Babels

The Federation authorities propose to convene one of the meetings of all members they call Babels, to discuss their terms of union.

The Final Reflection John M. Ford 2000

Not so good for the rest of the world, either, whose nations have been disbelievingly howling, in Babels of translations, that most American of plaints: "Say it ain't so."

Bush: Torturer, Tyrant, Disgrace 2008

Keeping up his cultural optimism about Argentina in public, and spending ever more of his private and literary life in codexes and codicils, Babels and Babylons, lotteries and labyrinths, Borges postponed for some time the disagreeable realization that his country and his culture were turning against him.

The Immortal 2004

Keeping up his cultural optimism about Argentina in public, and spending ever more of his private and literary life in codexes and codicils, Babels and Babylons, lotteries and labyrinths, Borges postponed for some time the disagreeable realization that his country and his culture were turning against him.

The Immortal 2004

If they had been equally diligent in brickmaking, they might have built ten Babels; or if they had devoted similar energies, on Iago's hint, "to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer," they might have tripled the population, or anticipated the colossal vats of Messrs Truman & Co.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 Various

Some squads were little Babels, each man uttering forth his voice, with the poor squad-leader either vainly trying to make himself heard, or silently trying to make his own ideas square with the contradictions of the other seven.

At Plattsburg Allen French 1908

The Babels he piles up may indeed survive his person, but they are themselves vain and without issue, while his brief life has been meantime spent in slavery and his mind cramped with cant and foolish ambitions.

The Life of Reason George Santayana 1907

In his letter of Jan. 14 (ib.p. 497), the allusion to Mrs. Vesey's Babels is explained: 'Mrs. Montagu is one of my principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.'

Life of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

The Continent was close and beckoning; I heard the confusion of her tongues, and saw the shafts of her Gothic Babels probing the clouds, and for another year I roamed among her cities, as ardent and errant as when I went afield on my pony to win the spurs of a

Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War George Alfred Townsend 1877

Our own architectural monstrosities and our Babels of machinery have been brought into existence by vast integrations of industrial capital.

Kokoro Japanese Inner Life Hints Lafcadio Hearn 1877