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More "Puerile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, in an act so puerile and preposterous that I should not venture to record it if it did not throw some glimmering of light on the subject which I have proposed to myself in writing these pages. My mind continued to dwell on the ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... already, and can put it in better language than any man. I hear that he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that he shall not survive. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation that he shall die. But if his persuasion should happen to be no longer so strong, or if he can now put up with attempts to console him, of what I have said a thousand times, and what I still (upon my honour) ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... shown the dial, but would not believe it until he had gaped at his own watch, which had stopped at half-past three. Then he bounded to his feet in a puerile passion, and there lay the little garden, a lake of sunlight as he remembered it, swallowed up entirely in the shadow of ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... some stress on this apparently puerile detail, because the most trifling causes have often disastrous effects, and because we wish the reader to understand what must have been the despair, fury, and exasperation of this woman, when she discovered the death of her dog—a despair, a fury, and an exasperation, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... among the least important, as to the limits fixed by nature to human knowledge. To know of a surety what those things are which never can be known to mortal man, is a knowledge, the want of which has driven many to puerile and superstitious practices, and many ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... awful and incomprehensible power. His lamp of such mystic brilliance and that battery quite unnerved his coward heart. What awful torture, what burning flash of lightning might not rend him to blackened fragments if the wires were broken! To such depths of puerile ignorance and terror did the wretch sink in his guilty fancy. He dared not move a muscle lest the wire break. The very thought of it filled him with unspeakable agony. The son of science placed himself before his prisoner. With the revolver at easy ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... English steel, my snuff-box set with brilliants, my cross set with diamonds, my buckles set with the same stones, were altogether worth more than fifty thousand crowns. This ostentation, though puerile in itself, yet had a purpose, for I wished M. de Bragadin to know that I did not cut a bad figure in the world; and I wished the proud magistrates who had made me quit my native land to learn that I had lost nothing, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Roman, and knew no other Antony but the Antoine who scrubbed her floors and brought her water. It was a woman's tragedy, but written by a woman in man's attire, determined to write a very masculine, vigorous work, but succeeding in producing only a plated piece, in which everything was puerile, artificial, and conventional, from the first word to the last line. It was an olla podrida, in which Shakspeare hobnobbed with Campistron, Theophile Gautier locked arms with Dorat, Plutarch was ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thought, "you are, in truth, about as puerile, insipid a scoundrel as ever escaped the law. I'll save you your drugged Dutch courage for evidence." But it was not drugged, as he learned later. It was good whisky—a leader—to warm his stomach while the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... literature was intermittent. He was apparently a stranger to our eighteenth-century authors, both in poetry and prose; of those who followed them in time, he undervalued Scott, disliked Macaulay, admired Napier, admired Trollope. Wordsworth he condemned as puerile, inheriting the Edinburgh Review estimate of his poetry, and often called on me ecstatically to repeat Hartley Coleridge's parody of Lucy. Of Keats he was immeasurably fond, drawn to him by the poet's relation to his family, declaiming his lines often—as he did sometimes those ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... for it was beginning to be the talk in every mouth that he was leaving all the affairs of state to Wolsey and spending his time in puerile amusement. "The toward hope which at all poyntes appeared in the younge Kynge" was beginning to look, after all, like nothing more than the old-time royal cold fire, made to consume but not to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... could give the country by opening out its resources, and establishing the industries of the West on its fertile slopes and plains. I am no politician, and know nothing of the secret springs of policy that regulate our dealings with Nepaul, but it does seem somewhat weak and puerile to allow the Nepaulese free access to our territories, and an unprotected market in our towns for all their produce, while the British subject is rigorously excluded from the country, his productions saddled with a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... (Hist. Roy. Soc.) backs Dr. Thomson, but with a remarkable addition. Having followed his predecessor in observing that the Transactions in Martin Folkes's time have an unusual proportion of trifling and puerile papers, he says that Hill's book is a poor attempt at humor, and glaringly exhibits the feelings of a disappointed man. It is probable, he adds, that the points told with some effect on the Society; for shortly after its ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... knowledge. His love of reading seemed to have increased in proportion to his acquirements, which were equally great: his representing himself as an infidel was better perhaps understood by his master, who believed it to be only puerile vanity; and therefore Coleridge considered the flogging he received on this occasion, a just and appropriate punishment; and it was so, for as a boy he had not thought deep enough on an equally important point, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... forty-eight, an ex-Member of Parliament, a church-warden, and an ex-editor, to play at pirates with him, as though he were ten years old. I pointed out how unusual it was for an officer in the Coldstream, aged twenty-six, to think even of so puerile an amusement, but to include a dignified, earnest-minded, elderly man in the invitation was really an unprecedented outrage. My justifiable indignation increased when I found that the Guardsman ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... There had not been much time for work, but Arthur had played his part to his own satisfaction; the Irish and American journals buzzed with the items which he provided, and the denunciations of the American Minister were vivid, biting, and widespread; yet how puerile it all seemed before the brief, half contemptuous sentence of the hired judge, who thus roughly shoved another irritating patriot out of the way. The farewell to Ledwith was not without hope. Arthur had declared his purpose to go straight to New York and set every influence to work that could reach ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... passing his night in the forest, our little adventurer did not lose heart. Cadurcis was an intrepid child, and when in the company of those with whom he was not familiar, and free from those puerile associations to which those who had known and lived with him long were necessarily subject, he would assume a staid and firm demeanour unusual with one of such tender years. A light in the distance was now not only a signal that the shelter he desired was at hand, but reminded ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Villa Elsa led him on to another revealment. What was it but a rather puerile performance? Tactless, boisterous youngsters blurt out the disagreeable sentiments of a household. The Buchers had acted like children. Laying aside all question of the wonderful German trained mind, knowledge, efficiency, Gard observed ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... (SUSAN.) SUSIE prophesied then, it will be remembered, that the fair oratress would yet live to be President of the United States and Canadas. Miss LOGAN, with her customary modesty, declined to view the mysterious future in that puerile light, gracefully suggesting, amid a brilliant outburst of puns, metaphors and amusing anecdotes, that SUSIE distorted the facts. Miss ANTHONY, under a mistaken impression that this referred to her peculiar ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... man himself, how puerile it is to give him this importance! The solitary bit of cleverness about him is his statement that he has no control whatever over the spirits that attend him. Asking him not to summon them, is pretty like asking Mr Windham not to send for his creditors. They ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... enough there were some whose habitual discontent made them ready for treasonable enterprise. Yet the promoters of disaffection miscalculated the numbers and strength of their party, and the resulting demonstration was factitious and puerile. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... annoyances of being looked upon as an important factor in work where there was no chance of my being such would no longer exist. Practically I had complete control of the work of the office, and was thus, metaphorically speaking, able to work with untied hands. It may seem almost puerile to say this to men of business experience, but there is a current notion, spread among all classes, that because the Naval Observatory has able and learned professors, therefore they must be able to do good and satisfactory work, which ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... ordered him by an express article to be very cautious about making communications to the Prince. Searching questions were put in regard to these secret instructions, which I have read in the Archives, and a copy of which now lies before me. They are in the form of questions, some of them almost puerile ones, addressed to Barneveld by the Ambassador then just departing on his mission to France in 1614, with the answers written in the margin by the Advocate. The following is all that has reference to the Prince: "Of what matters may I ordinarily write to his Excellency?" ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... temperament was moved by the sublime conception of a God ruling over the world of matter and the world of mind, revealed religion, as her spirit encountered it, consisted only in gorgeous pageants, and ridiculous dogmas, and puerile traditions. The spirit of piety and pure devotion she could admire. Her natural temperament was serious, reflective, and prayerful. Her mind, so far as religion was concerned, was very much in the state of that of any intellectual, high-minded, uncorruptible ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... this will satisfy His Imperial Majesty concerning the puerile and trivial sophistry with which the adversaries have perverted our article. For we know that we believe aright and in harmony with the Church catholic of Christ. But if the adversaries will renew this controversy, there will be ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... his ship, much less a wife?—what is to be said of Lohengrin? This cheap Italian music, sugar-coated in its sensuousness, the awful borrowings from Weber, Marschner, Beethoven, and Gluck—and the story! It is called "mystic." Why? Because it is not, I suppose. What puerile trumpery is that refusal of a man to reveal his name! And Elsa! Why not Lot's wife, whose curiosity turned ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to the monitor. No. Death before dishonour. But the side not so seamy of this picture of school life is the extraordinary power of honour among boys. Of course the laws of the secret society might well terrify a puerile informer. But the sentiment of honour is even more strong than fear, and will probably outlast the very disagreeable circumstances in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... onward looking are marvellous in 'Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.' Forgetfulness of the past and eager anticipation for the future are, we sometimes think, the child's prerogatives. They may be ignoble and puerile, or they may be worthy and great. All depends on the future to which we look. If it be the creation of our fancies, we are babies for trusting it. If it be, as Paul's was, the revelation of God's purposes, we cannot do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... When he raised his eyes and looked at her, Marguerite noticed with distress an expression of fear, like that of a child detected in a fault. The noble girl was unable to reconcile the majestic and terrible expression of that bald head, denuded by science and by toil, with the puerile smile, the eager servility exhibited on the lips and countenance of the old man. She suffered from the contrast of that greatness to that littleness, and resolved to use her utmost influence to restore her father's sense of dignity before the solemn day on which he was to reappear in the bosom ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... we have done with such puerile declamations? We contemn, we revile interest, that is to say, the good and the useful, (for if all men are interested in an object, how can this object be other than good in itself?) as though this interest were not the necessary, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... is better than an orchard; and in a universe which is nothing but generations, or an unbroken suite of cause and effect, to infer Providence, because a man happens to find a shilling on the pavement just when he wants one to spend, is puerile, and much as if each of us should date his letters and notes of hand from his own birthday, instead of from Christ's or the king's reign, or the current Congress. These, to be sure, are also, at first, petty and private beginnings, but, by the world of men, clothed with ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... mere decoration; however, is requisite to make society at all agreeable," continued Mr. Ellsworth. "There is luxury enough among us, in eating and drinking, dressing and furniture, for instance; and yet what can well be more silly, more puerile, than the general tone of conversation at common parties among us? And how many of the most delightful soirees in Paris, are collected in plain rooms, au second, or au troisieme, with a brick floor to stand on, and a glass of orgeat, with a bit ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... not allow him to transcribe. This writer, although he professes to be the first historiographer (9) of the Britons, has sometimes repeated the very words of Gildas (10); whose name is even prefixed to some copies of the work. It is a puerile composition, without judgment, selection, or method (11); filled with legendary tales of Trojan antiquity, of magical delusion, and of the miraculous exploits of St. Germain and St. Patrick: not to mention those of the valiant Arthur, who is said to have felled to ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... the queer character of some of his questions. Take those relating to the arrangement of the house, for example. The pretence that the information would be valuable to him, should he ever again be cast away, was altogether too puerile for consideration; he required the information—and very cleverly extracted it from the unsuspecting Billy, too—for some entirely different reason. But what was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... Miss Effingham, like any other problem. In ordinary times, extraordinary men seldom become prominent, power passing into the hands of clever managers. Now, the very vanity, and the petty desires, that betray themselves in glittering uniforms, puerile affectations, and feeble imitations of other systems, probably induce more than half of those who fill the foreign missions to apply for them, and it is no more than we ought to expect that the real disposition ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... not effeminate; he was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... and events in history, not by their outward appearance, but by their inward significancy. In speaking of the Turks, we may for a moment yield to the romance which attends on their name and their actions, as we may admire the beauty of some beast of prey; but, as it would be idle and puerile to praise its shape or skin, and form no further judgment upon it, so in like manner it is unreal and unphilosophical to interest ourselves in the mere adventures and successes of the Turks, without going on to view them in their moral aspect also. No race ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Charlemagne, his person and his power. At the close of this ninth century a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his campaigns and his life. These stories are full of fabulous legends, puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies within ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... romance possessed the field. The Yellow Book and similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for want of a better word)—disappeared from the press. Psychology was pronounced 'off,' ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... occupation, his impenetrable complacency, his peasant-like delight in petty vices, his capacity for hiding the harsh face of reality behind the cloak of romanticism, his general innocence and childishness. But she never envies him his puerile ego; she never envies him his shoddy and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... badly of course he could not do otherwise—a foredained failure such as he—bungled it hopelessly; but the idea was the same—a bad travesty of a bad idea, badly worked out. For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust and contempt for the method. It was sin without genius, a puerile theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst. The really good have little ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... because she wore a number six glove; that she was careful of her personal appearance, because she possessed a vanity case; that she was of tidy habits, because she evidently expected to send her gowns to be cleaned. But all these things seemed to me puerile and even ridiculous, as such characteristics would apply to thousands of woman all ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... evolved and progressed with the nations, and the stimulus it gave to men in the reign of the ancient caliphs is beyond all question. To impute to it the present decadence of the Moslem world is altogether too puerile. The truth is that nations have their day; and to a period of glorious splendour succeeds a time of lassitude and slumber. It is a law of nature. And then one day some danger threatens them, stirs them from their ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... guns, to restore order: no support, however, was rendered to these by our troops, whose leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable of adopting more than the most puerile defensive measures. Even Sir William Macnaghten seemed, from a note received at this time from him by Captain Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he therein expressed his perfect confidence as to the speedy and complete success of Campbell's Hindoostanees ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... undoubtedly produced much evil; puerile critics and venal drudges manufacture reviews; hence that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and scandal of criticism. Passions hostile to the peaceful truths of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the republic, and every literary ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Irenicus became a Lutheran and displayed some dignity in refusing to sacrifice his convictions to worldly interests; but at this time he was enthusiastic and heady, and as a result his work is an uncritical jumble. 'Puerile and silly' Erasmus called it, when he saw some of the proof-sheets at Spires in 1518. 'A most unfortunate book', wrote Beatus Rhenanus in 1525, 'without style and without judgement.' To Aventinus in 1531 it was 'an impudent compilation from Stabius and Trithemius, by a poor creature of the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that since that day it would be impossible for me to love. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the doctrines and duties of Christianity, throw much light on the religious spirit, tendencies, and heretical sects of the times to which they belong. Others of these writings are unutterably absurd and puerile, worthy of notice only as showing the type of the puerilities current in the age ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... which oftentimes in republican governments must be sorely felt before they can be removed. The former, that is ignorance, being a fit soil for the latter to work in, tools are employed by them which a generous mind would disdain to use; and which nothing but time, and their own puerile or wicked productions, can show the inefficacy and dangerous tendency of. I think often of our situation, and view it with concern. From the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen! so lost! it is ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tales which offended it, but has not succeeded in discarding them all."(1) Just as the poets of the Rig-Veda prefer to avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra and Tvashtri, so Homer succeeds in avoiding the more grotesque and puerile tales about his own gods.