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More "Dally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... world and are gone. Will he see them again? It is a flickering perhaps. To sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, he must be sore of his having charged them with good matter. How can the man do it, if, during his term of apprenticeship, he has allowed himself to dally here and there, down to moony dreamings over inscrutable beautiful eyes of a married lady; for the sole reason that he meets her unexpectedly, after an exchange of letters with her in long-past days at school, when she was an inexperienced girl, who knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mistakes. The real pluck was the sporting spirit that stood to its guns, even if it cost a big and wearisome effort. She would not dally. She would answer to her own Best, and try to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and he didn't have time to dally long in talk. So he went off, and Durland sent Tom Binns, who was acting as his orderly for the day, to bring Jack ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... half a crown we decided that we really ought to try Dicky's way of restoring our fallen fortunes while yet the deed was in our power. Because it might easily have happened to us never to have half a crown again. So we decided to dally no longer with being journalists and bandits and things like them, but to send for sample and instructions how to earn two pounds a week each in our spare time. We had seen the advertisement in the paper, and we had always wanted to do it, but we had never had the money ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... of it, for he proceeded to add in a hard tone: "That or immediate confession to your husband, with me by to substantiate your story. No slippery woman's tricks will go down with me. Fix the date here and now and I promise to stand back and await the result in total silence. Dally with it by so much as an hour, and I am at your gates with a story that all must hear." Is it a matter of wonder that the stricken woman, without counsel and prohibited, from the very nature of her secret, from seeking counsel uttered the first one that came to mind and ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou art exempt. Thou shalt not go! Thou dost ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... opinion. Can it be right to tend and care for the body that has an hereditary predisposition to some malady, and are we to neglect the growth and spread in the young character of hereditary taint of vice, and to dally with it, and wait till it be plainly mixed up with the feelings, and, to use the language of Pindar, "produce malignant ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one end resting on his stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his own proper weapon, which, as he rode, projected backwards, and displayed its little pennoncelle, to dally with the faint breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equipment must be added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and worn, which was thus far useful that it excluded the burning rays of the sun from the armour, which they would ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... colour, comely and fair-spoken, Worthy companion to an earl or so, But not a bride for Edgar, England's king. This will allay the strong effects in love Fame wrought in Edgar's mind of Alfrida. Well, I'll to court, and dally with the king, And work some means to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... seized; the wreck would be examined, the blood found, the lagoon perhaps dredged, and the bodies of the dead would reappear to testify. An impulse almost incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... dally by the way, when nothing, at those hours, I make out, so much spoke to us as the animated pictured halls within the Palace, primarily those of the Senate of the Empire, but then also forming, as with extensions they still and much more copiously form, the great Paris museum of contemporary ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... work—put it off as long as may be; and even when the paper is spread out and the pen all right, and the ink within easy reach, how they keep back from the final plunge! And after they have begun to write, how they dally with their subject; shrink back as long as possible from grappling with its difficulties; twist about and about, talking of many irrelevant matters, before they can summon up resolution to go at the real point they ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... party separated for a short time. Ottilie escaped to her room, where she could give way to her tears. No weight of sorrow had ever pressed so heavily upon her as this clear perception (which she tried, as people usually do, to make still clearer to herself), that men love to dally with and exaggerate the evils which circumstances have once begun to inflict ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had hardly passed, after the second rejection of Mr. Canning at her door, before the thought of whistling him back again flashed luringly across Carlisle's mind. She repelled the thought, but it recurred, and she came to dally with it, ably assisted in that direction by mamma. What had he done to warrant such absurd melodramatics?... More and more her mind had fastened upon the genuine tenderness, the emotion, the man ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the change in light and colour; Saul did not; neither was disposed to dally for a moment. They were obliged to give forth their voices now in hoarse ejaculations, to make the patient beasts understand that they were to step off the rough log landing-place into the boat. The boat was almost rectangular ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... "Oh, do come along! we shan't git to that wheel to-day if you dally so, and begin to talk ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Jules Sandeau's friendly offices acquainted literary circles that a young man of the best society, devoted to literature, the author of some remarkable sketches in the newspapers and reviews, was about to appear as the literary critic of "L'Assemblee Nationale," the well-known dally newspaper, which has been since suppressed by the government. A month afterwards my signature might have been read at the foot of a feuilleton of fifteen columns. About the same period of time a fashionable ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... always remember to stand inside of that circle, when you take 'em off and put 'em on, there won't be any more trouble. And take 'em off as soon as you shut the doors. If you dilly-dally a minute—" ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... little sound was heard save the working of their jaws; but as nature began to feel more than adequately supplied, soft sighs began to be interpolated and murmuring conversation intervened. Then some of the more moderate began to dally with tit-bits, and ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it occurred to her. She must not dally with it—no she mustn't. To in anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... wilted things, and London was as hot as ever. Still the charm of these open spaces of sky and park, after the high walls and innumerable windows of Brown's Buildings, was very great; Marcella wanted nothing more but to lie still, to dally with a book, to dream as she pleased, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would appear to have everything in his favour when set upon by the tempter, and it might seem strange that in this case he should dally so long with the danger. But the fact is there were unusual elements in this temptation, such as have been already set forth, and Bert's course of action from the time when he first saw the translation of Sallust in Regie Selwyn's room, until when at length after days of indecision, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... reverenced a man of whom it could be truly said that he had once, and once only, (for more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality of the passion,) been desperately in love; in love, that is to say, in a terrific excess, so as to dally, under suitable circumstances, with the thoughts of cutting his own throat, or even (as the case might be) the throat of her whom he loved above all this world. It will be understood that I am not justifying such enormities; on the contrary, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of my entrusted power, When with my mortal foes you tamely dally'd, By hardy rebels braved, you poorly sought A servile pause, and begg'd a shameful truce. Should Essex thus, so meanly compromise, And lose the harvest of a plenteous glory, In idle treaties, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... or not? If my Wife does the most ordinary thing, as visiting her Sister, or taking the Air with her Mother, it is always carried with the Air of a Secret: Then she will sometimes tell a thing of no Consequence, as if it was only Want of Memory made her conceal it before; and this only to dally with my Anxiety. I have complained to her of this Behaviour in the gentlest Terms imaginable, and beseeched her not to use him, who desired only to live with her like an indulgent Friend, as the most morose and unsociable Husband in the World. It is no easy ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... their cries to one another, and the wounded sat by the fires and dressed their hurts, and with the officers I talked over the engagements of the day, and the methods of each charge, and the other details of the fighting. It is the special perquisite of soldiers to dally over these matters with gusto, though they are entirely without interest ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... not mean to dally with you this morning. So God bless you! Take care of yourself, and sometimes fold to your heart ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... By young graves weep; The daisies love to dally Where maidens sleep. May their bloom, in beauty vying, Never wane Where thine earthly part is lying, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... year to dally in true lovers' fashion under pine trees in some remote solitude, so Dick took her to cities and theaters and big shops and got his fun out of watching her revel with open purse. Their honeymoon was more full of occupation and less of rapture and sweet ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... palettes dabb'd with every color. Over the breast of the pond I notice many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle capricious flight. Near where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed topt with a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time. By-and-by a humming-bird visits the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and shimmering about. These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of the August foliage, (we have had some copious rains ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Bonaly's gray-brow'd castle towers, Bounded by mountains, and bedded in flowers; Here hangs the blue bell, and there waves the broom; Nurtured by art, rarest garden sweets bloom; Heather and thyme scent the breezes that dally, Playing amang the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... from the first. She did not speak at all for a minute, then she chose to dally with the ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... thing for him: he has some strength of mind—some soul—above vulgar prejudices; so must a woman be to hold him. He was caught at first by her grace and beauty, and that sort of stuff; but I knew it could not last—knew she'd dilly dally with Clary, till he would turn upon his heel and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Come," taking Maurice by the arm; "come, they may be seeking us. To the frontier. Every hour is precious. To a telegraph office! We shall see if I dally with peasant girls, if I forsake ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... stay, bide, take time; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; linger, loiter; bide one's time, take one's time; gain time; hang fire; stand over, lie over. put off, defer, delay, lay over, suspend; table [parliamentary]; shift off, stave off; waive, retard, remand, postpone, adjourn; procrastinate; dally; prolong, protract; spin out, draw out, lengthen out, stretch out; prorogue; keep back; tide over; push to the last, drive to the last; let the matter stand over; reserve &c. (store) 636; temporize; consult one's pillow, sleep on it. lose an opportunity &c. 