"Namby-pamby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expenditure; opium-using women—about four hundred thousand of them in the United States—who will have the drug, though it should cause the eternal damnation of the whole household; heartless and overbearing, and namby-pamby and unreasonable women, yet married—married perhaps to good men! These are the women who build the low club-houses, where the husbands and sons go because they can't stand it at home. On this sea ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... haven't seen him since yesterday." Elsa dropped her book petulantly. "I am weary of these namby-pamby stories." ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... business, Frank Bowman! You're one o' them foolish folk, too, that's allus tryin' ter hide the trewth 'cause it's bitter. Sure 'tis bitter; 'twas meant ter be. An' these namby-pamby people in this world that can't stand the trewth to be told ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... that dominated his slight figure. Here we have a clockwork picture, begun and finished by a button and a box of chemicals, from which every projecting feature has been more delicately and dexterously omitted than they could have been by the most namby-pamby flatterer, painting in the weakest water-colours, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... importance, of such high interest, to all human creatures who live together in society, you can hardly expect, Helen, that you, as a rational being, can go through the world as it now is, without forming any opinion on points of public importance. You cannot, I conceive, satisfy yourself with the common namby-pamby little missy phrase, 'ladies have nothing to do ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... do her good to model something strong and natural. She'll never amount to anything if she keeps on making namby-pamby gods and pet kittens,' answered irreverent Dan, remembering that when he was last here Bess was vibrating distractedly between a head of Apollo and her Persian ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... subject of much speculation among them, and opinions widely differed concerning his character. Some called him a "prig" and declared that he was "stuck up" and conceited. Others said he was a "namby-pamby" without brains or wit. But there were a few who had occasionally talked with the boy, who understood him better, and hinted that he might develop into "quite a man" ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... Alexander, leaned toward the namby-pamby intellectual rather than to the social and convivial. He is remembered for his affected poetical style. Karl, brave soldier, attracted the eye of no less a judge of valor than the Great Frederick, who appointed this Karl Alexander von Bismarck ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-pambys I am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in the spilled blood of violence and horror. Without arguing this matter of my general reputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add that I have indeed lived life in a very rough school ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... burdens that must be borne—none but those who lived through all these troubles could count half of them. If such came now, would the body of the nation strive to stand against them, or fall in the dust, and be kicked and trampled, sputtering namby-pamby? Britannia now is always wrong, in the opinion of her wisest sons, if she dares to defend herself even against weak enemies; what then would her crime be if she buckled her corselet against the world! To prostitute their mother ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... this universal demand for fiction is necessarily an enormous supply, and as everybody writes, without reference to gifts, the product is mainly trash, and trash of a deleterious sort; for bad art in literature is bad morals. I am not sure but the so-called domestic, the diluted, the "goody," namby-pamby, unrobust stories, which are so largely read by school-girls, young ladies, and women, do more harm than the "knowing," audacious, wicked ones,—also, it is reported, read by them, and written largely by their own sex. For minds enfeebled and relaxed by stories lacking even ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Janice Day was either namby-pamby or stupid. She had opinions, and expressed them frankly; and she possessed a strong will of her own. But she not to hurt other people's feelings; and if she stood up for her opinions, she usually did so ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... 1652 and 1654. The first passage is in her pleasant mood and touches on a subject—aviation—which interested that day and interests this. The second strikes some people as one of the most charming specimens of the love-letter—written neither in the violent delight that has violent end, nor in namby-pamby fashion.[101] ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... like your last book much better than the rest of them; but I don't like your heroine. She strikes both Julia and myself [Julia is his wife, who is acquainted with no literature but the cookery-book] as rather namby-pamby. The descriptions, however, are charming; we both recognised dear old Ramsgate at once. [The original of the locality in the novel being Dieppe.] The plot is also excellent, though we think we have some recollection of it elsewhere; ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... up at her quickly. He had not spoken of his feeling to any of them because he was ashamed of it. "It's namby-pamby of me," he had said to himself. He flushed as he looked up, fearing that she must despise him for his weakness, and he almost denied that he had had any feeling at all about it; but he did not deny it. "I couldn't bear it, Mrs. Graham," he said quickly ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine |
