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Infancy   /ˈɪnfənsi/   Listen
Infancy

noun
1.
The early stage of growth or development.  Synonyms: babyhood, early childhood.
2.
The earliest state of immaturity.  Synonym: babyhood.






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"Infancy" Quotes from Famous Books



... experience in the production and regulation of the gas supply, and with enlarged competition among the companies engaging in its transmission from the wells to the works. At present the use of natural gas as a substitute for coal in the manufacture of glass, iron, and steel is in its infancy. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... her fingers were as brisk as any of the younger girls', from time to time addressed a question or a remark to her lady, which was always kindly answered. She was the old nurse of Chad, having been nurse to Sir Oliver in his infancy, and having since had charge of his three boys during their earliest years. She was growing infirm now, and seldom left her own little room in a sunny corner of the big house, where her meals were taken her by ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... The giant advances to challenge Aeneas; but through sewed plates of brass and tunic rough with gold the sword plunges in his open side. Next he strikes Lichas, cut from his mother already dead, and consecrated, Phoebus, to thee, since his infancy was granted escape from the perilous steel. Near thereby he struck dead brawny Cisseus and vast Gyas, whose clubs were mowing down whole files: naught availed them the arms of Hercules and their strength of hand, nor Melampus their father, ever of Alcides' company while earth yielded him ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... be associated solely with those objects or conditions most in keeping with its inspirations. In this way we quickest come to an understanding of its originating idea, and sympathize with its feeling, tracing its progress from infancy to maturity and decay, and comparing it as a whole with corresponding or rival varieties of artistic development. This systematized variety of one great unity is of the highest importance in placing the spectator in affinity with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... lovable in character as well as in a being that I have not seen as one that I have. I have known of people who have an earthly father living that they have never seen, and whom they love with a deep and rich fervency of affection. I have known of children whom poverty or accident has separated in infancy from their mother, and who cherished for that unknown, far-off maternal friend a sacred and deathless love. They have meditated hours, days, and weeks on the sad separation and the sweet, holy bosom from which they drew the breath of life. In well-formed minds ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... told me that among Congo Francais tribes certain rites are performed for children during infancy or youth, in which a prohibition is laid upon the child as regards the eating of some particular article of food, or the doing of certain acts. "It is difficult," he said, "to get the exact object of the 'Orunda.' Certainly the prohibited ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... and girl by teaching and needlework. A black-letter Bible and an illuminated music-book belonging to her were the first things to give his mind the impulse which led to such mingled glory and disaster. Living under the shadow of the great church of St. Mary Redcliffe, his mind was impressed from infancy with the beauty of antiquity, he obtained access to the charters deposited there, and he read every scrap of ancient literature that came in his way. At 14 he was apprenticed to a solicitor named Lambert, with whom he lived in sordid circumstances, eating in the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... proper for a mother country to assist and support her colonies in their infancy is undoubted. In so doing, the mother country taxes herself for the advantages to be hereafter derived from the colony; but it may occur that the tax imposed upon the people of the another country may be too onerous, at the same time that no advantages at all commensurate ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... am going to be more patriotic than any woman ever was before. I am not going to sell my Grandmother's rosebushes in their gardens or the acres that have nourished my family since its infancy in America long before this Evan Baldwin ever had any family, I feel sure, for sixty thousand dollars to go back and sit down in a corner with. I am going to demonstrate to the United States what one woman ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... those of all his companions, but this did not conceal his air, manner, size, eyes and voice. When he spoke, it was in a jargon of broken English and broken Spanish, such as no man accustomed to either language from infancy would have used. The same was true as to all the rest I heard speak, with the exception of an old fellow in the boat, whom I shall presently have occasion ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... soul there came a longing. 'Oh!' I said to myself, 'that my parents had belonged to the same social grade as that worthy couple reposing in that bed; and oh! that I, in my infancy, had been as beautiful and as likely to be so carefully nurtured and cultured as that sweet babe in the next room.' I almost heaved a sigh as I thought of the difference between these surroundings and my own, but I checked myself; ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton

... tenderness in them which is unusual, and which is very pathetic. At the very close of his brief and heroic life, the thoughts of Drouet reverted to the historic town in which he was born, to Sedan which still shuddered in his infancy at the recollection of the horrors of 1870. He thought of the dead who fell on that melancholy field; and then his thoughts turned to those dear faces which he had so recently left behind. The following passage, in ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... the Gods, I do entreat you, Chremes, and {by} our friendship, which, commencing with our infancy, has grown up with our years, and by your only daughter and by my own son (of preserving whom the entire power lies with you), that you will assist me in this matter; and that, just as this marriage was about to be celebrated, it ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... she always spoke of prayer as something to be learned. If she believed that a Christian "learns to pray when first he lives," she believed also that the prayer of the infant Christian life was like the feeble breath of infancy. She understood by prayer something far more and higher than the mere preferring of petitions. It was communion; God's Spirit responding harmoniously to our own. With Coleridge she held, that the act of praying with ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... audacity to call me an ass. Little blinking Marmaduke Doggie Trevor. Little Doggie Trevor, whom I trained up from infancy in ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... freezing looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and tastes had charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she loved that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and complied willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which he considered, not indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bring himself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary that he should pass nearly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her father's and who had known her from infancy, came down to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... of gold, Studded with precious gems, which had been hung About my neck at the baptismal font. This sacred pledge of Christian redemption I had, as is the custom of my people, Worn on my neck concealed, where'er I went, From my first hours of infancy; and now, When from sweet life I was compelled to part, I grasped it as my only stay, and pressed it With passionate devotion ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... heavenward in a rapturous flight, were rising higher and higher; the echo resounded down the ages, repeating the hymn of triumph which had so often been sung under that roof; and for once the music was in harmony with the building, and spoke the language which the cathedral had learnt in its infancy. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... been brought to your knowledge. But now, having seen, as you have, of what nature are the witnesses on whose testimony she has been impeached, it is impossible that you should believe this story. Had Lady Mason been a woman steeped in guilt from her infancy, had she been noted for cunning and fraudulent ingenuity, had she been known as an expert forger, you would not have convicted her on this indictment, having had before you the malice and greed of Dockwrath, the stupidity—I may almost call it idiocy, of Kenneby, and the dogged resolution to conceal ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... far, far more important lectures, for which I have long been preparing myself, and have given more thought to, than to any other subject, viz.: those on female education, from infancy to womanhood practically systematized, I shall be (God permitting) ready to give the latter end of the week after next, but upon condition that I am assured of sixty names. Why as these are lectures that I must write down, I could sell them as a recipe ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... Fate says No, This must not yet be so, The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy, That, on the bitter cross, Must redeem our loss; So both himself and us to glorify: Yet first, to those ychained in sleep, The wakeful trump of doom must thunder ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... useless, shapeless, graceless pile of stones. It was as though I were looking on the genius of the city. It was vast, pretentious, bold, boastful with a loud voice, already taller by many heads than other obelisks, but nevertheless still in its infancy—ugly, unpromising, and false. The founder of the monument had said, Here shall be the obelisk of the world! and the founder of the city had thought of his child somewhat in the same strain. It is still possible ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... intelligent beings, so we should ever be industrious ones; never sitting down contented while our fellow-creatures around us are in want, when it is in our power to relieve them, without inconvenience to ourselves. When we take a survey of nature, we behold man, in his infancy, more helpless and indigent than the brute creation; he lies languishing for days, weeks, months, and years, totally incapable of providing sustenance for himself; of guarding against the attacks of the field, or ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... and clients, in that period, as I possibly could. My cottage was my paradise. My habits, as might be inferred from my history, were singularly domestic. Doomed, as I had been, from my earliest years, to know neither friends nor parents; isolated, in my infancy, from all those tender ties which impress upon the heart, for all succeeding years, tokens of the most endearing affection; denied the smiles of those who yet filled my constant sight—my life was a long yearning for things of love—for things to love! While the struggle continued between ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... you. At first, curiosity sought out the melancholy stranger, but Peggy's incommunicativeness and sound judgment baffled its scrutiny. In a little while, we were suffered to remain in the seclusion we desired. Here you have passed from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, unconscious that a cloud deeper than poverty and obscurity rests upon your youth. I could not bear that my innocent child should blush for a father's villany. I could not bear that her holy confidence in human ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... By her acts she will link the past to the future, bind together the two eternities. But she is incomplete, this maiden, and being immature she is unaware of her incompleteness. Nevertheless she is the creature of the law of the race, and from her infancy she prepares herself for the task she is to perform. Hers is a certain definite organism, somewhat different from all other female organisms. Consequently there is one male in all the world whose organism is most nearly the complement of hers; one male for whom she will feel ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... the bark of a tree. After several drinks of the brew, the abdomen is kneaded and pushed downward until the foetus is discharged. A canvass of forty women past the child-bearing age showed an average, to each, of five children, about 40 per cent of whom died in infancy. Apparently about the same ratio of births ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs

... the empire, now torn from your Crown; nor upon the system of our Government founded on law and practice of ages, which draws the line between the Constitution of Great Britain and all other establishments. These principles, from my earliest infancy, I have imbibed; and if I could reconcile a deviation from them to my political or moral duties, I will confess that no hopes of ambition have power to tempt me. Under these impressions I embarked in an undertaking ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... the auld Dalgarno, and a fu' cousin, ye ken, o' the young farmer. They had baith fed frae the same plate; sleeped under the same roof; played at the same sports; and dabbled in the same river—the bloody, bloody Nith!—from infancy to youth. Oh! sirs! but I canna get on ava"—— Here Janet sorted her wheel, and apparently shed a tear, for she moved her apron corner to her eye. "Aweel, this was the nicht o' the wedding, bairn—no this nicht, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile and the other unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams to the sight of innocent human natures and of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... part of the Head turn'd in-side outward, in which Nature has placed the Materials of reflecting; and like a Glass Bee-hive, represents to you all the several Cells in which are lodg'd things past, even back to Infancy and Conception. There you have the Repository, with all its Cells, Classically, Annually, Numerically, and Alphabetically Dispos'd. There you may see how, when the perplext Animal, on the loss of a Thought or ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... easily nourished, as such people are,—a quality which is inestimable in a tutor's wife,—and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... is equal to good wine. Reineck wrote a dissertation "De Potu Vinoso;" and the learned Dr. Shaw lauded the "juice of the grape." But the stoutest of its medical advocates was Tobias Whitaker, physician to Charles II., who undertook to prove the possibility of maintaining life, from infancy to old age, without sickness, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various

... in the Rue Meslay, afterwards transferred to the Rue Grange-Bateliere, Aurore Dupin's infancy passed tranquilly away, under the wing of her warmly affectionate mother who, though utterly illiterate, showed intuitive tact and skill in fostering the child's intelligence. "Mine," says her daughter, "made no resistance; but was never beforehand with ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... of his son's infancy and boyhood Michael Gregoriev, disregarding all thought of his child, saw practically nothing of the boy. He had, in his heart, some faint satisfaction concerning Ivan's sex, mingled with a fancy, gained after one accidental interview, that nevertheless, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... temper well in hand, striving to remember that to old Debbie and Zachary she seemed but the child they had loved and watched over from infancy, of a sudden grown older. They had not known the Prioress of the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... own incorrect notions of right and wrong, and it is one scene of daily altercation. They abuse and laugh at aunt Bathurst, I believe on purpose to vex me; and, having never lived with them from my infancy, of course, when I met them I had to learn to love them. I was willing so to do, notwithstanding their unkindness to my aunt, whom I love so dearly, but they would not let me; and now I really believe that they care ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... the East has bound itself fast to externals, so the Raskolnik praises his fossilism to the skies, and would gladly run the risk of petrifying society in its inherited shape. With him, as with the child or the Oriental, wisdom and science belong to the infancy of civilization, and the maxims of antiquity leave nothing to be learnt. Under both aspects the Old Believer is reactionary, opposed to the very principle of progress—the hero of routine and a martyr to prejudice. His gaze turns naturally to the past, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... piously disposed. It is not merely a convenient environment for the development of the religious faculty. She stands to us in the relation of shepherd, with a more than parental authority to feed and train our souls through infancy to maturity; that is, from the time when we do not know or like what is good for us, to the time when we begin to appreciate and spontaneously follow her directions. Just then as a child, however naturally recalcitrant and ill-disposed, retains a certain ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... Born in Massachusetts, 1790. Moved with his parents to Hudson, New York, during infancy. Was graduated from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and the Litchfield (Connecticut) ...
— Arkansas Governors and United States Senators • John L. Ferguson

... one back to Washington, a city then in its infancy. The story throws a strong light on the early customs and life ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... told falsehoods. His old aunt had laboured to impress upon him from infancy that to lie was to commit a sin which is abhorred by God and scorned by man; and her teaching had not been in vain. The child would have suffered any punishment rather than have told a deliberate lie. He looked straight in the master's face and said, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... brought up with great care, and, when old enough, had the same governor, and the same master for the arts and sciences which king Camaralzaman would have them learn; and they had the same master for each exercise. The friendship which from their infancy they entered into, occasioned an uniformity of manners and inclinations which increased with their years. When they were of age to keep a separate court, they loved one another so tenderly, that they begged king Camaralzaman to let them live together. He consented ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... joint operation of those three causes referred to already, namely, that the separation did not take place in the infancy or youth of the language, but only in its ripe manhood, that England and America owned a body of literature, to which they alike looked up and appealed as containing the authoritative standards of the language, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... the previous year in order to go to Persia as a simple missionary. Into the vacant place there was now installed one who had declined it at the previous vacancy, but who was still not too old to take up the burden. This was Archdeacon Leonard Williams, that son of the first bishop, who had in infancy been baptised with the children of David Taiwhanga on the first occasion when any of the Maori race were publicly admitted to the Church of Christ. His life had been spent in the service of the people among whom he had thus ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... an orphan girl who in infancy is left by her father to the care of an elderly aunt residing near Paris. The accounts of the various persons who have an after influence on the story are singularly vivid. There is a subtle attraction about the book which will ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... infancy of their state, were entirely rude and unpolished. They came from shepherds; they were increased from the refuse of the nations around them; and their manners agreed with their original. As they lived wholly ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... arrant flatterer. He does not go out of his way for you; he does not tell it you to your face; but, somehow or other, (if he knows his vocation,) he makes you believe, that, of all the travellers he ever escorted, (and he has been a travellers' escort from his infancy,) you are the first, the only one, in whose behalf duty became ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... it, in the ordinary course of things in this life; but, General De Benyon, what claims have you as a parent upon me? A son in most cases is indebted to his parents for their care and attention in infancy—his education—his religious instruction—his choice of a profession, and his advancement in life, by their exertions and interest; and when they are called away, he has a reasonable expectation of their leaving him a portion of their substance. They have a heavy debt of gratitude ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... comparison with him who finds it "hard only not to stumble" in the vernacular. We feel what a gusto there is in this graceless catachresis of solemn phrase and traditionally serious literature; we perceive how the language, colloquially familiar, taught from infancy in the schools, provided with plentiful literary examples, and having already received perfect licence of accommodation to vernacular rhythms and the poetical ornaments of the hour, puts its stammering rivals, fated though they were to oust it, out of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... Davis and Matthew McClung were two Lehigh men whose position in the football world was most prominent. The esteem in which they are held by their Alma Mater is enduring. I had talked with Dick Davis when this book was in its infancy. He was very much interested and asked that I write him a letter outlining what I would like to have him send me. Just before he died I received this letter from him. I regret he did not live to tell the story ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... been weeping all night—she had no mother—no one to whom she could unbosom her heart—no one but the old woman who had nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek. She knew and understood—she asked ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... increased numerically and used more generally policewomen may be a great factor in the prevention of juvenile delinquency, provided that through their frequent association with children, both in the company of their parents and at all grades of school, they become accepted by these young persons from infancy. The help and guidance of women police could be sought on grounds similar to those of the school dental nurse who in her particular sphere is banishing the fear of dental treatment. It is felt a similar approach to the child's moral ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie

... years seemed to have passed over her since the night of her son's death. The oppressive heat had induced her to remove her cap, and her long hair, white as the snows of winter, lay around her wasted and furrowed features. From infancy the respect and observance due to one of high station had been bestowed upon her, and the reverse in their fortunes was more than she could bear. At first, her high-toned feelings had shrunk from obligations to the new heir, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... then, to expect the physician to cure both sexes indifferently; we must recognize how far apart they are, their whole lives, pursuits, and habits, having been distinct from infancy. Do not talk of a mad person, then, but specify the sex; do not confound distinctions and force all cases under the supposed identical title of madness; keep separate what nature separates, and then examine ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... by NOLAN. TIM HEALY referring to difficulty of dislodging PARNELL, alluded to him as "Sitting Bull." Clamour from Parnellite section anxious for preservation of decency of debate. Speaker said, question most important. Irish Parliament in its infancy; above all things essential they should well consider precedents. Must reserve decision as to whether the phrase was Parliamentary; would suggest, therefore, that House should adjourn five weeks. On this point Debate proceeded up ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... to remove next year to some land provided for them, west of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial-places of their kindred; and of their great reluctance to leave them. He had witnessed many such removals, and always with pain, though he knew that they departed for their own good. The question whether ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... annum, and in possession of my brother's son; but the freehold land and houses, formerly purchased by my ancestors, were all sold by my grandfather and father; so that now our family depend wholly upon a college lease. Of my infancy I can speak little, only I do remember that in the fourth year of my age I had ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... who had charge of our hero in his infancy was Lannice. She did all in her power to give strength and hardihood to his constitution, while, at the same time, she treated him with kindness and gentleness. Alexander acquired a strong affection for her, and he treated her with great consideration as long ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... existence almost in a single night,—a catastrophe in which Providence, true to that ideal of perfect justice called poetical, working out the punishment of two of the actors by means of their own inhumanity, at the same time mysteriously involved two others,—one clothed in all the innocence of infancy, and the other guilty only through weakness and as the instrument of another. Seldom has destruction been more sudden or more complete, and never, perhaps, was so annihilating a blow dealt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... the bright spring-time of the year, in the bright spring-time of his life. Love had been the cradle-song of his infancy, love was the requiem of his youth. His was no romantic fable, no heroic epic; adventures, passions, fame, made up none of its incidents; it was simply the history of a boy's manful struggling against fate—of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... landed proprietor and cultivator of his own land even before his marriage, and he received with his wife, who was Mary Arden, daughter of a country gentleman, the estate of Asbies, 56 acres in extent. William was the third child. The two older than he were daughters, and both probably died in infancy. After him was born three sons and a daughter. For ten or twelve years at least, after Shakespeare's birth his father continued to be in easy circumstances. In the year 1568 he was the high bailiff or chief magistrate of Stratford, and for many years afterwards he held ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy. Every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of Euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high civilization. The few articles of luxury ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... them without the aid of a single white man. They applied to me to prepare it for them. They happened to select me, as their counsel, simply because I was born and brought up within a few miles from their plantation, and had known their people from my infancy. I told them to present their grievances in their own way, and they have done so. Not a line of the memorial was ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... name was George Frederick Handel, and he was born in the German town of Halle, February 23, 1685. Almost from infancy he showed a remarkable fondness for music. His toys must be able to produce musical sounds or he did not care for them. The child did not inherit a love for music from his father, for Dr. Handel, who was a surgeon, looked on music with ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... wonderful thing to the eye of a philosopher, to make observation how youth gets up, notwithstanding all the dunts and tumbles of infancy—to say nothing of the spaining-brash and the teeth-cutting; and to behold the visible changes that the course of a few years produces. Keep us all! it seemed but yesterday to me, when Benjie, a wee bit smout of a wean, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... book, the study of the occasional waking hallucinations of the sane and healthy was in its infancy. Much, indeed, had been written about hallucinations, but these were mainly the chronic false perceptions of maniacs, of drunkards, and of persons in bad health such as Nicolai and Mrs. A. The hallucinations of persons of genius—Jeanne ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... who, in accordance with the safest account, make Romulus give the name to the city, yet differ concerning his birth and family. For some say, he was son to Aeneas and Dexithea, daughter of Phorbas, and was, with his brother Remus, in their infancy, carried into Italy, and being on the river when the waters came down in a flood, all the vessels were cast away except only that where the young children were, which being gently landed on a level bank of the river, they were both unexpectedly ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... reasonably suppose of music generally, that it must have been gradually developed, having had its infancy, childhood, and youth; and that it grew slowly into present scientific form with the advance of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... he finds a hotel of the superannuated sort. One ought to choose, it would seem, and make the best of either alternative. The two old taverns at Arles are quite unimproved; such as they must have been in the infancy of the modern world, when Stendhal passed that way and the lumbering diligence deposited him in the Place des Hommes, such in every detail they are to-day. Vieilles auberges de France, one ought ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... cities and the lesser towns. In some cases the announcements of further meetings, made somewhat after the style of the public crier, develops into a series of short open-air addresses. In other cases, conspicuously in Italy, where our work is only as yet in its infancy—the sale of our paper, both by individual hawkers and by groups of comrades singing the songs it contains in marketplaces, largely makes up for the want of the more ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... by the sudden discovery of valuable mines therein. This is no chimerical illusion; it scarcely rests upon an uncertainty; for, the mineral wealth of New Mexico, we are firmly persuaded, is still in its infancy. To use trapper language, judging from "signs" which exist there in abundance, we shall not be surprised to hear, in time, that this territory has turned out to be a second California. Rumors of gold, and even specimens ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Craigenputtock, a remnant of the once larger family estate. He died in 1819, when his daughter was in her eighteenth year. To her he left the now world-famous farm and the bulk of his property. Jane, of precocious talents, seems to have been, almost from infancy, the tyrant of the house at Haddington, where her people took a place of precedence in the small county town. Her grandfathers, John of Penfillan and Walter of Templand, also a Welsh, though of another—the gipsy—stock, vied for her ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... In the infancy of a science there is no speculation so absurd as not to merit examination. The most remote and fanciful explanations of facts have often been found the true ones; and opinions which have in one century been objects of ridicule, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... which is in us from birth is said to be natural to us. Now virtues are in some from birth: for it is written (Job 31:18): "From my infancy mercy grew up with me; and it came out with me from my mother's womb." Therefore virtue ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... the blue eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a little peevish cry of "Mammy," as the child rolled downward; and then, suddenly, its eyes were caught by a bright gleaming light on the white ground, and with the ready transition of infancy it decided the light ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... this debate that I ascended the tribune for the first time. M. Cuvier and I had been appointed, as Royal Commissioners, to support the proposed measures,—a false and weak position, which demonstrates the infancy of representative government. We do not argue politics as we plead a cause or maintain a thesis. To act effectively in a deliberative assembly, we must ourselves be deliberators; that is to say, we must be members, and hold our share with others in free thought, power, and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the period of infancy of their offspring. This ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon

... glad to obey. But baby was just as well satisfied with his new friend's hair as he had been with the hat. It was capable of being pulled; and that is a quality which delights the heart of infancy. Dotty bore the pain heroically, till she bethought herself of appearances; for, being among so many people, she did not wish to look like a gypsy. She smoothed back her tangled locks as well as she could, and tried every art of fascination ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... of the dark ages are to be remembered and perpetuated on the plan of a tribal blood-feud, what peace can there be for the world? The disastrous results of this tendency were seen in the Irish Intellectuals, nourished from infancy on the story of Ireland's wrongs, who, instead of sanely facing present problems, unhinged their minds by brooding on historic grievances, thereby sealing their own doom and plunging their country into ruin. So, too, the enraged Feminists, harking back ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... taken into the Church in our infancy; and our need of prayer and watching, lest we turn it ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... their caverned hill. And one was weeping in his sight, The sweetest flower of all the isle, The bride who seemed but yesternight Love's fair embodied smile. And, clinging to her trembling knee, Looked up the form of infancy, With tearful glance in either face The secret of its fear ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Samuel. He was a Jew, and born in a little village in the neighborhood of Innsprueck. His family, which possessed a considerable fortune, left him, in his early youth, completely free to his own pursuits. From infancy he had shown that these were serious. He loved to be alone and passed his days, and sometimes his nights, wandering among the mountains and valleys in the neighborhood of his birthplace. He would often sit by the brink of torrents, listening to the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... singular views entertained by men of genius, in the infancy of the science, are those of Whiston, "who fancied that the earth was created from the atmosphere of one comet, and deluged by the tail of another;" and that, for their sins, the antediluvian population were drowned; "except the fishes, whose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... than the old one, free of the excrescences, rottenness and parasites which, under the ancient regime, disfigured and discolored it. No more compulsory vows, no "frocked" younger sons "to make an elder," no girls immured from infancy, kept in the convent throughout their youth, led on, urged, and then driven into a corner and forced into the final engagement on becoming of age; no more aristocratic institutions, no Order of Malta and chapters ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... had letters to write. She should do very well. Desolated, of course, without the two who were her soul and her existence; but Margaret understood that she could not bear the sight of sickness; it had been thus from infancy. Margaret nodded kindly, and went back into Peggy's room, with an impression that Rita was pleased at having her out of the way. Out of the way of what? But Margaret could not think about mysteries now. Peggy wanted to talk, and to have her head stroked, and to know ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... the lords of Mercteur, one of the most illustrious of Auvergne. Divine grace inclined him from his infancy to devote himself to God with his whole heart. He was very young when he received the monastic habit at Cluni, from the hands of S. Mayeul, by whose appointment he was made his coadjutor in 991, though only twenty-nine years ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... the earliest balloonists recognized that power, independent of wind, was necessary to give balloons steerage way and direction. Steam was in its infancy during the early days of ballooning, but the efforts to devise some sort of an engine light enough to be carried into the air were untiring. Within a year after the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, the suggestion ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... education, took some work in a university, and who yielded to the earnest pleas of her lover-classmate through grammar school, high school and college—and married him. To this happy family there came a number of beautiful children. The mother willingly, lovingly, cared for them during their helpless infancy—made their clothes, managed their meals, opened the door for them as they came home from school, met them with a cheery story, listened to their problems, helped them with their lessons—but all through it, first, last and all the time, she also ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... Comenius wrote a book, entitled the "School of Infancy." In England this book is scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of first-rate importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of education if a ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... honors, his time of service drawing to a close, his trust fulfilled and the young monarch come to his majority, he implores his royal ward to assemble his full court, and kneeling in their presence before the youth whom he had served from tenderest infancy, he prays: ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... which, not being essentially, fundamentally embedded and ingrained in the conscience of the man, may possibly be argued away; who have not implanted in their souls and hearts the high reverence for motherhood and the deep tenderness for helpless infancy that distinguished ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... scarcely ever visiting his home, he kept in close touch with his steward and regulated the plantation's management by constant correspondence. He had the reputation of a just but strict master. His slaves were well fed and clothed; they were supported in infancy and old age; they were trained in work according to their capacity, and taught something of morals and religion; in point of physical comfort and security, and of industrial and moral development, they were by no means at the bottom of the scale ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... back to the farthest limit and regarding the Candy Man curiously. "It is funny," he added, "how much you look like my Cousin Augustus. I wonder now if he could have been twins, and one stolen by the gypsies? You don't chance to have been stolen in infancy?" ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... English companies—the Hudson's Bay Company in the north, the North-west Company in the Canadas, the Mackinaw Company in the territories of the United States—and the few American traders in the field had to rely on their individual resources, with no aid from a Government too feeble in its infancy to do more than establish a few Indian agencies, and without constitutional power to ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... corner of the room attracted my attention. This I discovered to my delight was no less than a barrel-organ, on which one of the young ladies at my request played a few tunes. Now, barrel-organs, be it known, were things that I had detested from my infancy upwards; but this dislike arose principally from my having been brought up in the dear town o' Auld Reekie, where barrel-organ music is, as it were, crammed down one's throat without permission being asked ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... interval the always expected had happened to the house of Pompey the coachman. It was a tiny girl child, black of hue as both her doting parents, and endowed with the name of her sire, somewhat feminized for her fitting into the rather euphonious Pompeylou. Tamar had lost her other children in infancy, and so the pansy-faced little Pompeylou of her mid-life was a great joy to her, and most of her leisure was devoted to the making of the pink calico slips that went to the little ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... stock I hold. If this scheme of Haynes's goes in, I go out. Voluntarily. But at my own price. The Haynes-Cooper plant is at the height of its efficiency now." He dropped his voice. "But the mail order business is in its infancy. There's no limit to what can be done with it in the next few years. Understand? Do you get what I'm trying to tell you?" He leaned forward, tense ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... demand them again when of age. If he pays money on a contract, and enjoys the benefit of the contract and then avoids it when he comes of age, he can not recover back the consideration paid. And if he avoids an executed contract when he comes of age, on the grounds of infancy, ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... in part for the light of faith, under God, to the bright example and zealous labors of English missionaries. Henry was born in that country, of honorable parentage, and from his infancy gave himself to the divine service with his whole heart. When he came to man's estate he was solicited by his friends to marry, but having a strong call from God to forsake the world, he sailed to the north of England. The little island of Cocket, which lies on the coast of Northumberland, near the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... old Peralta, "give Santos wine, and pour yourself out a glass also, Ramona. You have both been good, faithful friends to me, and have nursed Calixto in his infancy. It is right that you should drink his health and rejoice with us at ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of order. When a man's tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he slips ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... answered then Sir Ector, "we are of no blood-kinship with thee, and little though I thought how high thy kin might be, yet wast thou never more than foster-child of mine." And then he told him all he knew about his infancy, and how a stranger had delivered him, with a great sum of gold, into his hands to be brought up and nourished as his own born child, and then ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... with his