachful—the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... mouse-bat peers; the stealthy vole Creeps from the covert of its hole; A shimmering moth its pinions furls, Grey in the moonshine of his curls; 'Neath the faint stars the night-airs stray, Scattering the fragrance of the may; And with each stirring of the bough Shadow beclouds his childlike brow. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... came to primitive man by injuries, accidents, bites of beasts and serpents, perhaps for long ages not appreciated by his childlike mind, but, little by little, such experiences crystallized into useful knowledge. The experiments of nature made clear to him the relation of cause and effect, but it is not likely, as Pliny suggests, that he picked up his earliest knowledge from the observation of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... for the Thatched Cottage. My sweet Constance spent the entire morning with me. She had brought a hat to trim, but the work did not proceed. It was a black felt hat, I remember, and I trimmed it for her. She herself was in one of her childlike moods, winsome and gay atop of the sorrow that had made her pale cheek paler, and set blue rings ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... to scrutinize her as if she were something extraordinary (really as an excuse for a good gaze upon her pure complexion and limpid eyes, so steady, childlike, and unabashed, free from all such consciousness as would make them shrink from the playful look). 'Indeed! Now, in my experience the comfort would be in the not doing ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Exaggeration of kindness no doubt; but even so I hug it still to my breast, because in truth that is exactly what I was trying to capture in my small net: the Spirit of the Epoch—never purely militarist in the long clash of arms, youthful, almost childlike in its exaltation of sentiment—naively heroic ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... of Alexander Gordon in this world is after his Master has given commandment that the last touch be put to His servant's subdued and childlike humility. The old saint is sitting in his grandfather's chair and his wife is feeding him like a weaned child. John Livingstone tells that Mr. John Smith, a minister in Teviotdale, had all the Psalms of David by heart, and that instead of a curtailed, monotonous, and mechanical ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... had come to give an account of his pupil's progress, but he was oddly excited, and when Christine invited him to share their meal—surely he could have seen there wasn't enough to go round, Robert thought—he accepted with a transparent, childlike eagerness that made Robert stare at him as at a stranger. And after supper, with the self-conscious air of a man who has waited for this moment, be produced from his coat pocket a crumpled newspaper with the title Unshackled ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... for another Madonna of marble, which was of full length and by the hand of the same Nino; in the attitude of which Madonna the mother is seen handing a rose with much grace to her Son, who is taking it in a childlike manner, so beautiful that it may be said that Nino was beginning to rob the stone of its hardness and to reduce it to the softness of flesh, giving it lustre by means of the highest polish. This figure ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... passed in the society of a simple, noble man; the father's gay and debonair, as Amy remembered it—how long ago, was it? And last of all Friend Adam, in gray attire, his broadbrim crowning his snowy hair, his expression one of childlike happiness and freedom ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... and these were extremely limited. So much time was spent at Severndale with Peggy, and it was during one of these visits that Mrs. Harold figured in one of the domestic episodes of Severndale. They were not new to Peggy for she was Southern-born and used to the vagaries and childlike outbreaks of the colored people. But even though Mrs. Harold had lived among them a great deal, and thought she understood them pretty thoroughly, she had yet to learn ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... rapt in his Vision. At last material darkness began to gather round him, and he awoke with a start to realization that he had been sitting there most of the day. With a sigh he replaced his book in the hole, which he cunningly masked with a lump of hard clay, and, feeling stiff and cold, ran, childlike, homeward. In the silence of the night he took out his cornelian heart and fondled it. The day had been curiously like, yet utterly unlike, the day on which she had taken it from her neck. In a dim fashion he knew that the two days were of infinite significance in his ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... And she is worthy of this name so true— This girl with thoughtful eyes of darkest hue, This maiden stepping o'er the golden line That separates the child from woman divine. Not yet she feels the longing, vague unrest That ever fills the woman's throbbing breast, But with a childlike questioning after truth, She lingers yet amid the ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... by which he was summoned to the Pond. So, rising silently, he wandered through the trees, and keeping his eyes fixed on the soft dim turf, lest some new beauty should tempt him to speech, he went across the open hill the Pond. Here he knelt down again, listening to the childlike bird, until at last the young piping ceased with a joyous chuckle. And at that instant, reflected in the Pond, he saw the silver star that watches the invisible young ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... our little sailor-boys, though their hearts are childlike still, have the spirit of gallant veterans. Elbows on the parapet of the sea-wall, they gaze out into the offing. It is more than the blue line marking the faint division between sea and sky that they see. Their eyes care little for the soft, changing colours of the ocean or the vast, contorted ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... afterwards that, when I yielded to an impulse and helped you out of your dilemma I scarcely knew I was in love with you. But it didn't take me long after that to find it out. And my only fear was that you were going through it all in the same childlike spirit, that you couldn't care for me. But when I asked you if you belonged to me, and you said—do you remember? You always were human—for me'—why—" his voice became happier again, for she had not drawn ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... enraptured terrier presses forward to lick his master's hand. The Queen, dressed for dinner and still girlish-looking in her white satin, stands talking to the Prince. The Princess Royal, a chubby child of two or three, is prowling childlike among the dead ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... You have gone a leetle too far. If God can forgive you and me all them things we've done, which he knows about, and other folks don't, you can, or or'to forgive sister Ethie, let her sin be what it may. Ethie was young, Dick, and childlike, and so pretty, too, and I 'most know you aggravated her some, if you talked to her as you feel now; and then, too, Dick, and mother, and all of you, I don't care who says it, or thinks it, it's a big lie! Ethie never went off with a man—never! I know ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Childlike and innocent your actions are, No thought of guile as yet within your breast; Alas! the wily foe, not lurking far, May soon corrupt and desecrate ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... Uncle Joshua, and from him she felt as far distant as though he were in another country. She became in this way, as time went on, more silent, graver, and more what her cousins called "old-fashioned"; and though at heart she was far more childlike than they, she went about her work with serious application like one of twice her years. Mrs Greenways did not disapprove of this, and though she lost no occasion of impressing upon Lilac her smallness and uselessness, she soon began to find her valuable in the house: it was a new thing to have ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... away trembling; but he comes very tenderly sometimes. And it seemed almost as though Death had known and loved the old man, so gently it touched him. And how could it deal hardly with him—the loving, simple, childlike old man? ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... was glad. In such sensitive purity had she grown up, so completely had he succeeded in holding aloof from her whatever could disturb her childlike innocence, that her soul was like a shining pearl to which ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... their roof, and get such refreshment as I see you stand much in need of." Seeing this friendly meeting between her lover and the stranger, Angelio tripped lightly to where they stood, and with a smile of childlike innocence lighting up her sweet face, held out her hand in token of her friendship. And when the general had acknowledged this with his usual courtesy, she blushed, and shook her head, and placed her right hand to her heart, which was her mute ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... from the letters, notes, etc., which I have in the preceding pages brought together, a clear conception of Morse's character can be formed. The dominant note was an almost childlike religious faith; a triumphant trust in the goodness of God even when his hand was wielding the rod; a sincere belief in the literal truth of the Bible, which may seem strange to us of the twentieth century; a conviction that he was ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... established by miracles; the details of ours must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think at home—that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived—for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... large element in the success of all public performances is the selection of just the right type of music. In the case of small children, unison songs with attractive music and childlike texts should be chosen. When the children are somewhat older (from eight or nine to twelve) longer and more elaborate unison songs provided with musicianly accompaniments may be selected, while rounds and unaccompanied part songs are effective by way of contrast. In the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... appearance, admired the spirit of many of them, and was greatly moved by the extraordinary fire of their eloquence, though he understood them only through an interpreter. He was specially impressed by the childlike piety of the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white man might well be proud. "You is a good man, capt'n — we knows dat," they said; and when I asked why, the answer showed their childlike faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped you. He dono ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... human in its tenderness Of chivalry;—Beauty's self the prize of blood, And evil raging round with wild excess Of more than brutal:—A disjointed time! Doubt with Hypocrisy pair'd, And purest Faith by folly, childlike, led to crime. ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... fairly, almost sadly, as if she begged to read my mind. "Monsieur, why should you regret my knowing? It is to your credit that you admire Madame Bertheau. They tell me that she is a woman formed for love, beautiful, childlike, untouched by knowledge of crime or hardship. Monsieur, forgive me. Are you willing—— ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... conclusion, that Helen, if her mind had been less preoccupied with sympathy, would probably have traced the effect of it all to a long series of rehearsals: in fact, such a suggestion did occur to her, but the thought perished instantly in the presence of the unaffected simplicity and the childlike earnestness which animated the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... mill-men, to enjoy the evening, with not the cleanest face in the world, to be sure, but with an honest, jolly old heart under all, beating rough and glad and full. That was Adam Craig's fancy: but his head was full of queer fancies under the rusty old brown wig: queer, maybe, yet as pure and childlike as the prophet John's: coming, you know, from the same kinship. Adam had kept his fancies to himself these forty years. A lame old chap, cobbling shoes day by day, fighting the wolf desperately from the door for the sake of orphan brothers and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unremitting toil, the negro was pushed out into the world without one morsel of food, one cent of money, one foot of land. Naked and unarmed he was pushed forward into a dark cavern and told to beard the lion in his den. In childlike simplicity he undertook the task. Soon the air was filled with his agonizing cries; for the claws and teeth of the lion were ripping open every vein and crushing every bone. In this hour of dire distress ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... led by his connection with Blackwood's Magazine, to which he was the chief contributor, De Quincey removed with his family to Edinburgh, where his erratic genius and his singularly childlike ways produced enough amusing anecdotes to fill a volume. He would take a room in some place unknown to his friends and family; would live in it for a few years, until he had filled it, even to the bath tub, with books and with his own chaotic manuscripts, allowing no one to enter ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... level bit of grassless ground between barn and pump, and you may call it a battlefield, if you will, since famine and desire have striven there together. Or, if you choose to read fine meanings into threadbare things, you may see in it a field of the cloth of gold, where simple love of life and childlike pleasure met and sparkled for no eye to see. It was a croquet ground, laid out in the days when croquet first inundated the land, and laid out by a woman. This was Della Smith, the mother of two grave children, and the wife of a farmer who never ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Standish, gazing with childlike solemnity out of his big blue eyes, listened to both sides of the story, and to Henry's miscalculation, at no time during the recital did he laugh uproariously, or exclaim compassionately, or indicate that he shared ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... stood behind her where she knelt. She looked so little and childlike there that he wanted to pick her up and tell her—oh, such a host of things! But he was a wise House Surgeon, and his experience on the stairs had not counted for nothing; moreover, he was a great believer in the psychological moment, so he peered over her shoulder and ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... of hoofs below, and leans over the balustrade, a bright smile parting her lips, the sunlight streaming on her hair, looking quite childlike in her soft white gown, which clings around ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Andras preserved, nevertheless, a sort of youthful buoyancy. Many men of thirty were less fresh in mind and body than he. He was one of those beings who die, as they have lived, children: even the privations of the hardest kind of an existence can not take away from them that purity and childlike trust which seem to be an integral part of themselves, and which, although they may be betrayed, deceived and treated harshly by life, they never wholly lose; very manly and heroic in time of need and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with which a young man could be burdened: and I suspected him of an inimical attitude toward the older families of the city. Certain men possessed his confidence; and he had built, as it were, a stockade about them, sternly keeping the rest of the world outside. In Theodore Watling he had a childlike faith. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... girls, meanwhile, was pretty evenly divided between the moving show upon the quay and the quite as active contingent in Nanni's gondola. Indeed there were about as many babies in the one as in the other, for it is a pretty and childlike fancy of the Venetians to dress up their children as saints and angels, and lead them, with a becoming reverence, not all untouched by vanity, in the wake of the holy men. Here were small Franciscans in their brown cowls, tiny St. Johns, clad in sheepskins and armed with crosses, little queens ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... of that knowledge. For To Know—to Understand—means to give to each its rights! And, in this matter, have we to concede so much to our higher animals? The simplest form of thought contents them; the childlike adapting itself to animal uses; and, from such "small beginnings" has not our own primeval soul—the best that is within us—risen to higher glory, to become a moulder and organizer of thought—even of creative ideas? Therefore, from all that wealth with which we are dowered we may well ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... in Geneva and Mr. Gorbachev's upcoming visit to America can lead to a more stable relationship. Surely no people on Earth hate war or love peace more than we Americans. But we cannot stroll into the future with childlike faith. Our differences with a system that openly proclaims and practices an alleged right to command people's lives and to export its ideology by force are deep and abiding. Logic and history compel ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... the three others between twenty-five and thirty. The youngest, whom they called Sylvestre or "Lurlu," was only seventeen, yet already a man for height and strength; a fine curly black beard covered his cheeks; still he had childlike eyes, bluish-grey in hue, and sweet and ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... and gasping down into the depths. He was up again in a moment, striving, battling, buffeting. Nothing could make JOHNNIE despair, no disappointment could warp the simple straightforward sincerity, the loyal and almost childlike honesty of his nature. And if here and there, for a short time, fortune seemed to shine upon him, you may be sure that there was no single friend whom he did not call upon to bask with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh he had; not a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... like the soul of the author. The phantasmagoria have been distilled from nature. All the materials with which his memory is crowded become classified, orderly, harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is the result of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a perception that is keen, magical ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and she loved to dwell on the pure mother's face, and on the longing look in the eyes of the Child. She accepted wholly the idea of a God who loved mankind, of infinite goodness and mercy: if she could not as yet enter into the subtlety of doctrine she could give that childlike faith which is the ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... store in his village has his mind filled to overflowing with the words of other men. The newspapers and the magazines have pumped him full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... and a cigar, smoking in the saloon being, of course, allowed. The culminating point of the festival came when two boxes with Christmas presents were produced. The one was from Hansen's mother, the other from his fiancee—Miss Fougner. It was touching to see the childlike pleasure with which each man received his gift—it might be a pipe or a knife or some little knickknack—he felt that it was like a message from home. After this there were speeches; and then the Framsjaa appeared, with ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... to start in a day or two on his triennial holiday, and he was much excited at the prospect of it. His naif talk and quite childlike questions and speculations as to times and distances, and what could be done in a day, and the like, amused George Eliot much. In reckoning up his available hours he deducted so much in each day for the due performance of his canonical duties. I remarked to him that he could read the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... down, indeed, but the attempt to sleep seemed more painful than the accepted reality of waking. The night was the most terrible in her remembrance, filled as it was with anxiety for the fate of the man she so dearly loved. To her still childlike inexperience of the world, the circumstances seemed as full of fear and danger as though the poor Count had been put upon his trial for a murder or a robbery on an enormous scale, instead of being merely detained because he could not give a satisfactory ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... hand! Slowly the hat was lifted, but as quickly as light six able-bodied men were on their feet and half way to the door before we realized the cowardliness of it. We forced ourselves back inside the store very slowly, all of us rather ashamed of our ridiculous and childlike fear. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... boy's shoulder, and he looked at us over the top of her head, smiling. I assure you I never saw a more engaging smile, not even Pat's own—or Peter Storm's. Theirs are quite different. Pat's is childlike and winningly ignorant of life; the Stormy Petrel's is full of unexpected gleams of humour, which lighten those mysterious eyes of an Italian prince. This youth's smile at us over his weeping daughter's hat was pagan—the joyous, carefree smile ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... natural death could not long be postponed. They who attempted to read the prophecy with accuracy were of opinion that the prophet had intimated that had the nation, even in this its crisis, consented to take him, the prophet, as its sole physician and to obey his prescription with childlike docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very vague terms. Had he been allowed to operate he would ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... solo songs of the 'St. Matthew Passion' are all the more impressive because every sentiment of joy in its various shades is wholly excluded; they are all based on the emotion