Childishness

I like her all the better because she has childishness.

The average Westerner, in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea ceremony but another instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness and childishness of the East to him.

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Do you mean to annoy me again with some childishness, you little villain?

We must learn to wish, above all things, to see the babies grow up since there is no condition (for any creature not a baby) more revolting than babyishness, just as there is no state more humiliating (for any but a child) than childishness.

Well, said the old man, tapping his knee, which rang like an empty bone, this is what your childishness exposes me to, Acharat: to be struck down by lightning, to be killed stupidly by an electrical spark which, if I had time, would force to fall on my stove to boil my pot.

Exorcism, unction, the sign of the cross, holy water, infant-communion, and many other childishnesses, were also called "Apostolic institutions" — not at first, but long after they were invented, to conceal their real origin […]