father, who was in fair circumstances. His mother had died in his infancy; and his only sister, Maggie, was his playmate for a few years longer, when she departed to join the loved one that had preceded her. The husband and father became a lonely and bowed man, whose years were far less than they seemed. Although a farmer ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... and the normal man. If the eunuch state be imposed in infancy, the shape of the body, its hairiness, the quality of the voice and the character are altered in characteristic manner. The eunuch essentially is neither man nor woman, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... description, lying in the lap of mountains that had in some day of world infancy been riven into a mighty boulder-strewn fissure between walls of sheer and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... breathe of beauty's reign, In many a tint o'er lawn and lea, That give the cold heart once again A dream of happier infancy; And even on the grave can be A spell to weed affection's pain— Children of Eden, who could see. Nor own His ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various

... base ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in their ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... stage, a coming up out of darkness, a twilight and dawn before the sunrise of that life of the world to come which he was to enjoy hereafter. We all live for a while after we are gone hence, but we are for the most part stillborn, or at any rate die in infancy, as regards that life which every age and country has recognised as higher and truer than the one of which we are now sentient. As the life of the race is larger, longer, and in all respects more to be considered than that of the individual, so is the life we live in others larger and more important ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... soup and sweet things; excellent meat, and well-dressed frijoles. A poor little boy, imbecile, deaf and dumb, was seated there cross-legged, in a sort of wooden box; a pretty child, with a fine colour, but who has been in this state from his infancy. The women seemed very kind to him, and he had a placid, contented expression of face; but took no notice of us when we spoke to him. Strange and unsolvable problem, what ideas pass through the brain of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... men in the country round about. At the bank, he was held in high esteem by both the officers and directors, and Mr. Silby's affection for him amounted almost to the love of a father for a favorite child. From infancy to manhood his name had never been associated with aught that was injurious or degrading, and among all the young men of Geneva, Eugene Pearson stood highest in public esteem and ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... there with her father. The bookseller was old, narrow-minded, and stiff for presbytery; he approved of no people but Englishmen, and had a special prejudice against German Lutherans. His daughter believed firmly in his wisdom, and had been from infancy the old man's darling. She was fair, good, and clever; but the girl had a wayward pride, and a wit that was too ready for her judgment. Nevertheless, Hubert had found favour in her eyes as well as in those of her father, perhaps because he endeavoured earnestly to win it; while ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various

... have not been brought up like an Indian. Fatigue and hardship and danger are endured by red men from their earliest infancy. The back to the burden, Basil. You have heard the saying, "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." When the soldiers came up to Nikkanochee, he darted into the bushes and long grass, where they found him. At first, he uttered a scream; but, soon after, he ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... documents, however dry or recondite, which might throw some clear light upon our national life and manners, and not only upon mere events of national importance during Medieval times. A desire to know the truth was in the air. The science of history had passed out of its infancy, and the stirrings of a new craving—the passion of Research—were making themselves felt in that mysterious restlessness which indicates that the old smooth-faced docility, the old childish submission to tutelage, the old unquestioning acceptance of authority, has gone for ever, and a new life ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... In the infancy of the colony, however, but little was to be gained by their being restored to the rights and privileges of free people, as no one was in possession of such abundance as to afford to support another independent of the public store. Every man, therefore, must have wrought for his provisions; ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... grounds, listening with a strange pleasure to her low, tender voice, and gazing into the deep, dark eyes, that shone with softest lustre from out the pale, olive face, set in a wealth of wavy jet-black hair. For Helen Torringley was, like himself, of mixed blood. Her mother, who had died in her infancy, was a South American quadroon, born in Lima, and all the burning, quick passions and hot temperament of her race were revealed in her daughter's every graceful gesture and inflexion of her ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... deaf-mutism and blindness. Students of the so-called "morally defective child," that is the child who appears deficient in emotional and sympathetic responses, suggest as a partial explanation the absence in infancy and early childhood of intimate and sympathetic contacts with the mother. An investigation not yet made but of decisive bearing upon this point will be a comparative study of children brought up in families with those reared ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... and they were alone, for the old nurse who had brought them all up from their infancy was at present absent from ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... left, in his infancy, in the stables of a gentleman living in Kent, near the highroad between Gravesend and Rochester. The same day, the stable-boy had met a woman running out of the yard, pursued by the dog. She was a ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins



Words linked to "Infancy" :   immaturity, oral stage, early childhood, immatureness, oral phase, time of life, infant



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