of sorrow. The most fervent sympathy with the sufferings of the Son of Man, rising to the utmost anguish, childlike trustfulness, manly earnestness, and tenderly longing devotion to the Redeemer; repentance for the personal sins that his suffering must atone for, and passionate entreaties for mercy; an absorbed contemplation of the example offered by the sufferings of Jesus, and ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... was growing very dark, and the turf on the bank was soft and uneven. Lucia put her hand through Maurice's arm with her old childlike familiarity, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... were impossible, to end its sufferings, and was then left to rest, while the doctor returned to the morning-room, to face the sisters with what courage he might. Bridgie lay back in a deep, old-fashioned chair, a slight, almost childlike figure, her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders bowed as by too heavy a burden—the burden of all those five motherless,—it might soon be fatherless?—children. Esmeralda, straight and defiant by the fireplace, her ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... punishments short of death, and the insolent practice of allowing peers to vote in criminal trials on their honour, while other men vote on their oath." But generally the claims of rank and birth were admitted with a childlike cheerfulness. The high function of government was the birthright of the few. The people, according to episcopal showing, had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. The ingenious author of Russell's Modern ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters felt the antique; how differently from their Roman brethren! It was thus that they interpreted the lines of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... fellow who usually won the hearts of his creditors, it was not until after his death that a multitude of small claims came buzzing about his daughter's ears; and it was these as much as anything which had made her accept with childlike insouciance the arrangement of the friends who packed her away to her relatives with all the ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... to see in labour drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair, almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and childlike condition. The temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this temptation there was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came the loss of mental grasp and pride in surroundings. There was the falling off of a piece of plaster from the walls of the house which was ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... country, seemed native in the New England cottage, and inseparable from the warmth and security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim's demeanor lost a premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he became more childlike, and his natural character displayed itself with freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a certain unhealthiness in the mind of the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... forth to other lands, following in the footsteps of Colum of the Churches, and of these we shall presently speak. The life of the church was so rich and fruitful that we are led to think of this as a period of childlike ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... not immortalise him. He bids him seek, not outside in worn out fictions, but within his own soul, for the spirit of true beauty, turn to God for praise, instead of to a human audience, and go with the tabula rasa of childlike intelligence into God's school of Nature. Compare Nos ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Exhaustion had brought its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Rang with a sound of mirth. All that stern Wisdom could desire, Or Fancy fair engage— Danger-defying youth was there, And calm experienced age. It seemed as though earth's very best To that brave barque were given— Science for nature's mysteries, And childlike faith for Heaven. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... to the Stockbridge Indians by the most ponderous of the metaphysical preachers of New England, Samuel Hopkins, is beautifully simple and childlike. It is given in full in Park's "Life of Hopkins," ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my former solitary way of travel. But the Colonel stood in the path. I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him a man of a childlike nature—with that sort of innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests— and broken with years and sorrow. I could not turn my back on his distress; could not leave ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in right assertion; it is the assumption of legitimate responsibility and command. To be lowly of heart does not mean to be inefficient; to be humble does not necessarily mean to be obscure. Luther and Lincoln were both of a childlike humility of heart. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... condition in a more simple and childlike spirit, fearing trouble less, calculating less, hoping more. For we decrease our responsibility, if we decrease our clearness of vision, and fear lessens ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... observer, Johanna only made the impression of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings, intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness; and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her, had Johanna shown the least readiness to be ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
