"Babel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Manchester, but could not read it; it was much too learned for me, and seemed rather an account of Babel than Manchester, I mean in point of antiquity.(207) To be sure, it is very kind in an author to promise one the history of a country town, and give one a circumstantial account of the antediluvian world into the bargain. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and a kind of frenzy seized her. She had a wild desire to get down out of the carriage and run with all her might away from this hateful scene. The sky seemed to have suddenly clouded over and the hum and buzz of voices about seemed a babel that would ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... classes and roommates; discussing the advent of new teachers, pupils and improvements, when a tall, gracious woman of, perhaps, thirty-five years suddenly appeared in the doorway, her fair face gleaming with humorous appreciation of the animated scene and babel before her, and enjoined silence with the uplifting ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... earth much light upon Heaven had thrown, And he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone; And the spirals of music e'er higher and higher he wound Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound — Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. Then he paused at the top ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... were Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Austrians, Poles, people from the Balkan states, Swedes, Danes, Russians, and a few from India, China, and Japan. The clatter of their various tongues made a very Babel inside the ark, when they talked to one another in groups, but nearly all of them were able to speak English, which, after many years of experiment, had been adopted as the common language for transacting ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... in having to do with genii or giants or something of that sort. They say he commanded the giants to build him a sort of pagoda, rising higher and higher above all the stars. The Utmost for the Highest, as the people said when they built the Tower of Babel. But the builders of the Tower of Babel were quite modest and domestic people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise above it, and go on rising for ever and ever. And ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... Lucy turned down the driveway and the door of the Howe homestead closed, a tragic babel of voices reached her ear, piping in shrill staccato the ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... is, that the Hebrew, which was the original language spoken by Adam, was preserved by the Hebrew people after the confusion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel, and thus became the language used by our Redeemer,—the language not of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... hundred such groups. These comprise over one thousand distinct languages which are mutually unintelligible and at least as different as Spanish and Italian. Such differences might arise in a day at the Tower of Babel, but in the processes of evolution they take ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... otherwise in a land where the city man has destroyed the home. The American has shown no great genius for the domestic virtues. He has hauled down the homes of his ancestors, has builded in their stead vast apartment-houses and tenement buildings—steam-heated Towers of Babel. Into each of these he has packed the population of a European market-town, has left the children to grow up on the roofs and staircases, the babies to find a blessed release through rickety fire-escapes. When a fit of reform has touched him, he has stirred ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... of the guests that it might be haunted, I can assure you that when I went to bed no subject was farther from my thoughts than the subject of ghosts. I returned to my room at about half-past eleven. The storm was then at its height—all was babel and confusion—impenetrable darkness mingled with the wildest roaring and shrieking; and when I peeped through my casement window I could see nothing—the panes were shrouded in snow—snow which was incessantly dashed against them with cyclonic ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... against the individual. Individual initiative and assertion, liberty of conscience, the right of man to life and the pursuit of happiness,—all these are foibles of the West which it has been the chief business of caste to crush; and upon their ruin it has erected this mighty tower of Babel. In India, it has been the business of men, from time immemorial, not to do what they think to be right, nor to find out, every one for himself, what they consider to be the best and to act according to the dictates of conscience; it has rather ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... that a motor char-a-banc rounded the corner and drew up in front of the entrance. Sixteen jolly faces were grinning under sixteen school hats, and at least a dozen excited voices were pouring forth a perfect babel of exclamations. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the hand, and led her from the tent of her grandfather towards his own. Here she set to work instantly to assist her husband in hurriedly packing up their goods and chattels; and, immediately afterwards, the little village became a perfect Babel of confusion, as the alarmed inhabitants, on learning the threatened danger, prepared for instant flight. In less than an hour the most of them were ready. The men launched their kayaks, while the women, having loaded their oomiaks with their goods, tossed their ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... was, in fact, an oratorio designed to be staged and acted; in other words, a biblical opera. Of Israelitish race, the stories of the Old Testament appealed to him with intense force, and his "Tower of Babel," "The Maccabees," "Sulamith," "Paradise Lost," and, later, "Christus," were very important and ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... it be for ilk ane to bring in the new word he wantit, haein' eneuch common afore to explain 't wi'! Afore lang the language wad hae intil 't ilka word 'at was worth haein' in ony language 'at ever was spoken sin' the toor o' Babel." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... hand, Transmit across the twilight waste of years The flying brightness of a kindled hour? Not always, nor alone, the lives that search How they may snatch a glory out of heaven Or add a height to Babel; oftener they That in the still fulfilment of each day's Pacific order hold great deeds in leash, That in the sober sheath of tranquil tasks Hide the attempered blade of high emprise, And leap like lightning to the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... wholly intended to see you, but now I fear I cannot, as my stay is grown so short; so, if I cannot, here is a "good bye," and God bless you, and as you are aware of my ignorance in travelling about your great Babel, being insufficient to do so in most cases without a guide, which is not always to be procured, you must allow me to make up for the omission by a shake of the hand on paper, as hearty as your imagination ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... so before midnight, they clanked into Lahore station—a big-bastioned building, whose solid masonry breathed fire, as literally as any dragon of romance. Within was a great darkness, partially dispelled by hanging oil-lamps; and babel enough to wake the Seven Sleepers. The uninitiated arriving at an Indian railway station are apt to imagine that a riot of some sort must be in progress. But it is only the third-class passenger, whose name is legion, fighting, tooth and nail, for the foot of space due to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... over dogs, but the Tower of Babel, too. Don't forsake us, Ammos Fiodorovich, help us. ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... god the grete flodes sende, Of al the world and made an ende Bot Noe5 with his felaschipe, Which only weren saulf be Schipe. And over that thurgh Senne it com That Nembrot such emprise nom, Whan he the Tour Babel on heihte Let make, as he that wolde feihte 1020 Ayein the hihe goddes myht, Wherof divided anon ryht Was the langage in such entente, Ther wiste non what other mente, So that thei myhten noght procede. And thus it stant of every dede, Wher Senne takth the ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... outdone. She said they had better all be little Heretics than little Pharisees; she said she only needed a few infant Turks and Infidels, and her sectarian Babel ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... as blanched as a dead man's, his voice pealing out above the babel like a bell, Oliver stood to windward of the double furnace, giving quick orders on ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... a heavy and stupid criticism of his on someone who had maintained that there were no monuments still existing of the antediluvian period. Mengs thought he would confound the author by citing the remains of the Tower of Babel—a double piece of folly, for in the first place there are no such remains, and in the second, the Tower of Babel ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... amidst the Babel of sounds that had broken out all around them, girls and soldiers chattering like magpies in concert, "that most of the explosions came from over where our hangars are strung out! Yes, there they start up gain! Boys, I tell you it's a big raid on ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... quae est regnum magnum, et transiui iuxta turrim Babel: Haec regio suam linguam propriam habet, et ibi sunt homines formosi, et foeminae turpes: et homines illius regionis vadunt compti crinibus, et ornati, vt hic mulieres, et portant super capita sua fasciola aurea cum gemmis, et margaritis; mulieres vero ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... fathers of nomads, of musicians and workers in metal (Gen. iv. 1, l6b-26). This is followed by the primitive stories of the sons of God and the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1-4), of Noah the first vineyard-keeper (ix. 20-27), and of the tower of Babel and the origin of different languages (xi. 1-9). In a series of more or less closely connected narratives the character and experiences of the patriarchs, the life of the Hebrews in Egypt and the wilderness, and the settlement in Canaan are presented. Its basis for the ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations and its vast concerns? 'Tis pleasant, through the loop-holes of retreat, To peep at such a world,—to see the stir Of the great Babel, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the jewels of a queen, behind each one of whose whims lie days and days spent in the ardent battle of Wall Street. Frenzy of speculations in land, cities undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... stanzas, which I send you as a brick of my Babel, and by which you can judge of the texture ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... been opened, and on the sill a big, broad-shouldered man had appeared, followed by several other evil-looking though smiling men. And all the women had hurried to them. There had been shrill cries, a babel of voices, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... blues and pinks. The other clouds rolled over water and land. They entirely obscured the lower portions of the houses: only the upper stories and the roofs and gables were visible. Some of the buildings appeared to be as high as the Tower of Babel. The boy no doubt knew that they were built upon hills and mountains, but these he did not see—only the houses that seemed to float among the white, drifting clouds. In reality the buildings were dark and dingy, for the sun in the east ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... with young people when we arrived, and a babel of voices burst on us as we drew rein at the door. After helping the girls from the pung, Addison and I put up the horses at a farmer's barn near by. When we again reached the schoolhouse, a gigantic man in an immense, shaggy ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... when we reached home, and now a meditative man might well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association. Late in the morning ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Oriental, generally making it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most diabolical noises to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... scattered