(2) The period of actual apology comes later. Pindar declines, as we have seen, to accuse a god of cannibalism. The Satapatha Brahmana invents a new story about the slaying of Visvarupa. Not Indra, but Trita, says the Brahmana apologetically, slew ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... at last induced to leave the picture, and have tea. While Delilah poured, Porter watched the two, interested and diverted by enthusiasms which seemed to him somewhat puerile for a man who could do real things in the world ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... eccentric. Gray Kidds is one of those individuals whose peculiarity it is never to have been a boy. Kidds at fifteen had whiskers as voluminous as he now has at six-and-twenty, and as he gambolled heavily amongst his more puerile schoolfellows, visitors to the playground used to ask the assistant masters who that man was playing with the boys. They evidently had an uneasy notion that a private lunatic asylum formed a branch of the educational establishment, and that Gray Kidds was a harmless ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... was the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest warm simplicity; unacquainted and uncorrupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is indeed, very puerile and silly; but I am always pleased with it, as it recalls to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue was sincere. The subject of it was a young girl who really deserved ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... than life or death; her features were livid as those of a corpse, yet her hands went on with their mechanical work—one pen did not project a hair's breadth beyond the other. We lawyers know how common such puerile, commonplace actions are in the supreme moments of life, and how seldom men wring their hands, or use tragic gesture, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... into joy. When man dishonored God, or wronged his fellow-men,—as did the Pharisees, with their unhallowed traffic in the Temple, their robbery of the widow and fatherless, their blocking up of the way of life with their senseless ceremonies, puerile traditions,—no knight in all the heroic past ever breathed out a more fiery indignation. How did He die? In such a way that even the thief might be redeemed and live eternally. He was an ideal man, as well as perfect God. He was the servant of all, as well as King ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... refused to move. They ought to have made ten miles a-day, but preferred doing five. Argument was useless, and I was reluctant to apply the stick, as the Arabs would have done when they saw their porters trifling with their pockets. Determining, however, not to be frustrated in this puerile manner, I ordered the bugler to sound the march, and started with the mules and coast-men, trusting to Sheikh and Baraka to bring on the Wanyamuezi as soon as they could move them. The same day we crossed the Mgazi where we found several Wakhutu spearing fish in the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... purpose of retaining their supremacy over the province, have not only connived at those irregularities, but have always enjoined that the public sanction should be given to their puerile shows, and their pageant, pompous processions by the attendance of the civil and military officers upon them, and by desecrating the Lord's day with martial music, &c. In this particular affair, the executive officers of the Provincial Government are fully ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... chaotic and immature monsters of the secondary grounds—Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl—these might also regard themselves as vain and ephemeral attempts, ridiculous experiments of a still puerile nature, and conceive that they would leave no mark upon a more harmonious globe. And yet not an effort of theirs has been lost in space. They purified the air, they softened the unbreathable flame of oxygen, they paved the way for the more symmetrical life of those ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... devotion only, acting with every faculty for a single associate when one of their number asked for the assistance of all,—this life of filibusters in lemon kid gloves and cabriolets; this intimate union of superior beings, cold and sarcastic, smiling and cursing in the midst of a false and puerile society; this certainty of forcing all things to serve an end, of plotting a vengeance that could not fail of living in thirteen hearts; this happiness of nurturing a secret hatred in the face of men, and of being always in arms against this; ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Ralston, "I don't want to hear any such weak, puerile talk. How do you propose to pay me the nine hundred and sixty-odd dollars you owe me? Do you expect to save it out of your salary?" he concluded, ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... metaphysical point of view, the Atharvan is pantheistic. It knows also the importance of the 'breaths,'[1] the vital forces; it puts side by side the different gods and says that each 'is lord.' It does not lack philosophical speculation which, although most of it is puerile, sometimes raises questions of wider scope, as when the sage inquires who made the body with its wonderful parts—implying, but not stating the argument, from design, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... gallipots full of paint and varnish. Have you tried, my dear sir—you who set up to be a connoisseur? Have you tried? I have—and many a day. And the end of the day's labor? O dismal conclusion! Is this puerile niggling, this feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce—you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent master and poet! You can DO. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bird, flower, and insect, were more than resources, they were the friends of her lonely life, and awoke many a keen feeling of interest, many an aspiration of admiring adoration that carried her through her dreary hours. And though Miss Fennimore thought her science puerile, her credulity extensive, and her observations inaccurate, yet she deemed even this ladylike dabbling worthy of respect as an element of rational pleasure and self-training, and tried to make Bertha respect it, and abstain from inundating ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... handed him a copy of the paper. 'Ah,' he exclaimed, with mock solemnity, '"The Rellum," should be printed on vellum.' He too, like Tennyson, was variable. But this depended on whom he found. In the presence of a stranger he was grave and silent. He would never venture on puerile jokes like this of his 'Rellum' - a frequent playfulness, when at his ease, which contrasted so unexpectedly with his impenetrable exterior. He was either gauging the unknown person, or feeling that he was being gauged. Monckton Milnes was another. Seeing me correcting some ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... for evidence such as this has simply broken down. The whole report of the trial is so puerile, that it can only be understood by bearing in mind that, as Mr. Gardiner says, the Government were in possession of a good deal of evidence which they could not produce in court. The King wished ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and those constitutions may produce chemic wonders,—in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the wonders differ from Normal Science in this,—they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Elvira and her brother Alvaro, is not at all young-ladyish, and has some strong turns of feeling. The end of the play, with the stabbing of the Princess and the accusation of Agnes by Elvira, is puerile, but was doubtless welcome to a sentimental audience. It is a bad play, but not at all ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... hopelessly threadbare or possessed no bearing upon real life. "We are learning," says Seneca, "not for life, but for the school." The only novelty which could be given to the treatment of old abstract themes or puerile questions was novelty of phrase, and the one great mark of the literature of this time is therefore the pursuit of the striking expression, of something epigrammatic or glittering. A speech was judged by its purple patches of rhetoric, not by the soundness ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me according to his agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure, though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one of employing that exclusive authority with which I consider ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... enjoyable as well as useful, to go and quit smoking when then ain't any sufficient excuse for it! Why, my old boy, when they use to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile word upon—they little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell—I won't until I see you again—but then we'll smoke for a week together, and then shut ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ashamed I should be to notice such foolishness, were I here considering only the authority of Destutt de Tracy! But the entire human race, since the origination of society and language, when metaphysics and dialectics were first born, has been guilty of this puerile confusion of thought. All which man could call his own was identified in his mind with his person. He considered it as his property, his wealth; a part of himself, a member of his body, a faculty of his mind. The possession of things was likened to property in the powers of the body and mind; ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... augmenting with every fresh arrival, made the streets one ever-moving pageant for many days before the conflict began. Isabella had full leisure to observe, from her own lattice, the gay and costly garniture, and the glittering appointments of the warriors, with the pageants and puerile diversions suited to the taste and capacity of the ignorant crowds by which they were followed. The king's mummers were arrived, together with many other marvels in the shape of puppet-shows and "motions" enacting the "old vice;" Jonas and the whale, Nineveh, the Creation, and a thousand unintelligible ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to realize that this new world, so different from the old sweet, green one, was a world of enemies, every soul against him, and he was ready to fight them all to the death. He neither pawed the sand nor bellowed, for these are puerile betrayals of temper to which the noblest bulls do not descend. Like a tornado he swept across the ring, killed a horse with a single thrust, sent the picador crashing against the barrera; and quick as a wild cat, strong as an African lion, wheeled to lift another animal and its rider on his ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... beautiful ballad was first printed, in 1791, in The Bee. It is adapted to an old and sweet air, to which, however, very puerile words were attached. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... oppose Only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent Passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born Perfection: but I will not buy it so dear as it costs Plato will have nobody marry before thirty Prudent and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent Puerile simplicities of our children Shelter my own weakness under these great reputations Socrates kept a confounded scolding wife The authors, with whom I converse There is no recompense becomes virtue To do well where there was danger was the proper office ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... a French critic of M. Flaubert expressing ideas with which many of my own entirely coincide. "The great mistake of the realists," he says, "is that they profess to tell the truth because they tell everything. This puerile hunting after details, this cold and cynical inventory of all the wretched conditions in the midst of which poor humanity vegetates, not only do not help us to understand it better, but, on the contrary, the effect on the spectators is a kind of dazzled confusion mingled with fatigue and disgust. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chapter. And yet, from the blindness or inconsiderate examination of his critics, this latent wisdom—this cryptical science of poetic effects—in the mighty poet, has been misinterpreted, and set down to the account of defective skill, or even of puerile ostentation. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... you have the French spirit. I do not believe that there ever was a Frenchman since the seventeenth century (unless perchance it was Gerard de Nerval, and he was not quite sane), who could put his hand on his heart and deny that the little stars seemed to him puerile ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... The puerile Tarlingford, interfering at first, was summarily crushed. Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was stifled, and, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... misgiving; and there is an unrest which will be satisfied only when the sources of it are probed to the core. The Church authorities repeat a series of phrases which they are pleased to call answers to objections; they treat the most serious grounds of perplexity as if they were puerile and trifling; while it is notorious that for a century past extremely able men have either not known what to say about them, or have not said what they thought. On the Continent the peculiar English view has scarcely a single educated defender. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Themistocles; to escape his duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels; Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricians might again trample on plebeians, and that posterity might talk of him. The love of posthumous fame—what is it but as puerile a passion for notoriety as that which made a Frenchman I once knew lay out two thousand pounds in sugar-plums? To be talked of—how poor a desire! Does it matter whether it be by the gossips of this age or the next? Some men are urged on to fame by poverty—that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of July 31st—no number, sheets of different sizes. All these observations mean nothing, unless it is that a person without anything to do or to think occupies herself with puerile things. Indeed, I should do very wrong not to profit by all your lessons, and to persist in the error of believing in friendship, and regarding it as a good; no, no; I renounce my errors, and am absolutely persuaded that of all illusions that is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... have come to her—come on what cold blast from heaven, or him? But in pity for herself, let her not ask them! We seem to see the man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind. "I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And then, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... appear that the coming of the Wise Men—the Magi—was in accordance with the astrological signs, of the interpretation of which they were adepts and masters. When this truth is known, how puerile and petty seems the myth of the "traveling star" of the commonly accepted exoteric version? And the pictures of the Wise Men being led by a moving heavenly body, traveling across the skies and at last standing still over the cottage of Joseph, with which the Sunday school books are filled, must ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... philological readers will doubtless consider the information of this Note trivial and puerile; but they will, I hope, bear with a tyro in the science, in recording an original remark of his own, borne out by an authority so decisive ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... the oaths and acclamations of the people, the august triad was formed by the names of the father, the son, and the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness, while he beheld with puerile impatience the double obstacle that hung, and might long hang, over his rising ambition. It was not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sight of the puerile contrivance, the only thing here that recalls to us the gigantic war raging somewhere under the sky. We begin to laugh bitterly, offended and even wounded to the quick in our new impressions. Tirette collects himself, and some abusive sarcasm rises to his lips; but the protest lingers and is mute ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from the proprietress. But in their petty, monotonous, habitually frivolous life there was, in general, a great deal of semi-puerile, semi-hysterical play. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... utterly destitute as to suffer himself to be beaten and ill treated, both by Thersander and Sostratus, without an attempt to defend himself; and his lamentations, whenever he finds himself in difficulties, or separated from his ladye-love, are absolutely puerile. As to the other characters, Thersander is a mere vulgar ruffian—"a rude and boisterous captain of the sea,"—whose brutal violence on his first appearance, and subsequent unprincipled machinations, deprive him of the sympathy which might otherwise have been excited in behalf of one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... on the ground with a severe air, and then proceeded with a discourse of much austerity. Not that he was averse to a certain seemly decoration, or to the embodiment of revolutionary sentiment by means of a symbolism that strikes our cooler imagination as rather puerile. He was as ready as others to use the arts of the theatre for the liturgy of patriots. One of the most touching of all the minor dramatic incidents of the Revolution was the death of Barra. This was a child of thirteen who enrolled ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Mike said, shaking his head. "I know when I'm beaten." He'd been going to suggest that the Brainchild was a training ship, from Snookums' "learning" periods, but that seemed rather obvious and puerile now. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such burning, whole-souled, ardent warmth of beam as one finds in countries where they make a specialty of climate. It is, generally speaking, a half-hearted, uncertain ray, as pale and as transitory as a martyr's smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most puerile attempt to gleam, is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency. Not only that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman remarks smilingly, "I think now we shall be having settled weather!" It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... physicists dissociated themselves from studies which they looked upon as unreal word-squabbles, and sometimes not unreasonably abstained from joining in discussions which seemed to them idle and of rather puerile subtlety. They had seen the ruin of most of the systems built up a priori by daring philosophers, and deemed it more prudent to listen to the advice given by Kirchhoff and "to substitute the description of facts for ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... depreciation of railway scrip is a consequence of railway travelling on Sundays. Let them not, as far as you are concerned, libel the system of nature with their ignorant hypotheses. Looking from the solitudes of thought into this highest of questions, and seeing the puerile attempts often made to solve it, well might the mightiest of living Scotchmen—that strong and earnest soul, who has made every soul of like nature in these islands his debtor—well, I say, might your noble old Carlyle scornfully retort on such ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... childish memories, and may be too puerile for record; but I am sure most of my readers will find in them something of their own childhood's memories. It is my memories of men and things, I am writing, and I would ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... constitutions may produce chemic wonders,—in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the wonders differ from Normal Science in this,—they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... It may stand upon a par with the speculations of those who are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purer intentions, have not so effectual means of judging. It is besides an effect of vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine that every Statesman is of course corrupt: and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point, is solely formed upon ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Vandin avails himself of various system of Philosophy to combat his opponent. He begins with the Buddhistic system. The form of the dialogue is unique in literature being that of enigmas and the latent meaning is in a queer way hid under the appearance of puerile ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... to do all the work. But this will keep them so busy, that they will not have time to think. Moreover, as continual physical labor degrades the mind, if they should presume to think, their thoughts would be puerile, and practically useless. Therefore, it is plain, that to the females belongs the direction of affairs. The lady of the house may be found in the study with books and papers about her, while the master is in the ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... Third Canto of Childe Harold. He informed me, that he was authorized by the illustrious personage—(still recognized as such by the Legitimacy in Europe)—to whom they were read, to say, that 'the delineation was complete,' or words to this effect. It is no puerile vanity which induces me to publish this fact;—but Mr. Hazlitt accuses my inconsistency, and infers my inaccuracy. Perhaps he will admit that, with regard to the latter, one of the most intimate family connections of the Emperor may be equally ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... from his throne of Poland to take that of France as soon as he heard of the death of his brother, had not even the few good qualities of the latter. Depraved, prodigal, effeminate, capable only of the most puerile occupations, he excited the indignation of the Parisians by his dissolute manners, by his travesty of feminine apparel, his fine collars, his necklaces of pearls, his pourpoint opened to show his throat. D'Aubigne declared that he could ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... after a few moments' silence, "accepting your remarkable premisses for the sake of argument, will you kindly enlighten me as to since when you became so beautifully complete and altogether puerile a moralist? Suppose you did sin with her some three-quarters of a century ago, have not time and suffering purified you both—or rather her? I suppose it does not make ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cloaked with mantles of gold. The founder, an atheist who had denied the gods, was transformed into one. About him a host of divinities was strung. The most violently nihilistic of doctrines was fanned into an idolatry puerile and meek. Nirvana became Elysium, and a religion which began as a heresy culminated in a superstition. That is ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... admitting its business powers, its sharp, almost demoniac, intellect, and no lack, in its own way, of courage and generosity)—there is, at present, little of cheering, satisfying sign. In the West, California, &c., "society" is yet unform'd, puerile, seemingly unconscious of anything above a driving business, or to liberally spend the money made by it, in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime favourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernize some of the Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author has any very cordial sympathy with Shakspeare. How should he? Shakspeare was the least of an egotist of anybody in the world. He does not much relish ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... study of letters, so that it was only natural that there should be among them one or two renowned writers of verses; for how could they ever resemble the families of such upstarts, who only employ puerile expressions as a makeshift to get through what they have to do? But the why and the wherefore must be sought in the past. The consort, belonging to the Chia mansion, had, before she entered the palace, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... scholar critic comprehends fully the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the masters, and to set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon it, and to bid his master reach it if he can, is the puerile play of an infantine intellect, or very conceited mind! And so we give M. De Piles, and all his followers, a slap in the face, and bid them go packing with Number 20. We will not condescend to pull to pieces this fantastic scheme, which is in its distinctions, and weighings and calculations, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... is a hard question for evolutionists. Any scientific theory must be ready to give an account of all phenomena. A hypothesis to explain the origin of man must explain all the facts. How did man become a hairless animal? Darwin's explanation is too puerile for any one professing to be a learned scientist to give. He says that the females preferred males with the least hair (?) until the hairy men gradually became extinct, because, naturally, under such a regime, the hairy men would die off, and, finally only hairless men to beget progeny would ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... with the remonstrance of Scapin, and re-animate it; and thus these "Lazzi, although they seem to interrupt the progress of the action, yet in cutting it they slide back into it, and connect or tie the whole." These Lazzi are in great danger of degenerating into puerile mimicry or gross buffoonery, unless fancifully conceived and vividly gesticulated. But the Italians seem to possess the arts of gesture before that of speech; and this national characteristic is also Roman. Such, indeed, was the powerful expression ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... resumption of the jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me according to his agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure, though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one of employing that exclusive authority with which I consider ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps a man's shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all similar for the man. These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much or not proving anything. That Buddhism approves of ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... eunuchs would appear to be an unusual tendency to put on fat, a notably greater length of the legs, absence of hair in the sexual and secondary sexual regions, a less degree of pigmentation, as noted both in the castrated negro and the white man, a puerile larynx and puerile voice. In character they are usually described as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is absolutely identical in all essentials. Now turn to the west and what do we find? The same story in its every detail preserved amongst the Mexicans (each tribe having its own version), the people of Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and almost every tribe of North American Indians. It is puerile to suggest that mere coincidence can ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... me—so puerile, so ridiculous, yet there was a sting in it. Look higher for their daughter! Higher than whom? But why should I let the talk of this silly woman annoy me? The daughter is wonderfully beautiful, but what of that? Still I have heard it said that the most brilliant men often choose ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... palettes, and gallipots full of paint and varnish. Have you tried, my dear sir—you who set up to be a connoisseur? Have you tried? I have—and many a day. And the end of the day's labor? O dismal conclusion! Is this puerile niggling, this feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce—you, who but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... adopted vigorous measures for confirming and perpetuating such religious observances as were at that time observed, and in introducing others. Every public act which he performed was always accompanied and sanctioned by religious solemnities. The rites and ceremonies which he instituted seem puerile to us, but they were full of meaning and of efficacy in the view of those who performed them. There was, for example, a class of religious functionaries called augurs, whose office it was to interpret the divine ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... evidence such as this has simply broken down. The whole report of the trial is so puerile, that it can only be understood by bearing in mind that, as Mr. Gardiner says, the Government were in possession of a good deal of evidence which they could not produce in court. The King wished to spare Arabella, and to accept Aremberg's ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... They accepted the principle with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the ritual ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the unfortunate president who had disposed of his gaiters in the way just mentioned drew them out instead of his handkerchief and smeared his face over with mud. The Pope is said to have been much amused at this mistake. If this anecdote should be thought too puerile to be repeated here, I may observe that it afforded no small merriment to Bonaparte, who made Michot the actor relate it to the Empress at Paris one evening after ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... rapid decay of the King; the utter failure of all male heir in the House of Cerdic, save only the boy Edgar; whose character (which throughout life remained puerile and frivolous) made the minority which excluded him from the throne seem cause rather for rejoicing than grief: and whose rights, even by birth, were not acknowledged by the general tenor of the Saxon laws, which did not recognize as heir ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... esteemed the Comtesse de Noailles for her many good qualities, yet she was so much put out of her way by the rigour with which the Countess enforced forms which to Her Majesty appeared puerile and absurd, that she felt relieved, and secretly gratified, by her retirement. It will be shown hereafter to what an excess the Countess was eventually ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... strange man," said the other, "and much too hot-headed to listen to reason. Surely we ought to love truth above our puerile prejudices. We do not make nature, but she is already such as she is, spread out before us, for us to watch her ways ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... first efforts to understand were very puerile, very superficial. As E. B. Tylor says (1) of primitive folk in general, "they mistook an imaginary for a real connection." And he instances the case of the inhabitants of the City of Ephesus, who laid ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... and went forth with them, I thought also of their ancestral line stretching back to Abraham through centuries of the most wonderful history which belongs to any race. Beside these Israelites, how puerile the fame and deeds of the Hohenzollerns! The sixty or seventy thousand Jews of Berlin hold in their hands, it is said, a large part of the wealth of the city; but they are proscribed, and it is thought by many, unjustly treated ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... are not required to believe that the same body is raised again. That is against science, common sense, Scripture. St Paul represents the matter quite otherwise. One feels ashamed of arguing such a puerile point. Who could wish his material body which has indeed died over and over again since he was born, never remaining for one hour composed of the same matter, its endless activity depending upon its endless change, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act. This is the plan the Anglo-Saxons have adopted, as their great historian, Macaulay, ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... most of the tales which offended it, but has not succeeded in discarding them all."(1) Just as the poets of the Rig-Veda prefer to avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra and Tvashtri, so Homer succeeds in avoiding the more grotesque and puerile tales about his own gods.(2) The period of actual apology comes later. Pindar declines, as we have seen, to accuse a god of cannibalism. The Satapatha Brahmana invents a new story about the slaying of Visvarupa. Not Indra, but Trita, says the Brahmana apologetically, slew the three-headed ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... reminded me of it. I can speak on the matter like a professor, for I was past-master in the science. I had a bitter tongue. How deeply I regret it, God only knows. I have often made an awful fool of myself at conferences, at public meetings, etc.; I have often done silly and puerile things, what the French call betises; I think of them without shame. But the sharp, acrid things I have said, and the few harsh things I have done, fill me with confusion. There's the benefit of a diary. It is an examination of conscience. I remember once at a station, a rather mean fellow ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... shut his eyes to the meanness of his adversaries. The ultra-zealous, afraid of that light which letters diffuse, not to the prejudice of religion, but to their own disadvantage, took different ways of attacking him; some, by a trick as puerile as cowardly, wrote fictitious letters to themselves; others, attacking him anonymously, had afterwards fallen by the ears among themselves. M. de Montesquieu contented himself with making an example of the most extravagant. This ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... made some effort to oppose the Manchu armies, and even assumed the command in person, although he was only a civilian, but his troops had no heart to oppose the Manchus, and the devices to which he resorted to make his military power appear more formidable were both puerile and ineffective. Yet one passage may be quoted to his credit if it gave his opponent an advantage. It is affirmed on good authority that he could have obtained a material advantage if he would only have flooded the country, but he "refused to do so, on the ground ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... religious system—all human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict uniformity, yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite directions, but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most puerile legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not so with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which, and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... '"The Rellum," should be printed on vellum.' He too, like Tennyson, was variable. But this depended on whom he found. In the presence of a stranger he was grave and silent. He would never venture on puerile jokes like this of his 'Rellum' - a frequent playfulness, when at his ease, which contrasted so unexpectedly with his impenetrable exterior. He was either gauging the unknown person, or feeling that he was being gauged. Monckton Milnes was another. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... evidence that the menace was thoroughly understood, for the whole day shift was toiling at the ice, chopping it, thawing it, shoveling it away, although its tremendous thickness made their efforts seem puerile. Everywhere there was manifested a frantic haste, a grim, strained eagerness that ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... notwithstanding his fluctuations of feeling and the obvious contradictions of sentiment in some of his letters and his more deliberate essays, it is, upon the whole, plain enough that, while he always regarded the vulgar notions as puerile falsehoods, the hope of a glorious life to come was powerful in him. This may be stated as the result of a patient investigation and balancing of all that he says on the subject, and of the circumstances under which he says it. To ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the enemy, this is too puerile altogether. The things these fellows produce are all read and checked by competent General Staff Officers. To think that it matters to the Turks whether a certain trench was taken by the 7th Royal Scots or the 3rd Warwicks is just really like ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... at least fifty louis; and my diamonds, my watches, my chains, my sword of the finest English steel, my snuff-box set with brilliants, my cross set with diamonds, my buckles set with the same stones, were altogether worth more than fifty thousand crowns. This ostentation, though puerile in itself, yet had a purpose, for I wished M. de Bragadin to know that I did not cut a bad figure in the world; and I wished the proud magistrates who had made me quit my native land to learn that I had lost nothing, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Mother of God should be decked with this worldly symbol, as a reward for services rendered, will be obscure only to those who fail to appreciate the earthly-tangible complexion of southern religion. Puerility is its key-note. The Italian is either puerile or adult; the Englishman remains everlastingly adolescent. . ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Luther freed Germany, and all Christendom indeed, from the tyranny of tradition, as Lessing freed us from the tyranny of the letter, from the second-hand and half-baked Hellenism of a Racine and a Corneille, so Frederick the Great freed his countrymen at last from the puerile slavery to French fashions and traditions, which had made them self- conscious at home and ridiculous abroad. He first made a Prussian ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... accomplished philological readers will doubtless consider the information of this Note trivial and puerile; but they will, I hope, bear with a tyro in the science, in recording an original remark of his own, borne out by an ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... tributary to the mighty Amazon river. It is amusing to take a cup of water from the one laguna and pour it into the other. I could not resist indulging this whim; and in so doing I thought I might possibly have sent into the Pacific some drops of the water destined for the Atlantic. But the whim, puerile as it may be, nevertheless suggests serious reflections on the mighty power of nature, which has thrown up these stupendous mountains from the bosom of the earth; and also on the testaceous animals found ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... occasion by a young and fascinating lady by the name of ANTHONY (SUSAN.) SUSIE prophesied then, it will be remembered, that the fair oratress would yet live to be President of the United States and Canadas. Miss LOGAN, with her customary modesty, declined to view the mysterious future in that puerile light, gracefully suggesting, amid a brilliant outburst of puns, metaphors and amusing anecdotes, that SUSIE distorted the facts. Miss ANTHONY, under a mistaken impression that this referred to her ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... elbow and proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them about his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado which I should have thought him ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... distorted, haggard, and almost black. The noise which Pierre had heard had been occasioned by Madame de Jonquiere, who whilst cleansing a basin had dropped the large zinc water-can. And, despite their torment, this had made the patients laugh, like the simple souls they were, rendered puerile by suffering. However, Sister Hyacinthe, who rightly called them her children, children whom she governed with a word, at once set them saying the chaplet again, pending the Angelus, which would only be ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the passage aged sixteen, a cruel young monster filled with rebellion and immorality, not educated at all, but full of the sense of vague failures, having in common with those of my years, all the levels of puerile understanding, stung with patronage and competitive strife, designed to smother that which was ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... go through automatically the daily vulgar routine of the convent; the pure flame of an elevated religious feeling being kindled in his soul, he tried to evade the vain exercises of the monks, the puerile gymnastics, and the adoration of so-called relics. His character was frank and open, and he was unable to hide his convictions; he put some of his doubts before his companions, and these hastened to refer them to the superiors; and thus was material found to institute ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... study, too, we can learn a lesson, not perhaps among the least important, as to the limits fixed by nature to human knowledge. To know of a surety what those things are which never can be known to mortal man, is a knowledge, the want of which has driven many to puerile and superstitious practices, and many more to ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... cried. "That's puerile. Either she would disguise herself effectually or not at all. I suppose if you were going to commit a capital crime, you would merely put on a high hat, because you never wear one! I'll tell you this much: I'm morally certain ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... had never loved before, made for the moment all other thought impossible to him: he started from his chair, and paced the room with rapid disordered strides. What was all the world to the ecstasy of such a love? All—all that he had hitherto lived for, was it not flat, stale, poor, puerile, in comparison to it? Why not leave all, and seize a happiness so infinitely greater than any he had ever known or imagined? Why not marry her, and be hers for ever, as she was anxious to be his? Nobles of higher rank than his had done ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... has since explained to us the results of introducing bloodshed into such quarrels. The laws which recognize war are and were acknowledged. But when A kills B because he thinks B to have done evil. A can no longer complain of murder. And Cicero's criticism is somewhat puerile. "And thou, boy," Antony had said in addressing Octavian—"Et te, puer!" "You shall find him to be a man by-and-by," says Cicero. Antony's Latin is not Ciceronian. "Utrum sit elegantius," he asks, putting some further question about Caesar and Trebonius. "As if there could ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... school he was a kind of Gray Beard: he neither ran, played, jumped, swam, or fought, as 86 other boys do. The descriptions of puerile years, so beautifully given ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of CROMWELL, when called into the hall of debate to discuss the rights of man, or into the field to battle for them, he were a bold man who dare smile at them. Yet in their religious acts they were often bigoted, intolerant and puerile. The same incongruity is seen in their tastes. Men of deep poetical sentiment, they often murdered poetry for conscience sake. A man who could write a defence of the colonies with a pen that fairly glowed with the burning Saxon that fell from it, would not be shocked at all at the impropriety ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... without any sound foundation laid in severe reasoning and philosophy. In Cambridge and in Oxford, the art of speaking agreeably is so far from being taught, that it is hardly talked or thought of. These defects naturally produce dry unaffecting compositions in the one; superficial taste and puerile elegance in the other; ungracious or affected speech in both."—DR. BROWN, 1757: Estimate, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of animals! "Enough," exclaimed my guide, "thou seest here the glorious result of a philosophical mind, gifted with unabatable ardour of experiment. Thou wilt acknowledge that, compared with the triumph which SUCH A MIND enjoys, the conquests of heroes are puerile, and the splendour of monarchy is dim!" During this strain, I fancied I could perceive the human being, alluded to by my guide, retire apart in conversation with another distinguished friend of humanity, by those ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... yourself. And think not so ill of your Jewish landlord, whom you wish you could wrap in that rug and throw overboard. He certainly meant well. That formula of card and messenger is so convenient and so cheap. Withal, is he not too busy, think you, to come up to the dock for the puerile, prosaic purpose of shaking hands and saying ta-ta? If you can not consider the matter in this light, try to forget it. One must not be too visceral at the hour of departure. Behold, your skyscrapers and your ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Naturalisme, la vérité, la science, were repeated some half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who has received a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Berry, "puerile as it may seem, I assumed you were coming back. My assumption was so definite that I didn't even get out. For one thing, Death seemed very near, and the close similarity which the slot I was occupying ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... many who call themselves "free-thinkers," many who reject all revealed religion, merely out of silly puerile vanity. They affect singularity in order to attract notice, in order to make people believe that they are strong-minded, that they are independent. Poor deluded slaves of human respect! They affect singularity in order to attract notice, and they forget that there is another ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... well weary of this vulgar trash of the K.G.C., which is only not absolutely ridiculous, because so nearly connected with most sanguinary aims. Be it borne in mind that the Southern character has always been eminently receptive of the puerile and nonsensical, while the vast proportion of semi-savage, semi-sophomorical minds in Dixie, half-educated and altogether idle and debauched, has made their land a fertile field for quack Bickleys, brutal and arrogant Pikes, and other petty tools of greater and more powerful knaves. The Order ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... having its origin (like the religious epidemic of the sixteenth century) in the private conceit of the individual, growing by violence and strife, and ending in dissolution. This is the ever-repeated refrain of his political discourses, puerile enough, it may be, to our rude hearing in Britain, but very grateful to polite and patriotic ears at Vienna, when the cannon of Wagram was yet sounding in audible echo beneath their towers. The propounder of such philosophy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of the booksellers. The first time these expressions, more worthy of an inquisitor of Goa than a senator, were related to me, I had no doubt of their coming from the Holbachiques with an intention to alarm me and drive me from France. I laughed at their puerile manoeuvre, and said they would, had they known the real state of things, have thought of some other means of inspiring me with fear; but the rumor at length became such that I perceived the matter was serious. M. and Madam de Luxembourg had this year come to Montmorency in the month of June, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... thing that he is dead set on doing, and would be warned that to do it was destruction; and that still he should not ask the counsel, nor ever dream of dropping the purpose, but should burst out in a passion of puerile rage against the counsellor, and will have none of his reproofs. Very curious! But there are a great many of us that have something of the same mood in us, though we do not speak it out as plainly as Ahab did. It lurks more or less in us all, and it largely ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of tete-a-tete with the infinite, how different life looks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenly puerile, frivolous and vain. We seem to ourselves mere puppets, marionettes, strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistaking gewgaws for things of great price. At such moments, how everything becomes transformed, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that the little victim could not have escaped by complaining to the monitor. No. Death before dishonour. But the side not so seamy of this picture of school life is the extraordinary power of honour among boys. Of course the laws of the secret society might well terrify a puerile informer. But the sentiment of honour is even more strong than fear, and will probably outlast the very disagreeable circumstances in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... edition of 1628 fills over forty pages. Calderon follows the narrative very closely, but in one noticeable incident he greatly improves upon his predecessor. This is in the celebrated skeleton scene of the third act. The corresponding scene in Montalvan's story is puerile enough. In Montalvan Luis Enius has no interview with the skeleton, so powerfully described by Calderon. His conversion is effected by a floating piece of paper which had eluded his grasp for two nights, but which he seized on the third, and ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... summon any of his own regiment to his defence in case of emergency, except upon the advice and consent of some official of the city police. Well was it for Chicago and the nation that the President of the United States stood as unmoved by the puerile protests of the demagogue in office as were his loyal soldiery by the fury of insult, abuse, and violence heaped upon them by that ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... But this puerile parody met with the indifference it deserved, and, accompanied by the Section Manager, we commenced our journey, travelling for some hours over the land which is in his charge. "Monte," too, seemed to consider that his presence as a guide ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Watching him at his work, with his sharp, restless eyes always alert, and listening to his voice as incisive as his shears, he seemed a man whose whole mind was possessed by the pursuit of news, a man whose brain and body worked with such machine-like accuracy that he could never fall into the puerile errors of his fellows. Now when he was misusing his authority to browbeat me into what he termed sanity, I found comfort in recalling that after all he had once in a moment of forgetfulness confessed to having a home at ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... while the situation became intolerable. We tried, but in vain, to procure newspapers and books; we were reduced to masquerading, to donning the hussar's vest for fun. This puerile fooling quickly wore itself out, and stretching ourselves every twenty minutes, exchanging a few words, we dive ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... and the previous one of General Fawcet, circumstantially illustrate the puerile imbecility with which the royal cause was then conducted. Both movements foundered in an hour, through surprises, against which each had been amply forewarned. Fortunately for the government, the affairs of the rebels were managed even worse. Two sole enterprises were ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... afford to talk of trifles, because he knows the world will think him a great man who condescends to trifle; Wordsworth must always be eloquent and profound, because he knows that he is considered childish and puerile.... I think that Scott's success would have made Wordsworth insufferable, while Wordsworth's failures would not have rendered Scott a whit less delightful. Scott is the companion of Nature in all her moods and freaks, while Wordsworth follows her like an apostle, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... of this committee. Every act, beginning with the mild and ineffective one of 1867, designed to remedy the appalling conditions in tenement houses, had been stubbornly opposed by the landlords; and even after these puerile measures had finally been passed, the landlords had resisted their enforcement. Whether it was because of the bitter criticisms levelled at him, or because he saw that it would be a good time to dispose of his tenements as ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... rations being more regular and assured if we broke a window, or the law in some way, and gave ourselves up. For the nonce, however, three weeks would pass, and with them all our woes. The idea of eighteen weeks occurred to nobody; it would have been too farcical, too puerile. That starvation must have killed us long ere the period had fled, would have been our axiom, if it were pertinent to the issue, when the 'pros' and 'cons' of the situation were being eagerly discussed on the opening days of a Siege that was to send the fame of the Diamond ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... first detailed for the arduous duties of the field to castigate the Indians. This matter is easy to accomplish; but the next thing to be thought of is to take care of these troops, which is not quite so puerile a task. The quartermaster estimates from the number of the soldiers how many mules will be required to transport their luggage, equipments and provisions. This having been determined upon, he collects the animals and has them provided with pack-saddles. The task ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... had been handed over by Pilate for special service. But they were Roman soldiers, as appears from the danger which the rulers provided against, that of their alleged crime against military discipline, in sleeping at their post, coming to his ears. The trumped-up story is too puerile to have taken in any one who did not wish to believe it. How could they tell what happened when they were asleep? How could such an operation as forcing back a heavy stone, and exhuming a corpse, have been carried on without waking them? How could such a timid set of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tennyson's Sonnets; three times too many, and some rather puerile: but scarce one but with something good in Thought or Expression: all original: and some delightful: I think, to live with Alfred's, and no one else's. Old Fred might have made one of Three Brothers, I think, could he have compressed himself into something of Sonnet Compass: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... particularly irresistible in the eyes of the fair. Readers of modern French fiction are aware that the heroes of those edifying tales invariably wear the mustache "hardiment retroussee," which habit doubtless adds a subtle charm to their singularly puerile and fatuous conversation imperceptible to the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... really puerile. "What awful woman? His landlady? Don't be such a goose, Andora. How can it have been kept back from him, when we've found it here among ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... that his face had lighted up. He laughed aloud in an evil, spiteful manner. Just as my own temper was getting the better of me a feeling of pity and indulgence came into my heart for this man, whose vengeance seemed to me as pathetic as it was puerile. Promptly deciding to make the best of my host's spitefulness, and assisted by his brother, I took my tea into the hall at the other end of the conservatory. I was nearly dead with fatigue, and when my friend proposed that I should go with him to see his petroleum ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... self-reliance be shaken, if the men most likely to know the facts, and to appreciate them wisely, appeared to think that the Frank race were nationally inferior to other races who had peopled this or that region, either neighbouring or distant? This, let it be well remarked, is not a puerile susceptibility. Great events may, on a given day, depend on the opinion that the nation has formed of itself. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel, afford examples on this subject that it would be ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... indicate that they were conceived and are scattered abroad with the sole idea of impressing the general public with what a marvelous and unusual person the individual in question is. There can be no reasonable doubt that they are merely evidences of childish vanity and puerile mendacity, and are only referred to here for the reason that young persons, ignorant of the laws of health, might attempt to emulate them, with results that could be but disastrous. Nothing so preserves youth, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... all, the month was filled with clamor from Ireland. Her Majesty's Government in Whitehall had immediately issued a communique which took a glacial view of the "puerile" proposal to toss for Northern Ireland. It was the timing of this communique, rather than its contents, that proved a tactical error. It had come too quickly, and Irishmen, both north and ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... China, the same thing was remarked: everywhere a few swollen towns were visibly replacing the ancient order. That this was an inevitable result of improved means of travel and transport—that, given swift means of transit, these things must be—was realised by few; and the most puerile schemes were devised to overcome the mysterious magnetism of the urban centres, and keep the people on ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... intimation he replied in such a manner as denoted a consciousness of having done his duty, and a laudable desire to vindicate his own conduct. His answer contained a further account of the engagement in which he was supposed to have misbehaved, intermixed with some puerile calculations of the enemy's superiority in weight of metal, which served no other purpose than that of exposing his character still more to ridicule and abuse; and he was again so impolitic as to hazard certain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... relations of an idle man. But we must be left "to dream our dream unto ourselves alone." One word from anybody belonging to me to anybody belonging to her on the subject, and—— But threats are puerile. For the present, dear aunt, I am your ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... extravagance. The passages of the Epistles, which were formerly felt to be so objectionable, are yet to be found here in all their unmitigated folly. Ignatius is still the same anti-evangelical formalist, the same puerile boaster, the same dreaming mystic, and the same crazy fanatic. These are weighty charges, and yet they can be substantiated. But we must enter into details, that we may fairly exhibit the spirit, and expose ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... schoolboy. But these were niceties for which the audience cared little. The enthusiasm of the orator infected all who heard him; his ardour and his noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave dignity to the most puerile allusion. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... In his shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his imagination with another step even more unlike his remembered self. He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond's which had often made him angry, namely, that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface. The question came—"Would any man buy the practice of me even now, for as little as it is worth? ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of human life cannot be used in interpreting life elsewhere without a certain conscious humour. This makes the charm of avowed writers of fable; their playful travesty and dislocation of things human, which would be puerile if they meant to be naturalists, render them piquant moralists; for they are not really interpreting animals, but under the mask of animals maliciously painting men. Such fables are morally interesting and plausible just because they are psychologically false. If AEsop could have reported what lions ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... made this Parliament supremely stimulating throughout the land. What of young Randolph Churchill, who, despite his halting speech, foppish mien and rather coarse fibre of mind, was yet the greatest Parliamentarian of his day? What of Justin Huntly McCarthy, under his puerile mask a most dark, most dangerous conspirator, who, lightly swinging the sacred lamp of burlesque, irradiated with fearful clarity the wrath and sorrow of Ireland? What of Blocker Warton? What of the eloquent atheist, Charles Bradlaugh, pleading at the Bar, striding past the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... direct admission that the government is unequal to the discharge of one of the plainest and commonest obligations of all civilized society. If this be really so, the sooner we get rid of the present form of government the better. The notion of remedying such an evil by concession, is as puerile as it is dishonest. The larger the concessions become, the greater will be the exactions of a cormorant cupidity. As soon as quiet is obtained by these means, in reference to the leasehold tenures, it will be demanded by some fresh combination ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the unexpected issue of that contest, will long be remembered by every man who was educated at Dr. Swishtail's famous school. The latter youth (who used to be called Heigh-ho Dobbin, Gee-ho Dobbin, Figs, and by many other names indicative of puerile contempt) was the quietest, the clumsiest, and, as it seemed, the dullest of all Dr. Swishtail's young gentlemen. His parent was a grocer in the city: and it was bruited abroad that he was admitted into Dr. Swishtails academy upon what are called "mutual principles"—that ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... effeminate; he was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be anything but Nellie ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... nine o'clock at night on the day of his flight, yet he had enjoyed so many hair-raising experiences, rescued so many lovely girls from all manner of perils, and soundly thrashed so many unprincipled varlets, that even Melissa's narratives became weak and puerile when put up against the tales he told to his pop-eyed brothers and sisters. He did not mention the sound thrashing that he sustained at the hands of Mrs. Bingle, however, nor did he attempt to account for the bitter ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... clemency and his saying, "Let us be friends, Cinna," the following is his interpretation of it: "I understand this action simply as the feint of a tyrant, and approve as calculation what I find puerile as sentiment."—"Notes par le Comte Chaptal": "He believed neither in virtue nor in probity, often calling these two words nothing but abstractions; this is what rendered him so distrustful and so immoral.... He never experienced a generous sentiment; this is why he was so cold in company, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... than resources, they were the friends of her lonely life, and awoke many a keen feeling of interest, many an aspiration of admiring adoration that carried her through her dreary hours. And though Miss Fennimore thought her science puerile, her credulity extensive, and her observations inaccurate, yet she deemed even this ladylike dabbling worthy of respect as an element of rational pleasure and self-training, and tried to make Bertha respect it, and abstain from inundating Miss Charlecote with sesquipedalian ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... continued the explorer earnestly, "a tremendous broadening of our concept of God, a more exalted, a more worthy concept of Him as spirit—or, if you will, as mind. An abandonment of the puerile concept of Him as a sort of magnified man, susceptible to the influence of preachers, or of Virgin and Saints, and yielding to their petitions, to their higher sense of justice, and to money-bought earthly ceremonies to lift an imaginary curse from His own creatures. And with it will ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... have never given me any trouble," said Mr. Phillips, "and to my mind, Mr. Dempster, the revelations, such as I have heard at least, are very puerile and contemptible; but that there must be a singular excitement attending even an imaginary conversation with the dead I can easily believe, and I do not care ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the study of the languages of the Bible had the single unfortunate result of increasing that puerile literalism which had appeared in only sporadic forms during several preceding centuries. It was the element antagonistic to the allegorical and spiritual interpretation of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and always the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... has made him arbitrary and puerile, life outside has made him lukewarm. Therefore it seems that God has withdrawn Himself from him, and the proof of this is that He has taken away all ability from the priesthood. There are no priests now who have talent, either in the pulpit or in books; the laity ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... magnitude and importance on any step in progress, at the time it is taken, nor the full moral worth of the characters who inspire it, hence it will be in line with the whole history of reform from the beginning if woman's enfranchisement in Nebraska should in many minds seem puerile and premature, and its advocates fanatical and unreasonable. Nevertheless the proposition speaks for itself. A constitutional amendment to crown one-half of the people of a great State with all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which he purposed to wreck upon Alkmaar. Already he gloated in anticipation over the havoc which would soon be let loose within those walls. Such ravings, if invented by the pen of fiction, would seem a puerile caricature; proceeding, authentically, from his own, they still appear almost too exaggerated for belief. 'If I take Alkmaar,' he wrote to Philip, 'I am resolved not to leave a single creature alive; ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... have done with such puerile declamations? We contemn, we revile interest, that is to say, the good and the useful, (for if all men are interested in an object, how can this object be other than good in itself?) as though this interest were not the necessary, eternal, and indestructible ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... said Mrs. Frederick Langford; "it is a—what shall I call it?—a puerile delusion, which their mammas can always defeat when they choose by a formidable list of colds and coughs; but I won't put you in mind of how often you have sat with your feet on the fender croaking like an old raven, and solacing yourself ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thales in philosophy, held to puerile doctrines concerning the motions and nature of the stars, which it is useless to repeat. His addition to science, if he made any, was in treating the magnitudes and distances of the planets. He constructed geographical charts, and attempted to delineate the celestial sphere, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... complain to his friends, instead of complaining of them. In one place he tells them, what is perfectly true, that their journeymen are far too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute vague and puerile dissertations for that solid instruction which is what the reader of an Encyclopaedia seeks. In another he remonstrates against certain frivolous affectations, and some of the coxcombries of literary modishness. Everywhere he recommends them to insist on a firm and distinct method in their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the sanguinary English criminal code with death in every line—why is it not reformed, I say? 'Twould be well if our legislators, instead of their puerile and frothy declamations against revolutionary principles and the ambition of Napoleon, would occupy themselves seriously with this subject. But then the lawyers would all oppose the simplification of our Code. They find by experience ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... and her husband exchanged a few muttered words and rapid glances, Euergetes watching them the while; his legs straddled apart, his huge body bent forward, and his hands resting on his hips. His attitude expressed so much arrogance and puerile, defiant, unruly audacity, that Cleopatra found it difficult to suppress an exclamation of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... NF.22: Name of a God)—Ver. 3. This pun upon the resemblance of "Castor," the name of the demigod, to "Castor," "a beaver," seems to be a puerile pun; and the remark upon the limited "copia verborum" of the Greeks, seems more likely to proceed from the Archbishop of Sipontum than from Phaedrus, who was evidently proud of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... also, worthless as they are for instruction in the doctrines and duties of Christianity, throw much light on the religious spirit, tendencies, and heretical sects of the times to which they belong. Others of these writings are unutterably absurd and puerile, worthy of notice only as showing the type of the puerilities current in the age ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
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