"Boyish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marched to a sunny mead at Greenhithe, and romped for hours and hours in hearty sailors' play. How they ran races, jumped in sacks, swarmed up the polished pole, and eyed the leg of mutton at the top, far out of reach, until sheer exhaustion with boyish laughter made them slide down! Then, gathered round cake and tea, and duly stuffed therewith to concert pitch, they sing our grand old Psalms, our free and joyous loyal ship-songs, the orchestra of young throats being directed ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... curves, and perhaps a little too close for so young a face. The well-cut nose and chin and clean fine outline of face, the self-reliant pose of the neck and confident set of the shoulders characterized him as decisive and energetic, while the pleasant and rather boyish smile that lighted up his face dispelled presently the peculiarly hard expression I had at first found in analyzing it. Whether it was the hard, shrewd light from which all the tender and delicate grace of the early morning had departed, I knew ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... lay bare what may have been, if not the source of the rules themselves, the origin and suggestion of their compilation. At that time a little volume was found in Virginia bearing the name of George Washington in a boyish hand on the fly-leaf, and the date 1742. The book was entitled, "The Young Man's Companion." It was an English work, and had passed through thirteen editions, which was little enough in view of its ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... job interrupted. "All right, I'll take it. I can't come for a few days, but I'll come next Tuesday, say." Janin was a little breathless at the rapidity with which things seemed to get settled by this boyish, very boyish, young man, but as they were apparently really settled he ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... hearts are wholly at the world's dispose, The butterfly doth represent to me, The world's best things at best but fading be. All are but painted nothings and false joys, Like this poor butterfly to these our boys. His running through nettles, thorns, and briars, To gratify his boyish fond desires; His tumbling over mole-hills to attain His end, namely, his butterfly to gain; Doth plainly show what hazards some men run. To get what will be lost as soon as won. Men seem in choice, than children far more wise, Because they run not after butterflies; When yet, alas! for what are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by this colloquy. There midway between the lead drivers in the left section sat Mr. Ferry, gazing straight to the front over the erected ears of his handsome bay and doing his very best to keep a solemn face, though the unshaded corners of his boyish mouth were twitching with mischief and merriment. There, silent, disciplined, and rigid, sat the sergeants, drivers, and cannoneers of famous old Light Battery "X," all agog with interest in the proceedings and all looking as though they never ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... up lately the choice Bible which I selected for myself as a boy, and on the fly-leaf, in my boyish hand, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Music receiving the hundreds who filed past to shake hands with him. A sinister fellow, resembling an Italian, tarried suspiciously, and was pushed forward by the Secret Service attendants. Next behind him followed a boyish-looking workman, his right hand swathed in a handkerchief. As the first made way Mr. McKinley extended his hand to the young man's unencumbered left. The next instant the bandaged right arm raised itself and two shots rang on the air. The President staggered back into ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and that to outrer whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrines and maxims of Benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie of youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself among others, quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tired of differing from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad part of the heterodox opinions they had ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Among the Lakes, is a fitting companion to his other books. It has the same flavor of happy, boyish country life, brimful of humor and abounding with incident and the various adventures of healthy, well-conditioned boys turned loose in the country, with all the resources of woods and water and their ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... splendid day he spent, following no settled route, but wandering here and there as the impulse of the moment directed, and feeling in all his boyish frame the gladness of life and of spring! He lunched in a little wood, with a fallen tree for a throne, and a rippling stream to play him music while he feasted. Then he sauntered leisurely on in the afternoon ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... thunder of her varied malediction, but that Brigid Beg began to cry: for, indeed, the poor child was both tired and parched to distraction, and Seumas had no barrier against a similar surrender, but two minutes' worth of boyish pride. This discovery withdrew the Thin Woman from her fiery contemplations, and in comforting the children she ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... Seville; let her country boast Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste thy ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... began to laugh, a laugh that began in his eyes, ran over his face and down into his throat, whence it came again in a shout of boyish merriment. ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... upon Roger's comfort and plans for the masquerade that many a mysterious and significant occurrence slipped safely by her kindly eyes; and with the excited Doctor's busy sleigh jingling so hysterically about on secret errands and his kindly face so full of boyish mystery that Roger, with the key to all this Christmas intrigue locked safely in his heart, had whispered a shy little warning in the ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... tearing sounds. He walked up to Stasia and stood squarely in front of her, six feet of brawn and brazen nerve. One ruddy cheek he presented to her astonished gaze. "Hello, sweetheart," he said. And waited. The Rourke girl hesitated just a second. All the Irish heart in her was melting at the boyish impudence of the man before her. Then she lifted one hand and slapped his smooth cheek. It was a ringing slap. You saw the four marks of her fingers upon his face. Chet straightened, his blue eyes bluer. Stasia looked up at him, her eyes wide. Then down ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... pressing to be more than merely friendly. Aminta twice gave her cheek for kisses. The secretary had spoken of Mrs. Lawrence as having the look of a handsome boy; and Aminta's view of her now underwent a change likewise. Compunction, together with a sisterly taste for the boyish fair one flying her sail independently, and gallantly braving the winds, induced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... playing in and out and over it like a butterfly in a smoke bush. She would be safe with Philip always, but safety had no special charm for one of her age, who had never been in peril. Mark's superior knowledge of the world, moreover, his careless, buoyant manner of carrying himself, his gay, boyish audacity, all had a very distinct charm for ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tall young man stood before me, hat in hand, a wistful something in his gray eyes, I had to crush a sudden desire to lay my hand on his shoulder and call him son. It would have been against my principles to be so outspokenly sentimental, but his light hair waved back from a boyish face pallid with illness and the playful curve of his mouth touched me. If I had been Jane Gray I should have cried over him. From the forced smile to the button hanging loose on his vest there was a silent appeal. All the mother in me was aroused and ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of the boys to another in some pause of the game, "Yonder, see! the Ard-Druid of the Province. Wherefore comes he forth from his druidic chambers to-day at this hour, such not being his wont?" And the other answered lightly, laughing, and with boyish heedlessness, "I know not wherefore; but well he knows himself." And therewith ran to meet the ball which passed that way. There was yet a third who watched the boys. He stood afar off on the edge of the plain. He had a little shield strapped on his back, two javelins in one hand, and a ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... boyish illness to live in the country, he early developed a great love for the Scotch ballads and the tales of the romantic past of his native land. These he gathered mainly by word of mouth. Later he was a diligent student and collector of all the old ballads. In this way his mind was steeped ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... (himself unconscious of the warmth) which brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his city career, and the bright promises that are before him,—promises of business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... morning.... It abounds in fun, and in relish of the activities, competitions, and sports of boyish and ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... driven into his jaw? Shall men say that his day is over, when he has hardly yet tasted the full cup of his success? Has his young life been a dream, and not a truth? Shall he never reach that giant manhood which the growth of his boyish years has promised him? If the South goes from him, he will be divided, shorn, and hemmed in. The hook will have pierced his nose, and the thorn will fester in his jaw. Men will taunt him ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... The boyish reader will easily imagine what Wilfred had to bear all this time from his Norman companions, from whose society there was no escape—with whom he had to share not only the very few hours allotted to study, but those ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... storming at what he regarded as the lax and careless way in which the boys were allowed to do largely as they pleased. He magnified and distorted their boyish scrapes, until he had really convinced himself that they were headed straight for destruction, unless brought ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... entered with zeal and sympathy into the daily life of the people of Concord. He delivered a few lectures, which were quite celebrated. Some of his manuscripts are in existence, and there is a boyish essay or two in the Harvard Magazine, one on Conversation and one on Friendship, which show a singular charm and simplicity of style. He wrote the epitaph on the tomb of Professor Ashmun at Mount Auburn, and a tribute to his friend, James Jackson, Jr., which is ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Gilberts, I come to the saddest part—the fate of poor Nellie, the dearest playmate my childhood ever knew, she whom the lapse of years ripened into a graceful, beautiful girl, loved by everybody, even by Tom Jenkins, whose boyish affection had grown with his growth and strengthened with ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... Monty said as he rose to go. "I'm glad you're pleased, Peggy; I need your good wishes. And, Peggy," he continued, with a touch of boyish wistfulness, "do you think there's a chance for a fellow? I've had the very deuce of a time ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... posters tacked upon it. It was a cozy room with its deep rattan chairs and pillow-strewn couch. Snow-shoes, fencing foils, boxing-gloves, and tennis racquets littered the corners, and on every side a general air of boyish untidiness prevailed. ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... there, waiting for the coming of my adversary, for fear has always been foreign to my family, but a sort of secret elation. For that day, if I survived, though the down upon my lip was as yet imperceptible, I could take my place as a man among men. No longer would my boyish face keep me out of the councils of my elders, but I would have the right to take my stand and ruffle it with the best of them all. I was there to win my spurs as a man and a duellist, and to show to all the world that I had the courage of my race. For then, as it has ever been in the fair ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... in the upper air still filled me. I sat down in a ditch, as merry as a sand-boy, and lit a pipe. I was possessed by a boyish spirit of casual adventure, and waited on the next turn of fortune's wheel with only a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... father's limbs and closed his eyes. Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm tenderly across the body. And the recollection came back to him of that hunting accident years ago—the weight of his father on his shoulders—the bitter cold—the tears which not all his boyish scorn of tears ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... boyish shout. "And he'd do it, too, I believe," he chuckled. "That is what makes Sir George so wonderful; with all his wealth he is the same dear old chap he always was. I knew him when he was your age almost—and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... when she had read through the confused line or two, in the half-boyish, half-clerkly hand of Robin, scribbled and dispatched by the hands of Dick scarcely two hours ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... has just come from the press, an announcement that cannot but appeal to every healthy boy from ten to fifteen years of age in the country. "No writer of the present day," says the Boston Commonwealth, "whose aim has been to hit the boyish heart, has been as successful as Oliver Optic. There is a period in the life of every youth, just about the time that he is collecting postage-stamps, and before his legs are long enough for a bicycle, when he has the Oliver Optic fever. He catches it by ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... with their ribbed grey bark, till they shone for a brief moment like the polished pillars in the house of Odysseus. Then a nightingale sang. Nightingales were rare at Beechmark; and Buntingford would normally have hailed the enchanted flute-notes with a boyish delight. But this evening they fell on deaf ears, and when the garish sunlight gave place to gloom, and drops of rain began to patter on the new leaf, the gathering storm, and the dark silence of the wood, after the nightingale had given her last trill, were welcome to a man ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sights and sounds. Up on these high lands there was a considerable breeze, and Mr. Taynton paused for a minute or two beside a windmill that stood alone, in the expanse of down, watching, with a sort of boyish wonder, the huge flails swing down and aspire again in the circles of their tireless toil. A little farther on was a grass-grown tumulus of Saxon times, and his mind was distracted from the present to those early days when the unknown dead was committed to this wind-swept tomb. Forests of pine ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... told Howells, with the wild joy of his boyish heart, how Mrs. Clemens found some compensation, when kept to her room by illness, in the reflection that now she would not hear so much ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... The boyish brightness faded out of Gale's face. Here, Belding saw, was the stern reality arrayed against ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... five days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism—they have been lucky so far and will come through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... service should suffice for the present. But, my mother tells me we have proper causes of complaint against you, for having so thoughtlessly left the place of safety into which you were brought, and for going strolling about the valley, after we had retired, in a very heedless and boyish manner!" ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the arrogant self-confidence in his manner toward her which there had been on the February night when he had made a certain prophecy concerning Midsummer. Instead there was that in his every word and look which indicated a fine humility—almost a boyish sort of shyness, as if even while he knew the treasure to be within his grasp he could neither quite believe it nor feel himself fit to take it. From a young man of the world such as he had been it was the most exquisite tribute to her power to rouse the best ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... suddenly lighting up with the fire of inflexible will. Then he was seized with a trembling fit, and sank back in his chair. He rubbed his hands over his gray face; he clenched his fingers, and the knuckle of his thumb went to his eye and got wet in doing it. And it was all so awkward, and so boyish, and so funny, this movement of his fist and the tear-drop on his thumb, that Miss Eastman would have laughed if she had not ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... boyish flights, while he Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be; And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes Explore her looks; he listens to her sighs; Charm'd by her voice, th' harmonious sounds invade His ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... most powerful and influential leaders in the city, but more especially of Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, who always opposed him. And yet all this great enmity between them arose, it appears, from a very boyish occasion, both being attached to the beautiful Stesilaus of Ceos, as Ariston the philosopher tells us; ever after which, they took opposite sides, and were rivals in politics. Not but that the incompatibility of their lives and manners may ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... never been. The will to fight—the exaggerated self-importance, the overweening pride of the strong man who has made his way by buffeting obstacles, were all mine; and yet, walking there that morning in the high wind between the rolling broomsedge and the blood-red sumach, I was aware again of the boyish timidity with which I had carried my market basket so many years ago to her kitchen doorstep. She had said of me last night that I was no longer "common." Was that because she had read in my glance that I had kept myself pure for her sake?—that for her sake I had made myself strong ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... is't not boyish folly (youthfull heat I cannot call it) to spume downe what all His life hath labourd for? Shall Barnavelt That now should studie how to die, propound New waies to get a name? or keep a being A month or two to ruyn whatsoever The good succes of forty yeeres employment In the most serious affaires ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... great-coat, and wrapped it about the slight, boyish figure. The great dark eyes that shone out of the small white face thanked him for the action. The clinging hands slipped from his shoulders and clasped his arm. Together they faced the fearful heat that ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... heart began to warm towards Farnham. He was not a particularly brilliant fellow, though a good business man; but he had such a whimsical face, with its bright eyes, its good-natured mouth, and its laughable, upturned nose! He was so frankly interested in life, so enthusiastic, so outspoken, so boyish in many of his ways, despite his forty years! I found myself almost inclined to be sorry that he was ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... her admiringly. "When you talk like that, I feel I could be anything or do anything that you like, I love you so," he ventured, flipping the grass with his stick to cover his boyish embarrassment. "I am thinking of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... "Cave Man" given him by Fritz Schmidt. He was considerably more than six feet in height, with broad, square shoulders, good features, a clear brain and a sound body. He had never used intoxicants of any description. He sometimes appeared quite boyish in his ways, for on account of his matured look and great size he was frequently judged to be older than he ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... me as to the signals he would give me by pinching my feet. When he was sure we both knew them he grinned a wry grin, and made a whimsical boyish gesture with his uplifted right hand, took a careful stand on the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "as far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea, that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was really as happy and as carefree as she seemed to ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... accompanying it with passionate gestures which filled Suzanne with horror and Domini with secret delight. She liked this abrupt unveiling of the raw. There had always lurked in her an audacity, a quick spirit of adventure more boyish than feminine. She had reached the age of thirty-two without ever gratifying it, or even fully realising how much she longed to gratify it. But now she began to understand it and to ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... a steamer chair next mine—a pale, Broadway tomboy sort of girl in a boyish sailor suit, who looked as if she needed sleep. Without exactly being on the stage, she yet appeared to live on the fringe of it, and combined the slangy freedoms of a chorus girl with a certain quick wisdom and hard ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... she was petite, with a still unformed girlish figure, perhaps a little too flat across the back, and with possibly a too great tendency to a boyish stride in walking. Her brow, covered by blue-black hair, was low and frank and honest; her eyes, a very dark hazel, were not particularly large, but rather heavily freighted in their melancholy lids with sleeping passion; her nose ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... there in the gondola, he realized with the intake of the breath to express it and the curious throbbing of the palms to grasp. He was able to identify in his bodily response to all that charged the decaying wonder of Venice with opulent personality, the source of his boyish dreams. It was no woman, he told himself, who had gone off with the bystanders while he had been engaged with the dragons of poverty and obligation, but merely the appreciations of beauty. There had never been any woman, there was never going to be. He began to plan how he ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... cover it. My eye lighted upon a flaking brownstone slab, that told me Captain Michael Cresap rested there. Captain Michael Cresap! The intervening years all fled away before me, and once again my boyish heart thrilled with that incomparable oration in McGuffey's Reader, "Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." Captain Cresap was the man that led the massacre ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... worshipful eyes had already produced in him a vague pity. Without understanding fully her feeling, he knew that she looked up to him, and he perceived that she was born to sorrow in larger measure than she deserved. Sallow, thin, boyish, she gave promise of a kind of beauty which would sometime make her desired of both ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... he said, in quite a boyish, humble tone, and then gasped at himself. What was there about Gila that ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... I know of," she said. "He is a bright boy—too bright for his own good, I'm afraid. But I can explain—a little. Johnnie has taken a violent fancy to you for some reason, and he has fallen into the boyish habit of weaving all sorts of romances around you. I think he reads too many exciting stories and tries to make you the hero of them. He told me the other day that he was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... shadowy lines of its trees, And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hesperides Of all my boyish dreams. And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: 'A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... earnest of those qualities which in his young manhood the rude tests of the sea and the grim crises of war developed to the full. "No matter" was his first plainly spoken phrase, a hint of childish obstinacy that foreshadowed the persistence of maturer years. Among other feats of his boyish daring, it is told that when a mere child, hardly into his first trousers, he went one day to catch a colt in one of his father's fields bordering on the Contoocook. The colt declined to be caught and after a sharp scamper took to the river and swam across. Nothing daunted, ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... surgeon, who passed many of his boyish years at Barchester. His father was a physician in the city of London, where he made a moderate fortune, which he invested in houses in that city. The Dragon of Wantly inn and posting-house belonged to him, also four shops in the High Street, and a ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... can wish for, and you must behave yourself, for if you do not do so you will be lucky if you escape with a flogging and being turned out of camp. I am younger than you are, and am just as fond of a piece of fun, but I know when it is good to enjoy one's self and when one must put aside boyish pranks. I have my duties to perform, and do them to the best of my power, and shall expect you to ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... of Scotland—from time immemorial—enjoyed the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we have quoted—we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the mists and snows? Of all that ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with a family. Needless to say, the part was well acted and sung by Brother NED, whom a gentleman near me, who "knew all about it," mistook for his brother JOHN, and criticised accordingly. As Cherubino, Mlle. SIGRID ARNOLDSON is a delightfully boyish scapegrace, giving us just that soupcon of natural awkwardness which a spoilt sunny Southern lad of sixteen, brought up in such mixed society as is represented by Count Almaviva's household, would occasionally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... once been in love but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... sung wherever the Union Jack flies, we must believe this to be a perfectly justifiable ambition. But occasionally on his pages we find gentle words of wisdom that were meant evidently for love's eyes alone. There is much that is pure boyish frolic, and again and again there are clever strokes directed at folly. He has shot certain superstitions through with doubt, and in his manner of dealing with error he has proved to us a thing it were well not to forget: that pleasantry is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... lounging in an open window, cleaning his fingernails with his pocket-knife, as Allison went into the post-office. He rose with some show of animation at sight of the tall, boyish figure ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... most displeasing feature. For the rest they looked what they were, honest ignorant peasants with wits sharpened by military training and the conditions of a new country. Presently I noticed at the window furthest from the platform one of quite a different type. A handsome boyish face without beard or moustache, and a very amiable expression. We looked at each other. There was no one else at that ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... not shoot me, Beverly, dear. I am not a spy," said Baldos, looking down into the eyes of the slender boyish figure who stood beside the princess. "It is better that I should die, however," he went on bitterly. "Life will not be worth living without you. You would not give yourself to the lowly, humble ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise, the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of these things, with ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... air, and high-boned, Scottish cast of features. There, too, stood General Knox, then secretary of war, in all the sleek rotundity of his low stature, with a bold and florid face, open, firm, and manly, in its expression. But I recollect that my boyish eye was caught by the appearance of De Yrujo, the Spanish embassador. He stood in the rear of the chair, a little on one side, covered with a splendid diplomatic dress, decorated with orders, and carrying under his arm ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was—it was always in the hottest places—there were to be seen, at no great distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Bassi, riding upon a fiery horse, and the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit from the list of Garibaldi's bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... front of Grant Hall by this time and were strolling slowly along, their voices hushed for the moment by the cheery hum of boyish talk and the clatter of mess furniture, as the Corps sat at their late supper. Then several officers, gathered about the steps of the club rooms in the south end, lifted their caps to Mrs. Graham and smiled greeting ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... a minute quietly," he said, with a gentleness that, though far less boyish, recalled to her mind the smiling gentleness of Ibrahim. "And I will give you a new pleasure, and all your anger will go from you as the waves go from the Nile when the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... afraid of his wife, afraid of her coolness and her grace, and that something Japanese about her—of all those attributes he had been accustomed to admire most; afraid, as it were, of her attraction. He felt young to-night, almost boyish; would she see that he was not really fifteen years older than herself, and she not really a part of his collection, of all the admirable appointments of his home; but a companion spirit to one who wanted a companion badly. In this agitation of his soul he could keep still no more than ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... parents to ask the question: Why? Certainly it would not be difficult to tell the reason in thousands of instances, and yet the habit and practice of the deadly sin of self-pollution is actually ignored; it is even spoken of as a boyish folly not to be mentioned, and young men literally burning up with lust are mildly spoken of as "sowing their wild oats." Thus the cemetery is being filled with masses of the youth of America who, as in Egypt of old, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... pleased with this boyish wisdom of his own, being fully persuaded that he was right, that he and I must ride together to Chichester with morning light, and find new ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... against an adverse eddy, often swept back, but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour of hours, a few yards could be gained. [225] Exploits which brought the Prince no nearer to his object, however glorious they might be in the estimation of the vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of the real business ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... left her lip, When a light, boyish form, with trip Fantastic, up the green walk came, Prankt in gay vest to which the flame Of every lamp he past, or blue Or green or crimson, lent its hue; As tho' a live chameleon's skin He had despoiled, to robe him in. A zone he wore of clattering shells, And from his lofty cap, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to free his back of a root or pebble, glanced languidly at a single struggling star, thought for an instant of his far-away mother, turned his head with a sigh, and slept. In the morning he was to fight, and perhaps to die; but the boyish veteran was too seasoned, and also too tired, to mind that; he could mind but one thing—nature's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Winchester and the spy to see Sheridan. They found him sitting by a small fire receiving or sending reports, and talking with a half-dozen of his generals. It was not yet day, but the flames lighted up the commander's thin, eager face, and made him look more boyish ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... way, going in the opposite direction, they were made up of four hale vigorous men and two boys, the latter had been left in the desert lands through which they had been wandering for two years—left, that is to say, by degrees, every bit that had been boyish having physically died out, for its place to be taken by something more manly, till on this particular day they rode back with their feet much nearer the ground and their sturdy mustangs appearing stunted, though quite well able to carry a far heavier ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... twenty strokes of their little clubs, and who pass much of their time in fishing for their lost balls in the muddy burn. As for the veterans "on the threshold of old age," it is pleasant to watch their boyish eagerness, the swaying of their bodies as they watch the short flight of their longest hits; their delight when they do manage to hit further than the sand-pit, or "bunker," which is named after the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... moment from the lips of each; and with an embrace of sincere affection, the friendship of their boyish days was renewed, and now, in their budding manhood, to be ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... by which we grew acquainted,' said Sir John. 'I had written, madam, with particular cruelty (since that shall be the phrase) of your fair self. Your husband set me at liberty, gave me a passport, ordered a carriage, and then, with the most boyish spirit, challenged me to fight. Knowing the nature of his married life, I thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful. "Do not be afraid," says he; "if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me." ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... go here, Franklin. I expect my students to have more common sense than that. Of course, it may have been nothing but a boyish prank, and if you can give me your word that the snowball which went down the stairs and hit Professor Duke was not aimed at him deliberately, I shall feel inclined ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... Ninian had a boyish pride in his knowledge of places to eat in many cities—as if he were leading certain of the tribe to a deer-run in a strange wood. Ninian took his party to a downtown cafe, then popular among business and newspaper men. The place was ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... Nehemiah!" he said, his boyish voice ringing out tense and excited above the tones of the men, once more absorbed in their wonted interests. A sudden silence ensued amongst them. "What air ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... intently and for a minute he was unable to speak. At last he broke out with an accent of which the almost boyish confidence, the really sublime simplicity rings in my ears as I write: "Wasn't she wonderful!" Even at the time I was able to do it justice enough to remark in reply that I had always told him so; but the next minute, as if after speaking he ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Both of us will have a more fortunate rival in this petty prince—in this conceited young dandy, who even now believes he is a perfect Adonis, and carries his ludicrous presumption so far as to believe that he can outstrip men of ability and merit by his miserable little title and by his boyish face—" ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... called her Fiammetta I cannot say, for I do not remember; perhaps from a boyish fancy, merely. At that time Boccaccio and I were famous friends; we were together constantly, and his companionship had such an influence upon me that for the nonce I lived and walked and had my being in that distant, romantic period when all men were ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Mr John Forster truly observed, all the recompense which he had to expect for a life of exertion was to dispose of the fruits of his labour according to his own will. This he felt; and he considered it unreasonable that what he supposed a boyish attachment on the part of Newton was to overthrow all his preconcerted arrangements. Had Mr Forster been able to duly appreciate the feelings of his nephew, he probably would not have been so decided; but Love had never been ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... with whom he had had various dealings since he had been turned out upon the town to earn his bread some fifteen years before. Indeed, long before that he had known the police. As far as his memory went back he had always known them. But the sportive industry of his boyish years was not now counted up against him. In the last fifteen years his biography had been written with all the accuracy due to the achievements of a great man; and during those hundred and eighty months he had spent over one hundred in prison, and had been convicted twenty-three times. He was ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... of the meeting was that, when Luck gathered up the lines, next day, and popped the short lash of Applehead's home-made whip over the backs of the little bay team, and told them to "Get outa town!" in a tone that had in it a boyish note of exultation, the thin youth hung to the seat of the bouncing buckboard and wondered if Luck really could drive, or if he was half "stewed" and only imagined he could. The thin youth had much to learn besides the science of photography and some of it ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... quiet and very serious person interests me. He doesn't say anything, and you wonder what sort of consciousness goes on under the close-cropped, boyish, black velvet hair. Nature has left his features a bit unfinished, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... ten; breakfast was never later than six, and generally nearer to five o'clock. A midshipman or two were always of the party; and I have known him send during the middle watch[36] to invite the little fellows to breakfast with him, when relieved. At table with them, he would enter into their boyish jokes, and be the most youthful of the party. At dinner he invariably had every officer of the ship in their turn, and was both a polite and hospitable host. The whole ordinary business of the fleet ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... very tragic that night. For hours and hours we argued the question over. But I felt somewhat that I was inextricably caught in my fate, that I could not retreat now from my resolve. I was perhaps, very school-boyish, but I felt that it would be cowardice to back out now. But it was Alice again who perceived a ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget the effect upon me of the first view of them predominating over a wide extent of country, part wild, woody, and rugged; part softened away into all the graces of cultivation. As ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... the whole night with a lascivious girl whose naughtiness none could surpass. Tired of a thousand methods of indulgence, I begged the boyish favor: she granted my prayers before they were finished, before even the first words were out of my mouth. Smiling and blushing, I besought her for something worse still; she voluptuously promised it at once. But to me, she was chaste. But, AEschylus, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... was temporarily stationed in big nipa barracks at Malate. It was in the newer Manila that the two boyish young sergeants found ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... a good share of his work for nothing. I have addressed larger audiences since then; but I have certainly never been puffed up with such a sense of my own power and value as I had in writing those pompous, boyish essays, in which I trounced Disraeli, and instructed Gladstone and the chairman of the local Board of Guardians in the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... with him, Mr. Ducker's hopes ran high, but when he caught Evans looking at him with that boyish smile of his twinkling in his eyes, the vision of chaperoning an Elk party to St. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... inseparable companion, and they were strongly attached to each other. About 1835 Curtis came under the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was heard by him in Providence, and who commanded his boyish admiration. Burrill Curtis has said of this interest of himself and his brother that it proved to be the cardinal event of their youth; and what this experience ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... was also laird of the estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, near the English border. James Boswell studied law, but was never very serious in any regular activity. Early in life he became possessed by an extreme boyish-romantic admiration for Johnson's works and through them for their author, and at last in 1763 (only twenty years before Johnson's death) secured an introduction to him. Boswell took pains that acquaintance should soon ripen into intimacy, though ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were misled, we erred in the company of some, who are accounted very good men now—rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines— assisted us in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... desolated heart. But none of his home folks had ever seen those frank, smiling eyes snap and sparkle in the way they did now, like broken steel; not one of them would have imagined that those almost boyish features could set in such stern, grim lines as they fell into while he waited for the much and long desired interview with the rascal who had tried to rob him of ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... called the ideas of the age. What mastery of description, what rich and vigorous colors Kielland had at his disposal was demonstrated in such scenes as the funeral of Consul Garman and the burning of the ship. There was, moreover, a delightful autobiographical note in the book, particularly in boyish experiences of Gabriel Garman. Such things no man invents, however clever; such material no imagination supplies, however fertile. Except Fritz Reuter's Stavenhagen, I know no small town in fiction which is so vividly and completely individualized, ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... With a sudden boyish impulse, Ralph gave both Scout Master Denmead and George Rawson a bear-hug of sheer joy, and then he ran out to bid his other friends good-bye. Presently he was in the launch, gliding swiftly across the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... of the town seems to lie on that side of its navigable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the North End of our American Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New-England metropolis; at any rate, here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Groseillers to say more. The ambition of young Radisson took fire. Long ago, when a captive among the Mohawks, he had cherished boyish dreams that it was to be his "destiny to discover many wild nations"; and here was that destiny opening the door for him, pointing the way, beckoning to the toils and dangers and glories of the discoverer's life. Radisson had been ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... comfortable luxury in urging her to say a word, which she had never indeed said, but which probably in those days he still hoped that she would say. And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms. But now it seemed to him that an age had passed since those days. His love had certainly not faded. There had never been a moment when that had been on the wing. But now the azure plumage of his love had become ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... little air while doing it! And at the close, when he said to her: "If I give you a pony to-morrow, and a good hearty kiss this very minute, shall you be willing to give up getting that degree?" she responded, with such gusto: "Indeed, I shall!" and her manner was so eager, so boyish, so full of fun, that she was wildly applauded, while Gerard embraced her as heartily as he liked, to make up to himself for her having had, as his wife, the ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) |