right side of the enemy's line, challenged only by the end, who made a desperate attempt at a tackle but failed, and, with only the opposing quarter between him and the goal line, raced like the wind. About him was a roaring babel of sound, voices urging him on, shouts of dismay, imploring shrieks from behind. Then the quarter was before him, crouching with out-reached hands, a strained, anxious ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was nearly full, and George, when he entered the public room, heard such a Babel of English voices, and such a clatter of English spoons that he might have fancied himself at the top of the Righi or in a Rhine steamboat. But the subjects under discussion all savoured of ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was there heard at Hall Place—not even when the fox was killed in the conservatory, among acres of broken glass, and tons of smashed flower-pots—such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity, repose, and order, as that day, when Grimes, gardener, the groom, the dairymaid, Sir John, the steward, the ploughman, the keeper, and the Irishwoman, all ran up the park, shouting "Stop thief," ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... Arabs, naked beneath their long woolen garments, little Moors dressed in rags, Negroes, Tunisians, hotel waiters in white aprons, pushing and shouting, plucking at his clothes, fighting over his luggage; one grabbing his preserves another his medicine chest and, in a screeching babel of noise, throwing at his head the improbable names of hotels.... Deafened by this tumult, Tartarin ran hither and thither,struggling, fuming, and cursing after his baggage, and not knowing how to communicate with these barbarians, harangued them in French, Provencal and even what he could ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... tracts—where no Babel-chimney scales the heavens—are without mighty objects to fill the soul with the sense of an outer world unconquerably aloof from our efforts. The wastes are playgrounds (and let us try to keep them such for the children's ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... lever was turned. But in five seconds the bow of the Titan began to lift, and ahead, and on either hand, could be seen, through the fog, a field of ice, which arose in an incline to a hundred feet high in her track. The music in the theater ceased, and among the babel of shouts and cries, and the deafening noise of steel, scraping and crashing over ice, Rowland heard the agonized voice of a woman crying from the bridge steps: "Myra—Myra, where ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... A babel of yells, screams, and howlings greeted the appearance of the two first candidates. The Master of the Ceremonies led them forward, by the right and left hand. Pointing at one, he shouted her name, and a wild outburst of mingled applause and derision rent the air. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Down into this Babel of confusion Dane slowly made his way. He passed the spot where he had met the Major, and he looked eagerly for the girl who had won his heart. But she was nowhere to be seen, although a small fire was burning near the shack, before which the colored ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... "By Babel's streams we sat and wept When Zion we thought on, In midst thereof we hanged our harps The willow ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... point at which children so frequently and readily learn control as in the matter of speech. The family where all speak at once, where a babel of sounds leads to a rivalry of vocal organs, is not only a nuisance to the neighbors, it is a school of uncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even after the thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or my opportunity ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... the other hand, the distracted Chinese reads that:—"Protestantism is not only a veritable Babel, but a horrible theory, and an immoral practice which blasphemes God, degrades man, and endangers society." (Cardinal Cuesta's Catechism cited in "China and Christianity," by Michie, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... of these tales have their counterparts in Irish, in Scandinavian, in Oriental romance. He says, fairly enough, that the assertions of Taliesin, in the famous Hanes Taliesin, or History of Taliesin, that he was present with Noah in the Ark, at the Tower of Babel, and with Alexander of Macedon, 'we may ascribe to the poetic fancy of the Christian priest of the thirteenth century, who brought this romance into its present form. We may compare these statements of the universal presence of the ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... of towns is quite different. Here are no plantings of trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering, forecasting agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with "Go to, let us build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati," but rather, "Here for the present we will abide." If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism were absent in New World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or any appreciation of the beautiful ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... reputation formerly enjoyed by its neighbor, Park street. It is a narrow, crooked thoroughfare. The sidewalk is almost gone in many places, and the street is full of holes. Some of the buildings are of brick, and are lofty enough for a modern Tower of Babel. Others are one and two story wooden shanties. All are hideously dirty. From Canal to Chatham street there is not the slightest sign of cleanliness or comfort. From Franklin to Chatham street there is scarcely a house without a bucket shop or "distillery," ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had set foot on shore, following a great negro porter, he was almost stupefied by the babel of tongues; but, fortunately, a policeman took him in hand and had him directed, together with his enormous collection of luggage, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... effeminate type of the two; but both are weak and unbalanced. And it is only these two types, the sentimental humanitarian and the sentimental brutalitarian, whom one hears in the modern babel. Yet you very rarely meet either of them in a train. You never meet anyone else in a controversy. The man you meet in a train is like this man that I met: he is emotionally decent, only he is intellectually doubtful. So far from luxuriating in the loathsome things ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... beside which Madam Rothsay and Edith Hester had been left helplessly bound by their captors. From the moment of the girl's brave effort to warn the camp, these two had listened with straining ears to the babel of sounds by which the whole course of the tragedy was made plain to them. They shuddered at the volleys, at the screams of the wounded, and at the triumphant yells of the victors. They almost forgot their own wretched position in their horror at ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... old lays of Bretagne were translated and presented to him by the antiquarian dame, Marie. Italian, Provencal, Gascon, Latin, French, and English, were spoken at the court, which the English barons termed a Babel, and minstrels of all descriptions stood in high favor. There was Richard, the King's harper, who had forty shillings a year and a tun of wine; there was Henry of Avranches, the "archipoeta," who wrote a song on the rusticity of the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fire, and would be pursued to a certain distance, after which it was allowed to escape by the sacrificers. As I was watching, with all my hopes enlisted on its side, the efforts of an antelope to escape, I heard a roar which was horrible even in that babel of abominable ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... They were as two persons, both intelligent and interested, entirely divided by the absence of any common language, or even of symbols. Words that each used meant different things to the other. (It strikes me sometimes that the curse of Babel was a deeper thing than appears ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... for all which books could teach was, at that time, within the compass of a diligent and ardent student. Even then we had difficulties to contend with which were unknown to the ancients. The curse of Babel fell lightly upon them. The Greeks despised other nations too much to think of acquiring their languages for the love of knowledge, and the Romans contented themselves with learning only the Greek. But tongues which, in my lifetime, were hardly formed, have since been ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... level of the dominating geniuses of the world, such as Homer, Saint Augustine, Shakespeare and Moliere; but for the mind that has accurate vision, how many rocks are overturned on this Enceladus, what staircases are forgotten in his Tower of Babel, as in his Jardies house! Balzac was half a woman, as George Sand was half a man. He had a woman's curiosities, he had also her contradictions. Balzac believed himself religious; but his church was the witches' sabbath, and his ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... capital. Miss CARLOTTA LECLERCQ's Duchess is equal to the occasion. The two girls' parts are unnatural and uninteresting. What ought to make the success of the piece is the scene where WEEDON GROSSMITH volunteers to sing "The Wolf," and everyone talks and chatters until the Babel ends in an explosion. It convulses the house with laughter; and if this situation had been so contrived,—as it might have been, allow me to say,—as to end the Act, the Curtain falling on the climax, the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... diverting my attention from the new box of bricks which Mrs. Bundle (commissioned by my father) had brought from the town for me; but when I had put all the round arches on the pairs of pillars, and had made a very successful "Tower of Babel" with cross layers of the bricks tapering towards the top, I had leisure to ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Sea does not grow in my affections; as we go south there is too much of the sensation of being slowly stewed. At Babel Mandeb I believe the temperature of the sea rises to ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... first things which the traveller notices in any foreign country is the language, and it is especially noticeable in Kamchatka, Siberia, or any part of the great Russian Empire. What the ancestors of the Russians did at the Tower of Babel to have been afflicted with such a complicated, contorted, mixed up, utterly incomprehensible language, I can hardly conjecture. I have thought sometimes that they must have built their side of the Tower ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... with the Tower of Babel the shame, or vain glory, of being presumptuously, and first among great edifices, built with "brick for stone." This was the inscription on ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... ruined men of wealth put themselves at the head of bands of revolted slaves,(31) and rudely reminded the public that the transition is easy from the haunts of fashionable debauchery to the robber's cave. It is no wonder, that that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not purely economic but borrowed from the political ascendency of Rome, tottered at every serious political crisis nearly in the same way as our very similar fabric of a paper currency. The great financial crisis, which in consequence of the Italo-Asiatic commotions of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... went up as the red-shirted firemen with their helmets and their waterproof garments came rushing into the grounds. A babel of confusion followed, as they demanded to know where they could get connection with the nearest fire hydrant on the street, or if none were handy where could the cistern ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... a confused babel of voices in the direction of Marlborough; but only the empty house, echoing 'Julia!' answered him. Not that he waited long for an answer; something in the dreary aspect of the evening struck cold to his heart, and touching his horse with the spur, he dashed off at a hand-gallop. Meeting the Bristol ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... analogy further by stating that as Babel was the cause of the destruction of the Jewish people, so this disaster had its beginning with Cain and his offspring, who settled in that part of the earth where, at a later day, Babylon was founded. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Darwinian phase of evolutionistic thought, as laid down in Spencer's interminable volumes, for instance, is given up by reputable biologists the world over. There is pretty much of a Babel among them, when it comes to a definition of evolution. There are dozens of theories,—mutation, orthogenesis, Weismanism, Mendelianism, etc.,— and each has its adherents,—but they agree in one thing, that "Natural Selection" does not account ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... all three carts were neatly interlocked, and their respective drivers were engaged in a war of words that beggared Babel. ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... M'Culloch, or to any writer whatever, I should not have offered it indirectly, but openly, frankly, and in the spirit of liberal candor due to an honorable contemporary.] At this very day, a French and an English economist have reared a Babel of far more elaborate errors on this subject; M. Say, I mean, and Mr. Malthus: both ingenious writers, both eminently illogical,—especially the latter, with whose "confusion worse confounded" on the subject of Value, if reviewed by some unsparing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... since he had sought the friendly solace of the covers and he had no mind to lose so good a friend as the pink comforter. By the time he had summoned sufficient courage to peep from under its edge, a babel of voices was again drawing near, and he hastily drew back in his shell ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... catamaran raced at once for the launch; a Babel of strange oaths jarred the brooding silence; alarm, almost panic, stirred men's hearts and bubbled forth in wild speech. Under pressure of this new peril the instinct of self-preservation burst the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... intolerable fires upon my unprotected head. At length, my skull opened, and, from the interior of my head, a splendid temple seemed to arise. Rows of columns supported rows of columns, order was piled upon order, and, as it arose, Babel-like, to the skies, it extended in width as it increased in height; and there, in this strange edifice, I saw the lofty, the winding, the interminable staircase, the wide and marble-paved courts; nor was there wanting the majestic and splashing fountain, whose cool waters ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the Tower of Babel upstairs," she said, "and just about as likely ever to get built. I can't bear to stay where I can't hear myself talk. You're nice and cosy here, Miss Craydocke." And with that, she settled herself down on the floor, with all her little ruffles ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... bustle and confusion on board. The ship was like a floating Babel. The decks were crowded with hucksters, boatmen, landlords, and women of undoubted character; all upon one errand, and actuated by one motive; united in purpose though divided by interest, they were bent upon fleecing poor Jack of his hard-earned money. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... him to the hilltop. The officer spoke a few words in a quiet tone to the boys who were at the summit, and instantly every sled stopped. Not so the tongues. Babel broke loose. Some went off in silence; others crowded about the officer, expostulating, cajoling, grumbling. It was "the first snow;" they "always slid on that hill;" "it did not hurt anybody;" "nobody ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... of apology, that, having once found that the demons in a possessed young woman understood Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he himself tried them with this Indian tongue, and "the demons did seem as if they understood it." Indeed, he thinks the words must have been growing ever since the confusion of Babel! The fact appears to be, that these are what are now called agglutinate languages, and, like those of all savage tribes, in a continual course of alteration—also often using a long periphrastic description to convey an idea or form a name. A few familiar instances ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... actual sight was quite impossible with the quick sympathetic tears that sprang to every one's eyes. Opinions flew about like papers in the wind, and Mrs. Dering could not make herself heard in the babel ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... A perfect Babel of voices from the room above greeted my ear, while the printing-room was bedecked with a most unsightly litter of tattered garments of nondescript shape and purpose laid out to dry. I was not surprised at this, however, as I had long grown used ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... sombre and the gay, in short, every possible antithesis that the eye, ear, heart can perceive, hear, or respond to, or that the mind itself can imagine, is here to be met with in two minutes. And yet all this is no Babel; for all, though concentrated, is admirably void of confusion; and evil or strong passions, if they do exist, are religiously suppressed—a necessary consequence, indeed, where there can be no sympathy, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... moment the hideous thought forced itself into his soul that a life of unselfish public service was futile. In all this babel of jangling cries and cat-calls not one voice was lifted in decent protest. He felt that his work was a failure and he had been pitching straws against ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... represented; every language was spoken at the same time. It was like the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. There the different classes of American society mixed in absolute equality. Bankers, cultivators, sailors, agents, merchants, cotton-planters, and magistrates elbowed each other with primitive ease. The creoles of Louisiana fraternised with the farmers of Indiana; the gentlemen of Kentucky and Tennessee, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... clamshell, painted white,—and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect on the minister. It kept him up straight to his work. So long as he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did not return to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babel of clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for him to splurge about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raised his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to be drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... arose a babel of uproar, men shouting against each other, curses and threats alike aimed broadcast. And impatient of the delay, small groups straggled into the grove to wait, Stumpy's party first, their leader striving fiercely to quiet their noise. Dolores reappeared soon, dressed in her altar ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... from the loop-holes of retreat To look at such a world; to see great Babel And not feel ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... was over, the drawling monologue was succeeded by a babel of voices, and glancing through the blinds, I saw the real estate men untying their horses from the young maples. A swirl of dust laden with the scent of the catalpa blew up from ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... rival of Fargeuil or Madeleine Brohan. Her manners are very fascinating—a little bit too natural to be quite French, and a little too ceremonious to be quite Italian. She would have proved an invaluable acquisition at the downfall of the tower of Babel, for she is mistress of I dare not say how many languages. As a rule, women hate her, and men do just the contrary. This is not to be wondered at, for she is very beautiful even now. Her face has the chiseled cameo features of her uncle, Napoleon I.; her eyes are deep violet, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is written: "Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me, if ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... talk. Let me tell you about my seven select spirits. They are having nursery tea at the present moment with a minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear a deafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter of crockery I will take you inside the room and introduce ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... in there was a chorus of laughter ringing round, with a clapping of hands, and a Babel of hilarious applause; and Tom Toole was seen in the centre, sitting upon the floor, hugging his knees, with his drawn sword under his arm, his eyes turned up to the ceiling, and a contortion so unspeakably ludicrous upon his queer little face, as was very near causing little Puddock to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of those who have consistently labored to cheer, to bless and to elevate mankind. Turner called himself the "author" not the artist of his pictures; and indeed, writing and painting are but different forms of that one eternal language of which not even Babel could confound the significance. There is hardly a single work in this Exhibition which does not illustrate the close ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... air Of pensive introspection, And then I curled down anywhere. They whispered of infection, And hoist me on two sticks as though I bore the leper's label, And took me where, all in a row Of tiny beds, two score or so Were raising second Babel; ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells, and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the sensitive nervous system, and many a man and woman breaks at last under the strain. Another element that adds to the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the last two being chromatropes, whose dancing colors elicited screams of delight from the astonished natives. This concluded the performance, but for hours after it was over the village rang with a perfect Babel of shouts, screams, and chatter. The whole thing was to the Fans absolutely incomprehensible, and their astonishment was equalled by their awe at the powers ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... have none, wanting to open them as soon as possible with the new comers. What with these and pistol practice and rifle shooting from upper casements across the river, in order to expend spare ammunition, the European quarter was a very Babel all day long, and we were not sorry to escape the turmoil and get under weigh to new scenes as soon ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... not for an hour.' His picture was doubtless a highly exaggerated one. The discretionary powers which some of the schemes of comprehension proposed to give would not have left the Church of England a mere scene of confusion, an unseemly Babel of anarchy and licence. A sketch might be artfully drawn, in which nothing should be introduced but what was truthfully selected from the practices of different London Churches of the present day, which might easily make a foreigner imagine that in the National ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... again—in spite of submarines. But I went one day through Saint Omer, with its beautiful church and little blue chateau, past the rest-camps of the big regiments of guards to a seaport on the downs, formerly a quiet little French town, transformed now into an ordered Babel. The term is paradoxical, but I let it stand. English, Irish, and Scotch from the British Isles and the ends of the earth mingle there with Indians, Egyptians, and the chattering Mongolians in queer fur caps who work ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Babel, now called Birs Nimroud, built at Babylon by Belus, was used as an observatory and as a temple of the Sun. It was composed of 8 square towers, one over the other, in all 670 feet high, and the same dimensions on each side on ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... that built the Tower of Babel is now in the world-it is the spirit of the devil. The spirit of man never goes upon the clouds; all who think so are Babylonians. The only heaven is on earth. All who are ignorant of truth are Ninevites. The Jews did not crucify Christ- ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale, All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land, And some that men were in the very walls, And some they cared not; till a clamour grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, And worse-confounded: high above them stood The placid marble Muses, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... same gloomy streets, without loitering in his task; he had raised treasures and images one above another; he had strengthened the base and heightened the summit of this precious and sacred heap; he had repaired and rebuilt, whenever it crumbled and fell, this new Babel that he longed to rear to the Olympus of the temple roof, with a resolute patience and perseverance that no failure or fatigue ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... his ears from any of the rooms opening upon the corridor into which he had darted, he sprinted down its length until it terminated suddenly in a flight of stairs leading to the lower hall. He had descended about half way when a babel of voices sent him scuttling back again, and a moment later a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... I remember—though I was only seven times one—the panting exultation with which I flung into her lap the cheap colored print of the Tower of Babel (showing the hurly-burly of French bricklayers and Irish hod-carriers, and the grand row generally) that I had just won at school by correctly committing to memory, and publicly reciting, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... cheers and frenzied excitement the surpassing eloquence of Salutatorian Smith, or the melting pathos of Valedictorian Jones? Did ever—for so we read in the veracious history of a day, the newspaper—did ever a college town resound with "a perfect babel of noises" from eight in the summer evening until three in the summer morning, the town lighted with burning tar-barrels and blazing with fireworks, the chimes ringing, and ten thousand people hastening ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... did the work thoroughly. "Never did men act more boldly," says the witness before quoted; "they threatened the enemy to his nose, and would have taken the fort if the officers had shown any spirit. They found it hard to bring them off. At the end we broke up with the confusion of Babel, and went about ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... hall was a babel of clacking tongues. Men, women and children hurried, chattering, to and fro, exchanging diverse views and speculating eagerly on the probable outcome of the meeting. Jose stood before them, with Carmen's hand clasped tightly in his. Don Mario, purple and trembling with rage, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Nae mair by Babel's streams we'll weep, To think upon our Zion; And hing our fiddles up to sleep, Like baby-clouts a-dryin': Come, screw the pegs, wi' tunefu' cheep, And o'er the thairms be tryin'; Oh, rare! to see our elbucks wheep, An' a' like lamb-tails flyin' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and spread it out on the roof of the dugout to freeze. Then he cut some fresh meat from the carcass, and afterwards dragged the remainder down the hill and left it for the dogs. The squabble began as soon as he returned to Aim-sa. A babel of fierce snarling and yapping proceeded as the ruthless beasts tore at the still warm flesh. And in less than a minute other voices came up from the woods, heralding the approach of some of the famished forest creatures. Nick gave no heed. The dogs must defend their own. Such is the law ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... sir, is difference of language to social intercourse! I never felt the curse that befell the architects of Babel so sensibly as now, since, as one of the effects of their folly, I am debarred from the gratification and profit which I had promised myself in being known ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... seen commencing their career. What a scene it is! What sawing and thumping, and filing, and grinding, and clinching, and hammering, without intermission, from morn till noon, and from noon till dewy eve! What a Babel of sounds and ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... March was created general by the Commune, and gathered round him in guise of staff the most illustrious, or least ignoble, of those foreign parasites and vagabonds, who have made of Paris a grand occidental Bohemian Babel. These soldiers of fortune, most of whom had been "unfortunate" at home, formed the marrow ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... all fight him," remarked Jackson, when the babel had died away. "It's for the chairman ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mathematics that it can never be fully learned." Most of us can master one section of a language concerning which those who use it vernacularly declare "Only Allah wotteth its entirety", but we lack as yet the means to study it as a whole. Older by long ages than Babel's fabulous Tower, and covering a continuous area from Eastern Arabia to the Maghrab al-Aksa (western Mauritania), from Chaldaea in the North to southern Zanzibar, it numbers of potential vocabulary 1,200,000 words all of which may be, if they are not, used, and while they specify ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to this is the etymological confusion upon which is based the myth of the "confusion of tongues" in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The name "Babel" is really Bab-Il, or "the gate of God"; but the Hebrew writer erroneously derives the word from the root balal, "to confuse"; and hence arises the mythical explanation,—that Babel was a place ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... memory of walking over a wide gang-plank that led into a babel. Miss Hildebrand held him by his left arm while the two other ladies went with Mr. Guilderaufenberg. They came out into a street, between two files of men who shook their whips, shouted, and pointed at a line of carriages. Miss Hildebrand told Jack ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... getting unpleasantly hot, and the horses caked with sweat and dust, a halt would be called in some shady tope, where the tents rose as if by magic, fires were rapidly lighted by the attendants, and, amidst quite a babel of tongues, breakfast was prepared, while parroquets of a vivid green shrieked at us from the trees, squirrels leaped and ran, and twice over we arrived at a grove to find it tenanted by a troop of chattering monkeys, which mouthed and scolded at us till our men drove them ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... such incessant variation in remoter times? and, if it be true, why not imagine that when one form of speech was lost, another was suddenly and supernaturally created by a gift of tongues or confusion of languages, as at the building of the Tower of Babel? Where are the memorials of all the intermediate dialects, which must have existed, if this doctrine of perpetual fluctuation be true? And how comes it that the tongues now spoken do not pass by insensible gradations the one into the other, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... sauntered slowly through the Vier Marchi, nodding right and left to people who greeted him. It was Saturday and market day in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou—the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hunted eyes, a man leapt forward. He held up his arms, making himself heard in clear command above the dreadful babel ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... contentiously knowing, and more apt to offend others than to defend themselves; but I have done it in obedience to authority, and to stop the mouths of such of this English age, who, though they be confessedly different in their minds and judgments, as the builders of Babel were in their language, yet do think it vain, if not impious, to speak or understand more than their own mother tongue." In like manner, Whitelock's uncle Bulstrode, the celebrated reporter, says of the second part of his reports, "that he had ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Ramusio this shoal is called Babel, being the two first words or syllables of Bab-el-Mandub, corruptly called Babel Mandel. Bab-el-Mandub signifies the gate of weeping, being the name of the entry to the Red Sea of Arabian Gulf; so called because reckoned exceedingly dangerous by the ancient ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to in his face, according to the Malay custom. Then he begged admittance very humbly, and after paying a fee of five dollars, was admitted. His followers rush in first—such a clatter! Greetings, welcomes, jokes, and laughter, make a Babel of noise; everybody speaking at once. Then a cloth was laid down for the bridegroom to pass over, and he was pulled with apparent reluctance into the room, panting and shutting his eyes as if exhausted. His head was wreathed with Indian jessamine. He ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... tumult formed of many factors filled the air. Babel of speech rose from Frenchmen, Spaniards, Canadians, English, Scotch, Irish, and American backwoodsmen, and Indians of half a dozen tribes. Horses, dogs, black-haired and blanketed women, and children of divers colors moved about continually. The gathering was heterogeneous, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... explosion that shall cease neither night nor day, waits the issue. Awakened Paris once more inundates those outer courts; boils, in floods wilder than ever, through all avenues. Dissonant hubbub there is; jargon as of Babel, in the hour when they were first smitten (as here) with mutual unintelligibilty, and the people had ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... us to London, we carefully avoided living in the great Babel, but took up our residence in one of its healthy suburbs, and, on the introduction of railways, removed to what was actual country. A very little time showed us the exhausting and unwholesome nature of city life. Late hours, heavy dinners, the indulgence of what are called jovial hours, and ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... towers be the seven hills of Rome or spiritual Antichrist," said Jackson, his chaplain, who kept near his master, or rather kept his master between himself and the Babel that roused his indignation. Morgan was just preparing his engines when Rigby approached, cautiously worming his way along the trenches, for the marksmen were become unmercifully expert ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... seats, and the tables. They remained standing until the sister in charge gave the signal to be seated. When the three hundred sat down as one, with a thud of something more than fifteen tons' weight, there broke loose a Babel of tongues—English as it is spoken in the mouths of children of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... me was a babel of shouts and cries, a rush and trampling of feet, but I sped all unheeding, my gaze ever upon the loathed, fleeing shape of this vile blackamoor. I was hard on his heels as he scrambled up the quarter-ladder ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... which, here and there, shot up to the sky chimneys taller than Cleopatra's Needle, vomiting forth huge wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy—occasionally a gorgeous one—of the more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames—the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch—a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a necessity that I should do so, in virtue of the authority our good lord and king, Edred, hath entrusted to me. The lad was bright, and, I think, innocent of aught like deadly sin, when he came to this huge Babel, where the devil seems to lead men even as he will, and he hath fallen here into evil company—nay, into the very company most evil of all in this wicked world, that of designing and shameless women, albeit of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... agony, is there no one to comfort her? They have demanded his sacrifice in the name of duty, and she has consented: ought not that to be enough to comfort her? then other people appear from other parts of the garden, and there is a Babel of tongues. He hears nothing; but he follows that sad face, until he could imagine that he listened to the throbbing ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... edged with rabbit fur) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that one fell, and a third was knocked over and a fourth got a bloody nose: and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the workmen of Babel—when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... in the best ways of avenging their wrongs upon society. Some in the prison are merry, and enjoy a dance, while others are indulging in obscene jests and ribaldry. Still, there are those that find means to labor and to work at repairing shoes or clothes in the midst of this babel of sin ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson |