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... an anticipated visit probably caused us to dally less than usual over our morning meal. At all events, when we rose from the table and went on deck the boat was still nearly a mile distant. And a very curious object she looked; for the weather being stark calm, and the water glassy smooth, the line of the horizon ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... Thing it is for a Woman to dally too long with her Lover's Desires; how many have owed their being old Maids to ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... had overcome the first giddy rapture of returning life, and was sure that I was steady on my feet, I dared to dally with the subject. I asked if bad news had come for Freule Menela, expressed devout relief that it had not, and piped regret at being ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar—while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!—Many were the "wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller,) between him and C.V. Le G——, "which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English man of war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... virgin honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, with the Tower- stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy,—as people in the green stage of millionism will have them,—I can dally with their amber semi- fluids or glossy spherules without a shiver,)—you know these small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each boarder found ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Banquets that cost as much as Ten a Throw. He would dally with Fish that had Glue Dressing on top of it and Golf Balls lying alongside. He would tackle Siberian Slush that had Hair Tonic floating on top of it. Then the Petrified Quail and the Cheese that should have been served in 1884. Often, sitting at these Magnificent Spreads, he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... hand a large clumsy glove. In my mind's eye I saw hair and claws under it, but I knew it was a hand shut hard—perhaps badly bruised. I glanced at the other: it was lovely as hand could be, and I felt that, if I did less than loathe her, I should love her. Not to dally with usurping emotions, I ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... interrupted me. Yes; I'll give her every chance to save herself. She shall say yea, or nay, in straight speech, and in so many words. After that, I'll understand how to act. But come! we're wasting time. A duel's a thing won't do to dally over. Do you intend to meet your ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... ask me to respect the memory of your jailer! Decency? Delicacy? What are they except artificialities, which vanish in times of stress? Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Porfirio Diaz—they were strong, purposeful men; they lived as I live. Senora, you dally ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... valley, Sol scarce with thee dare dally; He plants no rose-blushes on thy cheek, Yet indebted to his power art thou from hour to hour, And his beams play with thee hide and seek. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an evil conscience. You may dally as long as you like by the roadside. It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and watches over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. Not to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to live for ever. You have no idea, unless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that little confidence; but I must not dally. What arms have you in the house, and have ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... represents the south side of Fort Street, from the Brown Jug corner east. The wooden building next is a photograph gallery owned by Fred. Dally. He with R. Maynard were the only ones in the business at that time, I think. Next is Dr. Powell's residence and surgery; the house is not visible, being set back from the street. Alexander McLean's "Scotch House" clothing store is plainly seen. Amongst those standing in front are Mr. McLean, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... even if it be out of season. With the recollection of last night still so fresh, even the serious things of life seem trifles, far more its small conventionalities. Mr. Lyndsay, your friend has made his choice, but you are dallying between belief and unbelief. Oh, do not dally long! We need no spirit from the dead to tell us life is short. Do we not feel it passing quicker and quicker every year? The one thing that is serious in all its shows and delusions is the question it puts to each one of us, and which we ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... more poor SALLY's tricks With glee fill girl or boy full; No mug of beer her soul can cheer, Nor glass of O-be-joyful! We yet may see some Chimpanzee With Drink's temptations dally, To WILFRID's woe; but no, ah! no! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... gladness; but now let us dally no longer, for I have many folk to see to-day and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... may do better," answered the Fleming. "But would your reverence have me dally until the question amongst the garrison be, whether a plump priest or a fat Fleming will be the better flesh to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... a nearly unparalleled unconsciousness of the delays, the charms, the pauses and preparations of imagery. Her strength does not dally with the parenthesis, and her simplicity is ignorant of those rites. Her lesser work, therefore, is plain narrative, and her greater work is no more. On the hither side—the daily side—of imagery she is still a strong and solitary writer; on the ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Wherefore not? wherefore not, I say, boy?" cried the conspirator, very savagely. "By all the furies in deep hell, you were better not dally with me." ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... and he hastened on board to put on his uniform and obey this order. He received his despatches from the captain of the frigate, with orders to proceed to sea immediately. Mr Vanslyperken, under the eye of his superior officer, could not dally or delay: he hove short, hoisted his mainsail, and fired a gun as a signal for sailing; anxiously looking out for Ramsay's boat with his letters, and afraid to go without them; but no boat made ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... against us, as we would for the obtaining thereof be contented to have a French king our so perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a suitor therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and after the advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play and dally with kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all things, and more dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is any piece of our cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be none other thing but our cause, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... for his departure, and led him forth. The shrubbery of flowering trees struck refreshingly on the sight, with interlacing branches in rich confusion, among which was some Asagao in full blossom. Genji was tempted to dally, and looked contemplatively over them. The maiden still accompanied him. She wore a thin silk tunic of light green colors, showing off her graceful waist and figure, which it covered. Her appearance was attractive. Genji looked at her tenderly, and led her to ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... spot of brightness in the waste, and went back up the hill in the dark and the cold, to busy himself about his own work, even to spin it out, if necessary, till he should hear the gruff "Grub's ready!" And when that dinner-gong sounds, don't you dally! Don't you wait a second. You may feel uncomfortable if you find yourself twenty minutes late for a dinner in London or New York, but to be five minutes late for dinner on the Winter Trail is ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... moment her protege was extremely distasteful to the lady. But she was a philosopher where marriage was concerned, and she whole-heartedly hoped that her cousin Millicent would not dally too long with her opportunity and allow the matrimonial prize to escape. She was sincerely fond of Millicent, and desired for her the best things in the world. She sometimes said ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... much loss of time and great disaster. In accordance with this crafty system, the agent expressed the opinion that it would "be good and requisite for the English government somewhat to temporise," and to dally for a season longer, in order to see what measures the States would take to defend themselves, and how much ability and resources they would show for belligerent purposes. If the Queen were too eager, the Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were, their power, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... once more, and all will, I believe, do well. I am pressed to get on with Woodstock, and must try. I wish I could open a good vein of interest which would breathe freely. I must take my old way, and write myself into good-humour with my task. It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back, and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. All men I suppose do, less or more. They are like the sensation of a sailor ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... arrived. Surmounting indescribable hazards and hardships he walked the pavement of New York. In an hour the mutable quicksands of a great city would swallow him forever. Free! He wanted to stroll about, peer into shop windows, watch the amazing electric signs, dally; but he ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise; Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away,—where'er thy bones are hurl'd; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides Where thou perhaps, under the whelming tide Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist vows ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... woo a widow must not dally, He must make hay while the sun doth shine; He must not stand with her, Shall I, Shall I? But boldly say, Widow, thou must ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... bond—the government extended to them by the British Empire. Nor need we stay now to speculate on the nationalities which will arise from the wreckage of Turkey, Austria, or Russia, nor shall we dally with the Balkan jumble of nationalities. We simply note that these instincts or feelings which compel men of like speech, habits, and traditions to group themselves into independent national units are most active and ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... my wench,—now that's what I call hitting the nail on the head, like a right sensible woman!" cried Johnny, fetching her a slap on the shoulder, and laughing heartily. "That's doing the thing now to some tune. I'm for none of your dilly-dally ways. I once knew a young fellow that was desperately smitten by a young woman, and though he could pluck up courage enough to go and see her, he couldn't summon courage enough to speak out his mind when he got there; and so he and the damsel sate opposite one ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears; Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate herse where Lycid lies. For so, to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... of them, for the chamois hunters, the foresters, the cragsmen of the Austrian Alps are no mean antagonists, as all of us know who have shot and climbed with them. Very fine men, they shoot quick and straight, and when an officer of Alpini tells us not to dally to admire the scenery, because we are within view of an Austrian post within easy range, we recall old days and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Dally, v. [dli] Juguetear, divertirse, burlarse; dilatar, suspender, hacer pasar el tiempo con gusto. Maglar, maglibng, magbir; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... was put before her. Would she dally with it, and succumb to it? And could anyone ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... gentle or the comforter," and further said: "These dogges are little, pretty, proper, and fyne, and sought for to satisfie the delicatenesse of daintie dames and wanton women's wills, instruments of folly for them to play and dally withall, to tryfle away the treasure of time, to withdraw their mindes from their commendable exercises. These puppies the smaller they be, the more pleasure they provoke as more meete playfellowes for minsing mistrisses to beare in their bosoms, to keepe company withall in their ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Let dogmatism retire, and blossom, flowers of fancy, on your yielding stems! Henceforward the reader is our confidential counsellor. We will pretend that our means of information are no better than other writers'. We will uniformly revel in speculation, and dally with imaginative delights; and only when hard pressed for the true path will we snatch off the veil, and let forth for ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to signal the conductor to stop were Events. Shopping, all by herself, was even more delightful; so she dallied over every purchase and every exchange as long as she could—and it was not hard to dally, with the crowds, the long waits, and the ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... stage and sing for the good of Art and her lovers. Since that was no longer possible, she preferred never to sing a note again in public. The worst wrench of all was her promise to Monsignor not to sing Grania, and since she had made that sacrifice, she could not dally with lesser things. Then, resuming her search among her jewellery, she selected the few things she would like to keep. She examined a cameo brooch set in filigree gold, ornamented with old rose diamonds, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... not backward there. I protest, a freer drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it. "By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me so, I got it by heart at two readings. It is a kind of poetry, but in a form which ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... account of all that had happened during the absence of himself and the skipper. I had scarcely finished when the cabin boy came up with the intimation that breakfast was ready in the cabin, and we accordingly went below, seated ourselves, and fell to. We did not dally long over the meal, for there was still plenty to be done and thought about; but before returning to the deck I remarked to Cunningham that I should like to look in and see how the skipper was getting on, and we both entered the stateroom together. ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... by birth a Phocaean, of Ionia, born of free parents, and well educated. Once when Cyrus was at supper, she was led in to him with other women, who, when they were sat down by him, and he began to sport and dally and talk jestingly with them, gave way freely to his advances. But she stood by in silence, refusing to come when Cyrus called her, and when his chamberlains were going to force her towards him, said, "Whosoever lays hands on ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... gambol in the shade Of the same grove, and drink one common stream. Apathies are none. No foe to man Lurks in the serpent now; the mother sees And smiles to see, her infant's playful hand Stretch'd forth to dally with the crested worm, To stroke his azure neck, or to receive The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue. All creatures worship man, and all mankind One Lord, one Father. Error has no place; That creeping pestilence is driven away; The breath of heaven has chased it. In the heart No passion ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... name's a word; and to dally with that word might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals, ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no more constant to usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of living. Good Lord, to think she has caught old Mountclere! She is sure to have him if she does not dally with him so long that he gets ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... house, or else the cadaverous cold of the dying season, rather braced Amuel when the time was come and he would step out bolder upon the day that he feared than he had perhaps for weeks. He longed on that day for a letter for the last house in the lane, there he would dally and talk awhile and look on church-going faces before his last tramp over the lonely wold to end at the dreaded door of the queer grey house ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... spoke another stable hand came up, deftly threw the heavy harness over the horse's back, and set to work to buckle it with a speed that showed it was a job he did not care to dally over. No sooner was it accomplished than the other horses were hastily put in their places, the black wheeler in the meantime tramping upon the barn floor in a seeming frenzy of impatience, although his head was ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... walls of the chamber; and if the X-ray electrodes were let into the glass chamber and a proper vacuum was attained, you could get a fluorescent lamp of several candle-power. I started in to make a number of these lamps, but I soon found that the X-ray had affected poisonously my assistant, Mr. Dally, so that his hair came out and his flesh commenced to ulcerate. I then concluded it would not do, and that it would not be a very popular kind of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Mirobolant began to have an opportunity of exercising that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It was then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other places to walk in besides the river-side, where Pen was fishing. He came day after day, and whipped the stream, but the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but it seems a useless thing our goin' up to the oak. I know the Cap' sayed we were to wait for them under it. Why cant we just as well stay heer? 'Taint like they'll be long now. They wont dally a minute, I know, after they've clutched the shiners, an' I guess they got 'em most as soon as we'd secured these pair o' petticoats. Besides they'll come quicker than we've done, seeing as they're more like to be ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, and causes ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... singulars, trumpery mechanical pedantries, as we think now, to whom grammar is no longer, as of old, "a new invented game." Moreover, he has to give examples of the faults opposed to sublimity, he has to dive into and search the bathos, to dally over examples of the bombastic, the over-wrought, the puerile. These faults are not the sins of "minds generous and aspiring," and we have them with us always. The additions to Boileau's preface (Paris, 1772) contain abundance ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... should never be long, it being said, not without reason, that "nothing dries up so soon as tears." If time can mitigate the pangs of real grief, of course the counterfeit grief assumed in speaking must sooner vanish; so that if we dally, the auditor finding himself overcharged with mournful thoughts, tries to resume his tranquility, and thus ridding himself of the emotion that overpowered him, soon returns to the exercise of cool ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... troubles were swamped by a flood of pity for Diana. She felt sure that Diana was in love with Bellew, and feared that he had not told her the truth. On the other hand, he might honourably have done so, and Diana being the reckless scatterbrain she was, still chose to dally on the primrose path of danger. It was hard to know what ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... capitalist organization is called the National Economic League. It likewise manifests the frankness of men who do not dilly-dally with terms, but who say what they mean, and who mean to settle down to a long, hard fight. Their letter of invitation to prospective members opens boldly. "We beg to inform you that the National Economic ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... Wonders all perform; Rolland and Olivier strike hard; Turpin Th' Archbishop, deals more than a thousand blows; The twelve Peers dally not upon the field, While all the French together fight as if One man. By hundreds and by thousands fall The Pagans: none scapes death, save those who fly Whether they will or no, all lose their lives. And ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... not in a sportive humour now: Tell me, and dally not, where is the money? We being strangers here, how darest thou trust 60 So great a ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... sparrer-grass, en dey fix up a smashin' dinner. Bimeby one er de little Rabbits, playin' out in de back-yard, come runnin' in hollerin', 'Oh, ma! oh, ma! I seed Mr. Fox a comin'!' En den Brer Rabbit he tuck de chilluns by der years en make um set down, en den him and Miss Rabbit sorter dally roun' waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin', but no Brer Fox ain't come. Atter 'while Brer Rabbit goes to de do', easy like, en peep out, en dar, stickin' fum behime de cornder, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... men of power came once into the main highways, dusty, timid, foot-sore, and curiously old-fashioned. Now is the up grade eased by scholarships; young men labour with the football instead of the buck-saw, and wear high collars, and travel on a Pullman car, and dally with slang and cigarettes in the smoking-room. Altogether it is a new Republic, and only those unborn shall know if ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... long and loud monologue as to whether he should shoot Houseman or not, ending with a prayer to heaven to save him from more blood-guiltiness! Such are the childish excesses to which a playwright will presently descend when once he begins to dally with facile convention. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... in reporting the circumstances, Hannah had dallied—thus far I had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now there remained nothing to dally with any longer—and she rushed along in her narrative, hurrying to tell—I hurrying to hear. A second, a third examination had ensued, then a final committal—all this within a week. By that time all the world was agitated with the case; literally not the city only, vast as that city was, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the master-at-arms. "In brig there, I say!"—They dally no more; Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar, Together they pounce on the formidable Finn, Pinion and cripple and hustle him in. Anon, under sentry, between twin guns, He slides off in drowse, and the long ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... as I came out and shook him into attention, "there is naught within more dangerous than shadows, or perchance a rat. Nor have I any time longer to dally over such boyishness. I had supposed you a soldier and a brave man, not a nerveless girl to be frightened in the dark. Come, there is ample hiding-space behind the walls, and I purpose leaving you here to ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to the control of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have been an old soldier, but more still to have been a doctor. There is no time to dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore, and jumped on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soon done; inasmuch as the Commodore is not exactly one to dally in such matters; and when his locks ticked, as he drew the hammers to half-cock, Chase quietly dismounted from his perch, and Shot's head and fore-paws appeared above the barrier; but not till Archer's hand gave the expected signal did ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... length to consider myself as it were at home in this singular country of Aheer—without, however, experiencing any desire to dally here longer than the force of circumstances absolutely requires. It must be confessed, as I have already hinted, that the town of Tintalous,[1] in front of which we are encamped, does not at all answer the idea ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... many housen full of those Damosels, euen as our schooles are full of children in France to learne to reade. Moreouer, the misrule and riot that they keepe in those houses is very great, for very wantonly they sport and dally togither, shewing whatsoever God hath sent them. They are no men of great labour. They digge their grounds with certaine peeces of wood, as bigge as halfe a sword, on which ground groweth their corne, which they call Offici: it is as bigge as our small peason: there is great ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... me crazy; I feel that I'm wasting away; My brain is becoming more hazy, My appetite less every day. But, ah! I'd not pray for existence, Nor struggle my life to prolong, If, up some dark alley, with him I might dally Who wrote that ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Theo did not dally with his dressing, you may be sure; he was far too hungry, and too eager to attack the program ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... offering to forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... other youths had long finished breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee, till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how little he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen, when she shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no sooner, and when he did so, told his mother that he could not have children screaming at his door at all hours of ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went gayly, gayly In the house of Idah Dally; There were always throats to sing Down ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... holy fear. GOD warned His disciples to be wary in the world when He said thus: "Soothly the world shall withstand you with temptations." Therefore, if thou must go out, for thine own profit or that of others, colour not thy going with any false hue, to feign for thyself an occasion to dally with the world, for pleasure or command, or to be known ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... no doubt of it, child. Therefore it behooves us to be silent respecting the matter. But, by my life, girl! we dally too long. Away! and set a guard upon thy lips. If thou canst carry so weighty a matter sub silentio then will I deem thee better than the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... thou dally, then I am thy foe, And feare shall force what frendship cannot winne. Thy death shall bury what thy life conceales. Thou dyest for ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... line of her great father. Christina consented to be crowned, but she absolutely refused all thought of marriage. She had more suitors from all parts of Europe than even Elizabeth of England; but, unlike Elizabeth, she did not dally with them, give them false hopes, or use them for the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... the company of his cousin. He had been seen there with her on the road to Carlunnan. That venue of all others! God! did the river sing for him too among its reeds and shallows; did the sun tip Dunchuach like a thimble and the wild beast dally on the way? That was the greatest blow of all! It left plain (I thought in ray foolishness) the lady's coolness when last I met her; for rae henceforth (so said bitterness) the serious affairs of life, that in her notion ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Harrison heard of his daughter's public confession of shameful conduct with her book-agent boarder, he was a highly scornful man. He scorned her for her weakness in yielding to what he termed the "dally-faddle" of the book-agent, and he doubly scorned her for repudiating her former testimony. The moral side of the matter was obscure to him; ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to it too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; not there to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its part, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate its happiness and to amplify it. It reckons ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... on the road that afternoon anyhow, but she could not feel easy in her mind to go very far until the child was found. Virginia folks and Marylanders were the same as neighbors. If Mrs. Tracy would take a seat in the carriage, they would make it their business to dally along the road and meet the word the men out searching were to bring in. Mrs. Tracy clung to Grandma Padgett's arm as if she knew what a stay the Ohio neighbors had always found this vigorous old lady. The conveyance which brought her from Indianapolis had been sent back. She was glad to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... way or another, must bring the weary question to a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a resolution which made further procrastination impossible; if he did not mean well, he could not be permitted to dally further with the interests of the English nation. Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return from Bologna, he took the final step from which there was no retreat, and "somewhere about St. Paul's day,"[405] Anne Boleyn received the prize for which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... meadow. "I'll walk down there and let 'em know you are here," he said. "They would dilly-dally like that till after dark, an' then come home swingin' hands an' gigglin' an' sayin' fool things to each other. They make me sick sometimes. I believe in love, you understand—I think married folks ought to love each other, in the bounds o' reason, but this mushy business—well, it ain't ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... Eight young girls,—young ladies, for those who prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,—all in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the loudest, as the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his last word; nevertheless were I fain to come up and speak with him." "Come up then," said Sir Medard; "yet I must warn thee that it may be easier for thee to come in to Eastcheaping today than to go out therefrom. Moreover, bethink ye if ye dally how it would be were we to open our gates and fall upon you with all ours, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... the gods, in sundry shapes, Committing heady riots, incest, rapes; For know, that underneath this radiant flour Was Danaee's statue in a brazen tower; Jove slily stealing from his sister's bed, To dally with Idalian Ganymed, And for his love Europa bellowing loud, And tumbling with the Rainbow in a cloud; Blood-quaffing Mars heaving the iron net Which limping Vulcan and his Cyclops set; Love kindling ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... anger of white heat; "since you prefer those disreputable strangers to your family, go to them. I wash my hands of you, and shall write to your father to this effect to-night. I'm a prompt man and don't dilly-dally." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... ways in upland Puna; Walk softly, commit no offense; Dally not, nor pluck the flower sin; Lest God in anger bar the road, And you find no ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... time to tell you in the fulness of detail how those two spinsters brought up Mary, but there is so much else to put before you that I dare not dally here. Still, I am going to find time to say that all the love and affection which Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty had ever woven into their fancies were now showered down upon Mary—falling softly and sweetly like petals from two full-blown roses when stirred ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... lost all the days since this letter began rehandling Chapter IV. of the Samoa racket. I do not go in for literature; address myself to sensible people rather than to sensitive. And, indeed, it is a kind of journalism, I have no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come soon. In two months from now it shall be done, and should be published in the course of March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am going to call it A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can you think A Maid in love as much as you can be, Assisted with the silence of the Night, (Which veils her Blushes too) can say— I dare not? Or if she do, she'll speak it faintly o'er, And even whilst she so denies will yield. Go, go prepare your self for this Encounter, And do not dally as you did to day, And fright your Pleasure with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. 665 Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what, if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 Comes seldom save from rage and ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... family while going through college. This looked very plausible; but I was deeply impressed with the blunders I had already made in trying to be a politician, then a soldier, and not going at once to the work of the Lord. I was afraid to dally about the matter any longer. I laid the case before the Lord and my wife. I knew she was to be the greatest sufferer by the change, and her counsel weighed more with me than that of all others. Considering ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... last. The British agent, though roused from his midnight sleep, received me in his home with the utmost kindness and hospitality. Oh! by Jove, how delightful it was to lie on fair sheets, and to dally with sleep, and to wake, and to sleep, and to wake once more, for the sake ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... she, "if he should write, what then? Do you meditate pleasure in replying? Ah, fool! I warn you! Brief be your answer. Hope no delight of heart—no indulgence of intellect: grant no expansion to feeling—give holiday to no single faculty: dally with no friendly exchange: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... heard, their persecutors were in doubt about their having descended into the shaft; and this uncertainty promised to be their salvation. Unless sure that they were taking all this trouble to some purpose, the red men would not dally long over their work. Besides, there was the rich booty to be drawn from the captured waggons, which would attract the Indians back to them, each having an interest in being present ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... with that last quarter of it in which the Lodge makes always its outward effort. Socrates for the Lodge had left no stone unturned; he had made his utmost effort dally. The democracy had been reinstated, and he was understood to be a moderate in politics. And the democracy was conventional-minded in religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a disturber and innovator. And the democracy was still smarting from the wound; imposed ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... ourselves to do great matters, that nearly concern the glory of God, the good of our souls, and the happiness of the three kingdoms. And in such holy and heavenly things, which so nearly concern our everlasting estate, to dally and trifle must needs incense the anger of the great Jehovah. 3. The manner used both by Jews, heathens and Christians in entering into covenant, doth clearly set out the weightiness of it, and what a horrible sin it is to break it. The custom among the Jews, will ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... do none but those that are commendable. Some strict Philosophers commend not, but rather blame Calisthenes, for losing the good favour of his Master Alexander, only because he would not pledge him as much as he had drunke to him. He shall laugh, jest, dally, and debauch himselfe with his Prince. And in his debauching, I would have him out-go al his fellowes in vigor and constancie, and that he omit not to doe evill, neither for want of strength or knowledge, but for lacke of will. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it occurred to her. She must not dally with it—no she mustn't. To in anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she had ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse, And I'll direct thee how thou shall escape By sudden flight. Come, dally not; be gone'? ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the sacrament of the altar was the same at Southwark as at Lewes. These things remained; while all else was accidental—the different height of his room, the unfamiliar angles in the passages, the new noises of London, the street cries, the clash of music, the disordered routine of dally life. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of my mind. You do not care to dilly-dally after church. 'Tis as bad as a London rout, where you move an inch an hour. Well, there are men here to-day who have made some stir in the world! Do you ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and the opera and who, upon retiring this night, will seek slumber with the aid of some threadbare blasphemy of old Voltaire, some sensible satire by Paul Louis Courier, or some essay on economics, you who dally with the cold substance of that monstrous water-lily that Reason has planted in the hearts of our cities-let me ask, if by some chance this obscure book falls into your hands, not to smile with noble disdain or shrug ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... ten-finger-naily, These hands sho lotush-leafy, Are itching-anxious, girl, to dally With you; and in a jiffy I 'll drag Your Shweetness by the hair From the cart wherein you ride, As did Jatayu Bali's fair, The monkey ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... accountant. Has worked out the cost Of the keep of officials Who've recently crossed. It must be Three Millions; Mayhap 'twill increase If the delegates dally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... the third, Laertes: You do but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... put on his uniform and obey this order. He received his despatches from the captain of the frigate, with orders to proceed to sea immediately. Mr Vanslyperken, under the eye of his superior officer, could not dally or delay: he hove short, hoisted his mainsail, and fired a gun as a signal for sailing; anxiously looking out for Ramsay's boat with his letters, and afraid to go without them; but no boat made its appearance, and Mr Vanslyperken was forced to heave up his anchor. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... you, even if it be out of season. With the recollection of last night still so fresh, even the serious things of life seem trifles, far more its small conventionalities. Mr. Lyndsay, your friend has made his choice, but you are dallying between belief and unbelief. Oh, do not dally long! We need no spirit from the dead to tell us life is short. Do we not feel it passing quicker and quicker every year? The one thing that is serious in all its shows and delusions is the question it puts to each one of us, and which we answer to our eternal loss or gain. Many ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Grace intend to be present at the coronation, he may dally here no longer. . . Say you not so, Dacre?" ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... flash and fall, wink, and are overpast and renewed, while the gentle eyes of man hesitate and mingle the beginning with the close. These inexpert eyes, delicately baffled, detain for an instant the image that puzzles them, and so dally with the bright progress of a meteor, and part slowly from the slender course of the already fallen raindrop, whose moments are not theirs. There seems to be such a difference of instants as invests all swift movement with mystery in man's eyes, and causes the past, a moment ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... pretty grip and heave, O half-Nelson, beloved of wrestlers! What a leverage, what a perfection of result is with you! What a friend you are in time of peril! Woodell, too bloodthirsty to feint or dally, released his hold and stooped and shot forward, his arms low down, to get the country hold, which rarely failed when once secured. And, even as he did so, in that very half-second of time, there was a half-turn of the other's ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... trencher with what remained of the bacon and eggs, and saw him swallow a mouthful or two with apparent relish; but presently after began to dally with his knife and fork, like one whose appetite was satiated; and then took a long draught of the black jack, and handed his platter to the large mastiff dog, who, attracted by the smell of the dinner, had ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in a sportiue humor now: Tell me, and dally not, where is the monie? We being strangers here, how dar'st thou trust So great a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Sol scarce with thee dare dally; He plants no rose-blushes on thy cheek, Yet indebted to his power art thou from hour to hour, And his beams play with thee hide and seek. Lily of the ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... third. Laertes, you but dally, [Sidenote: you doe but] I pray you passe with your best violence, I am affear'd you make a wanton of me.[8] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough. Even the long hours, the early rising and the regularity enforced by the clangor of the bell were good discipline for one who was naturally inclined to dally and to dream, and who loved her own personal liberty with a willful rebellion against control. Perhaps I could have brought myself into the limitations of order and method in no ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... aching limbs appear incapable of supporting the weight on them. Difficulties loom appallingly large in the faint creeping light, courage fails, and the will grows feeble. Wyllard and his companions felt all this, but it was clear to them that they could not dally, with their provisions out, and staggering out of camp after a very scanty meal they hauled the sled through the slush for an hour or so. Then they had stopped, gasping, and the Indian slipped out of ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... the days since this letter began rehandling Chapter IV. of the Samoa racket. I do not go in for literature; address myself to sensible people rather than to sensitive. And, indeed, it is a kind of journalism, I have no right to dally; if it is to help, it must come soon. In two months from now it shall be done, and should be published in the course of March. I propose Cassell gets it. I am going to call it A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... burning sands, Green-wooded belts, enclasping summer lands, Or realms of dusky pines, or wolds of snow, Or jagged ice-peaks wrapt in purple glow, Or shadowy oceans lapped in fadeless sheen— Yet there were Paradise, were Lilith queen. To dally with my lord I was not meant; To soothe his idle whims, above him bent, Warm in my milk-white arms, lull his repose, Nor deep in subtle kisses drown his woes. Wherefore, since here no more dwells love, I ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... whether he should shoot Houseman or not, ending with a prayer to heaven to save him from more blood-guiltiness! Such are the childish excesses to which a playwright will presently descend when once he begins to dally with facile convention. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears; Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate herse where Lycid lies. For so, to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise, Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visitest the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... relations, but they sent me short and surly answers; nor did any one of them offer to come to see me, or to see the children, or so much as to inquire after them, well perceiving that I was in a condition that was likely to be soon troublesome to them. But it was no time now to dally with them or with the world; I left off sending to them, and went myself among them, laid my circumstances open to them, told them my whole case, and the condition I was reduced to, begged they would advise me what course to take, laid myself as low ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... atheism or papal infallibility. For long years the Socialists saw Church and State united against them, and both were therefore regarded with a common hatred. But no sooner does a serious difference arise between Church and State, than a portion of the Socialists begin immediately to dally with the former. [Footnote: 'Geschichte des Materialismus,' 2e Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.] The experience of the last German elections illustrates Lange's position. Far nobler and truer to my mind than ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... knowing him doomed, and loving to dally with him in her wickedness, 'Indeed if thou cam'st ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... however, should never be long, it being said, not without reason, that "nothing dries up so soon as tears." If time can mitigate the pangs of real grief, of course the counterfeit grief assumed in speaking must sooner vanish; so that if we dally, the auditor finding himself overcharged with mournful thoughts, tries to resume his tranquility, and thus ridding himself of the emotion that overpowered him, soon returns to the exercise of cool reason. We must, therefore, never allow this kind of emotion ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... something to have been an old soldier, but more still to have been a doctor. There is no time to dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore, and jumped on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... assumes to the beholder, but let him be one who has a clear insight. May I suppose that the judgment is given in the hearing of us all by one who is able to judge, and has dwelt in the same place with him, and been present at his dally life and known him in his family relations, where he may be seen stripped of his tragedy attire, and again in the hour of public danger—he shall tell us about the happiness and misery of the tyrant when compared with ...
— The Republic • Plato
... reporting the circumstances, Hannah had dallied—thus far I had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now there remained nothing to dally with any longer—and she rushed along in her narrative, hurrying to tell—I hurrying to hear. A second, a third examination had ensued, then a final committal—all this within a week. By that time all the world was agitated with the case; literally not the city only, vast ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... bladders light as air; Saying, thou fain wouldst comfort his distress, But dar'st not, canst not: nay, dear lady fair, All things are possible beneath the stress Of will, that flames above the soul's despair! Dally no longer: up, set to thy hand; Or see his love unclothed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... "I'll walk down there and let 'em know you are here," he said. "They would dilly-dally like that till after dark, an' then come home swingin' hands an' gigglin' an' sayin' fool things to each other. They make me sick sometimes. I believe in love, you understand—I think married folks ought to love each other, in the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... where Dr. Fuller coming in do confirm me in my verdict. From thence to my Lord's and despatched Mr. Cooke away with the things to my Lord. From thence to Axe Yard to my house, where standing at the door Mrs. Diana comes by, whom I took into my house upstairs, and there did dally with her a great while, and found that in Latin "Nulla puella negat." So home by water, and there sat up late setting my papers in order, and my money also, and teaching my wife her music lesson, in which I take great pleasure. So ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... visitor was kept waiting his pleasure, not altogether certain either as to his ultimate fate, for there were ugly stories as to those who had journeyed to Bekwando and never been seen or heard of since. Those were the sort of visitors with whom his ebon Majesty loved to dally until they became pale with fright or furious with anger and impatience; but men like this white captain, who had brought him no presents, who came in overwhelming force and demanded a passage through his country as a matter of right were his special detestation. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an' let it loose. Thar, I see Cipo now. Watch me!". Wrinkle spat on the ground, wiped his mouth with his hand, and puckered up his lips and whistled keenly. "He's comin'; watch 'im hop; he knows better than to dally when I give that sound. He's slow, though; walks like he had lumbago or locomotive attachment. Say, Cipo!" as the tall, elderly negro arrived, holding his tattered hat in his hand, "this is Mr. Alfred Henley, an' this is his hoss. Orders is out from headquarters to give both of 'em every ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... altogether masculine; "she was not for mincing obscenity, but would talk freely, whatever came uppermost." She never had any children, and was not taxed with debauchery: "No man can say or affirm that ever she had a sweetheart or any such fond thing to dally with her;" a mastiff was the only living thing she cared for. Her life was not altogether honest, but not so much from any organic tendency to crime, it seems, as because her abnormal nature and restlessness made her an outcast. She was too fond of drink, and is said ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "I wouldn't dilly-dally long if I were you," said Harkless, and his advice seemed good to the shell-men. A roll of bills, which he counted and turned over to the elder Bowlder, was sullenly placed in his hand. The fellow who had not yet spoken clutched the journalist's sleeve with ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... darling, you must come— The wind is off shore blowing; You only change your prison dull For one that's splendid, glowing! His Highness doats on milky cheeks, So do not make us dally"— We, eighty strong, who send ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... ceased to flout and dally. In spite of the delay that Marcus had experienced from the Taraxippos, the space that parted his bays from the black Arabs had sensibly diminished, round after round; and the interest of the race now centered entirely in him and the young ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had come, late, but with tremendous fury. He gained no sleep that night. The star of his desire shone like a mocking mirage before his mind's eye. It was all impossible, hopeless, but to love and lose were better than to live in ignorance of life's strongest passion. To dally with the impossible were sheer madness, he knew that. But what was to be done but obey the yearnings of his heart, though it brought ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... of exercising that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in the occupations of his art, the pangs of love. It was then that the large footmen were too much employed at Clavering Park to be able to bring messages, or dally over the cup of small beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It was then that Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other places to walk in besides the river-side, where Pen was fishing. He came day ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it Venus' glass: There might you see the gods, in sundry shapes, Committing heady riots, incests, rapes; For know, that underneath this radiant flour[10] Was Danaee's statue in a brazen tower: Jove slily stealing from his sister's bed, To dally with Idalian Ganymed, And for his love Europa bellowing loud, And tumbling with the Rainbow in a cloud; 150 Blood-quaffing Mars heaving the iron net Which limping Vulcan and his Cyclops set; Love kindling fire, to burn such towns as Troy; Silvanus weeping for the lovely boy That now ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... once obtained it. For two days he dwelt with us, spending his time for the most part in idle fashion, wandering about along the seashore or on the cliffs, but always with the look on his face of a man who does but dally with some fixed purpose. His doings were nothing to me, but by chance, from one of the brethren, I learnt that he was no stranger to the island—that once, many years ago, he had been the guest of the lord who ruled the little territory, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... perpetual union! Let the foundations be laid, let the superstructure be built up and cemented, let each stone be raised and reverted, In a spirit of national brotherhood! And may the earliest ray of the rising sun—till that sun shall set to rise no more—draw forth from it dally, as from the fabled statue of antiquity, a strain of national harmony, which shall strike a responsive chord in every ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the pretty time of a summer afternoon. The sun, in the last quarter of almost his longest journey of the year, but high yet, sent warm rays to rest in the meadows and dally with the tree tops and sparkle on the Mong and its salt outlet. The slight rustle of leaves now and then was as often caused by a butterfly or a kildeer as by the breeze; sometimes by a heavy damask rose that suddenly sent down its rosy shower upon the ground. It was the very pastime of birds and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... spirit of the people cries out for this declaration; the military, in particular, men and officers, are outrageous on the subject; and a man of your excellent discernment need not be told how dangerous it would be, in our present circumstances, to dally with the spirit, or disappoint the expectations, of the bulk of the people. May not despair, anarchy, and final submission be the bitter fruits? I am firmly persuaded that they will; and, in this persuasion, I most devoutly ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Street to Piccadilly Circus was performed every evening. In Piccadilly she found the 'bus that took her to Hammersmith. It was a pleasurable little journey; she looked forward to it. It amused her to dally on the way, stopping to look in the shop windows. The bright lights lifted her spirits. After a time she had become acquainted with the prints that hung in the print-seller's windows in Garrick Street; they always stayed there long ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,—all in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the loudest, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of an anticipated visit probably caused us to dally less than usual over our morning meal. At all events, when we rose from the table and went on deck the boat was still nearly a mile distant. And a very curious object she looked; for the weather being stark calm, and the water glassy smooth, the line of the horizon was invisible, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... this evil character. To young girls, with minds imperfectly disciplined, there is a fatal fascination in the mystery of surreptitious appointments and meetings. Mystery is so suggestive and romantic, and the young girl who, from piqued curiosity, is tempted to dally with a "Matrimonial" or a "Personal," is an object of commiseration. From dallying and reading and wondering, the step is easy to answer such notices. She believes that she has a chance of getting a rich and handsome husband, who will take her ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... power of this appetite for intoxicants; an appetite which, if once established, is almost sure to rob its victim of honor, pity, tenderness and love; an appetite, whose indulgence too often transforms the man into a selfish demon. Think of it, all ye who dally with the treacherous cup; are not the risks you are running too great? Nay, considering your duties and your obligations, have you any right to ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... that p'tater-patch wed by noon;" he watched the departure of his tormentor, and went straight to the potato-patch, duty and fear leading him by either hand. The weeds had no safety of their lives that day; he was in too great a hurry to dally, as he loved to do, over the bigger stalks of pigweed, the giants which he, with his trusty sword—only it was a hoe—would presently dash to the earth and behead, and tear in pieces. Even the sprawling pusley-stems, which generally played the part of devil-fish and tarantulas ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... leave your Camp at evening and mush away to Town To dally with the hootch a bit, but the feeling will not down. You may mix up in a poker game, or try the dance hall's lure But you're fighting off a feeling, that the old cures cannot cure. You've got that longing feeling that there's nothing satisfies, ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... away, 240 Untill with love revokt from vaine affright, She hardly yet perswaded was to stay, And then to him these womanish words gan say; Ah Satyrane, my dearling, and my joy, For love of me leave off this dreadfull play; 245 To dally thus with death is no fit toy, Go find some other play-fellowes, mine own ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... he should write, what then? Do you meditate pleasure in replying? Ah, fool! I warn you! Brief be your answer. Hope no delight of heart—no indulgence of intellect: grant no expansion to feeling—give holiday to no single faculty: dally with no friendly ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... I could dictate as many words as that, even if I wanted to, and that there would be many minutes in which I should not dictate any words at all, she said she was afraid that if she fell into a dilly-dally, poky way of working it would impair her skill, and it might be difficult, when she left my employment, to regain her previous expertness. She was quite willing, however, to engage with me, and thought that if I would try to dictate as fast as possible ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... another, and the wounded sat by the fires and dressed their hurts, and with the officers I talked over the engagements of the day, and the methods of each charge, and the other details of the fighting. It is the special perquisite of soldiers to dally over these matters with gusto, though they are entirely without interest ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... you for that little confidence; but I must not dally. What arms have you in the house, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gladly are its demands conceded! Let dogmatism retire, and blossom, flowers of fancy, on your yielding stems! Henceforward the reader is our confidential counsellor. We will pretend that our means of information are no better than other writers'. We will uniformly revel in speculation, and dally with imaginative delights; and only when hard pressed for the true path will we snatch off the veil, and let forth for ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... now no more poor SALLY's tricks With glee fill girl or boy full; No mug of beer her soul can cheer, Nor glass of O-be-joyful! We yet may see some Chimpanzee With Drink's temptations dally, To WILFRID's woe; but no, ah! no! It won't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... a little space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence lay ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... crowds, the vassals, hurriedly armed, come flocking. "Why does the horn sound? Why are we called to arms? Here we are with our weapons.... Hagen, what danger threatens? What enemy is near? Who attacks us? Is Gunther in need of us?" "Forthwith prepare, and dally not, to receive Gunther returning home. He has wooed a wife!" This still in a tone befitting the announcement of disaster. "Is he in trouble? Is he hard pressed by the foe?" "A formidable wife he brings home!" "Is he pursued by the hostile kindred of the maid?" "He comes alone, unpursued." ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... for the duke's faithful comrade, William Fitz-Osborn. "My lord," said he, "we dally; let us all to arms and forward, forward!" The army got in motion, starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite hill of Senlac. A Norman, called Taillefer, "who sang very well, and rode a horse which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possible, growing younger daily. My motto is "Hustle and Bustle" and not "Dilly and Dally." I live on standard bread, in a wooden hut embowered, when feasible, with sweet peas. My ear is always close to the ground, and I can confidently predict what the man in the street will be thinking about the day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... the south side of Fort Street, from the Brown Jug corner east. The wooden building next is a photograph gallery owned by Fred. Dally. He with R. Maynard were the only ones in the business at that time, I think. Next is Dr. Powell's residence and surgery; the house is not visible, being set back from the street. Alexander McLean's "Scotch House" clothing store is plainly seen. Amongst ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... received intelligence that a large force was marching from Glasgow to intercept him at Columbia, should he succeed in evading the force at Lebanon. Harlan was not so far in his rear that he could afford to dally. "In this emergency," he said, "I determined to make a detour to the right of Lebanon, and by a night march to conceal my movements from the enemy, outstrip the column moving from Glasgow to Columbia, and cross the Cumberland before it came within striking ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... by the Old South Clock; Bogardus waited the sounding knock Of friends to come at the moment, "chock," To try his goose, his game, his hock, And hoped they would not dally; When one, and two, and three, and four, And running up the scale to a score, And adding to it many more, Who all their Sunday fixings wore, Came in procession to the door, And crowded in on his parlor floor, Filling him with confusion sore, Like ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... the right, although the complex vision is silent on that tremendous question, to dally with the idea of the survival of the soul after the death of the body. But this must for ever be an open question, not to be answered either negatively or affirmatively, not to be answered by the intelligence of any living man. All we can ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... devices. More good women have been tripped by over-confidence in their ability to curb and to control their own affections, than by direct temptation to love where love is not lawful. Men are different; their temptations are not so subtle. They know exactly to what it will lead, if they dally with sentiment. Therefore, if they mean to do the right thing in the end, they keep clear of the danger at the beginning. We cannot possibly forbid ourselves to go on loving, where love has once been allowed to reign supreme. I know you would not, in the first instance, have ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... world shall withstand you with temptations." Therefore, if thou must go out, for thine own profit or that of others, colour not thy going with any false hue, to feign for thyself an occasion to dally with the world, for pleasure or command, or to be known with ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... still they are prone to retire on occasion to some quiet corner where they can rest unobserved, and then their talk invariably drops into some simple, natural channel that is in accord with the tenor of their dally lives. Of course this is tinctured more or less with the unaccustomed sights and sounds about them, but not greatly so; for the most part they simply ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou art exempt. Thou shalt not go! ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the Republicans of this State, had made Judge Douglas our candidate for the Senate of the United States last year, and had elected him, there would to-day be no Republican party in this Union.... Let the Republican party of Illinois dally with Judge Douglas, let them fall in behind him and make him their candidate, and they do not absorb him—he absorbs them. They would come out at the end all Douglas men, all claimed by him as having indorsed every one of his doctrines upon the great subject with which the whole nation is engaged ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... really ought to try Dicky's way of restoring our fallen fortunes while yet the deed was in our power. Because it might easily have happened to us never to have half a crown again. So we decided to dally no longer with being journalists and bandits and things like them, but to send for sample and instructions how to earn two pounds a week each in our spare time. We had seen the advertisement in the paper, and we had always wanted to ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else, beside their household business or to play with their children, to drive away time but to dally with their cats, which they have in delitiis, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs.' It is not the least merit of the cat that it has banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of humanity—the monkey tribe; and as to the little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... rage is in its force, But give it way awhile, and let it waste. The rising deluge is not stopt with dams; Those it o'erbears, and drowns the hopes of harvest; But, wisely managed, its divided strength Is sluiced in channels, and securely drained. First, let small parties dally with their fury; But when their force is spent and unsupplied, The residue with mounds may be restrained, And dry-shod we may pass the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... breast of the pond I notice many white ones, crossing, pursuing their idle capricious flight. Near where I sit grows a tall-stemm'd weed topt with a profusion of rich scarlet blossoms, on which the snowy insects alight and dally, sometimes four or five of them at a time. By-and-by a humming-bird visits the same, and I watch him coming and going, daintily balancing and shimmering about. These white butterflies give new beautiful contrasts to the pure greens of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... inclination of man to worship a god he could see and feel (a trait seen all down the pages of history) asserted itself, and Mary, the mother of Christ, took the place in the eye and the heart previously occupied by her predecessors. [Footnote: Just as this work goes to press, the dally papers of the world announce that the oldest idol ever discovered has just been unearthed. The idol is a goddess, who is holding an infant in her arms.] Being in possession of the Acts of the Apostles, which plainly declares ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... kinds of birds and animals. That excellent lady quickly ascending a peak of those mountains, threw that semen into a golden lake. And then assuming successively the forms of the wives of the high-souled seven Rishis, she continued to dally with Agni. But on account of the great ascetic merit of Arundhati and her devotion to her husband (Vasishtha), she was unable to assume her form. And, O chief of Kuru's race, the lady Swaha on the first lunar ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... radical ever published in America; but on the other hand, it dealt with questions of literature and philosophy, where occasionally even respectable and conservative reviews permitted themselves to dally with ideas. Thyrsis was hoping that the publisher might see prestige and publicity in the adventure, and decide to take a chance; when this proved to be the case, he sank back with a vast sigh of relief. He had now money ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a toy, Love laughs and shows the silver arrow We knew so well as man and boy,— The shaft that stings through bone and marrow; Again our kindling pulses beat, With tangled curls our fingers dally, And bygone beauties smile as sweet As fresh-blown lilies ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sustain his belief that he has done serviceable work, he must be sore of his having charged them with good matter. How can the man do it, if, during his term of apprenticeship, he has allowed himself to dally here and there, down to moony dreamings over inscrutable beautiful eyes of a married lady; for the sole reason that he meets her unexpectedly, after an exchange of letters with her in long-past days at school, when she was an inexperienced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... woman, and knows what she knows. He seems, so far as I could judge, to be a manly, right-minded young man. He told me that he shot three tigers in India, and I observed that he took scarcely any wine at dinner. It won't do though, Virginia, to dilly-dally, for I am given to understand that he leaves in a fortnight for California, to explore the West. But he is coming back to spend several months next winter, and if you do not throw cold water on him now, he may feel disposed ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Commander-in-Chief of the whole force. Sure that is honour enough, and the sooner he hastens thither the better. He is gone to dally at Court and trifle with the Queen as of old. When I see these middle-aged folk, Queen and courtier, posing as lovers and indulging in youthful follies, I ask myself, will it be so with me? shall I dance attendance on fair ladies when I have told ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the one, that there is of thought and sentiment in the other. Both are absent and self-involved, both live out of themselves in a world of imagination. Hamlet is abstracted from everything; Romeo is abstracted from everything but his love, and lost in it. His 'frail thoughts dally with faint surmise', and are fashioned out of the suggestions of hope, 'the flatteries of sleep'. He is himself only in his Juliet; she is his only reality, his heart's true home and idol. The rest of the world is to him a passing dream. How finely is this character portrayed where he recollects ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... if thou dally, then I am thy foe, And feare shall force what frendship cannot winne. Thy death shall bury what thy life conceales. Thou dyest for more esteeming ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... the Danes, why was it not produced? Why have the nations of Europe been allowed to feel an indignation against this country beyond the reach of all subsequent information? Are these times, do you imagine, when we can trifle with a year of universal hatred, dally with the curses of Europe, and then regain a lost character at pleasure, by the parliamentary perspirations of the Foreign Secretary, or the solemn asseverations of the pecuniary Rose? Believe me, Abraham, it is not under such ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... we criminalists "must not dally with mathematical truth but must seek historical truth. We start with a mass of details, unite them, and succeed by means of this union and test in attaining a result which permits us to judge concerning the existence and the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... contentedly with their feet in the plentiful straw. But he himself would crouch before the cold hearth, trying to blow up the smouldering turf into a bright flame. He would throw his damp frieze coat over the back of a chair, and wait shivering for the fire to burn up and warm him. Sometimes he would dally with the thought that it might be best for him to sell up the whole place—house, stock, and field, and go into the town. Was he not living the life of a beast of burden? Worse, indeed! He had not had a single day of rest since his release: not one, among all these days of labour on which ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... devices. 3. Circulars, sent in quantities to specific classes of persons to whom the advertiser specially desired to address himself. It may be noted at the outset that advertising in periodical publications exercises a reflex influence upon these publications. The dally, weekly and monthly publications of the day are accustomed to look to advertisements for so large a part of their revenue that the purchaser of a periodical publication receives much greater value for his money than he could reasonably expect from the publisher if the aggregate advertising ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... grandparents progressed slowly and deliberately through a menu of medically thought-out dishes. Both the old people were on a rigid diet, and mostly the conversation between them consisted of grumbles at having to dally with baby-food and reminiscences of the admirable dinners of the past. An aged butler and a footman in the sere and yellow only added to the general Rip van Winklism, and the presence of two very old dogs, one the grandfather's Airedale and the other Mrs. Ludlow's ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... content to watch and to listen to her. The revelations of her personality were to me as a continual and glorious adventure. To flirt with her would be a confession on my part of a kind of superiority that I could never feel; a suggestion of the ridiculous assumption that I could afford to dally with and in certain circumstances flout her. I could sooner have dallied with and flouted a supreme work of art. Wherefore when she challenged me with her daring "Why?" I met her eyes with a look that if it ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... look twice to identify the man with the drooping mustaches. For three long and weary years I had seen him dally in the office of the State penitentiary. His name was William Cummings, and he was ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... only kind of game that a gentleman may play," put in Page incisively, "and we are not going to dally with any game about which a gentleman need feel the ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... yours: and for your guide The shepherd of the church let this suffice To save you. When by evil lust entic'd, Remember ye be men, not senseless beasts; Nor let the Jew, who dwelleth in your streets, Hold you in mock'ry. Be not, as the lamb, That, fickle wanton, leaves its mother's milk, To dally with itself ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... was any slightest pretence about Cornelia. She never, never even in the first place, made any possible effort to attract me. Can't you see that Cornelia looks to me to-day exactly the way that she looked to me in the first place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a traveler, you know, cannot dally indefinitely to feed his eyes on even the most wonderful view while all his precious lifelong companions,—his whims, his hobbies, his cravings, his yearnings,—are crouching starved and unwelcome ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... said, and this was the gist of his saying, that upon that line of boundary or limit that divided the North from the South a palace be made, where in the Northern courts should summer be, while in the South was winter; so should he move from court to court according to his mood, and dally with the summer in the morning and spend the noon with snow. So the Sultan's poets were sent for and bade to tell of that city, foreseeing its splendour far away to the South and in the future of time; and some were found fortunate. And of those ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... dead, but yet it moves and wriggles when you touch it, and after a while the husk bursts and out comes the butterfly. The account is good enough, so far as it goes, but nevertheless Aristotle shows no affection for the butterfly, does not linger and dally over it, tells no stories about it. This is all of a piece with the rest of Greek literature, and poetry in particular, where allusions to the butterfly are scanty and rare. I think the Greeks found something ominous or uncanny, something not to ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... week I visited the afflicted man dally, remaining with him perhaps a couple of hours at each interview. No clue had been discovered to his history, and the worthy physician had fixed upon one day after another as that upon which he would relieve himself of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... she heard in his voice both bitterness and passion, and at that moment the man himself seemed curiously to come alive and to compel.... But Joanna was not going to dally with temptation in the unaccustomed shape of Arthur Alce. She ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... perfect a friend, to be not only a mediator but a suitor therein, and a suitor attendant to have audience upon liking and after the advice of such cardinals as repute it among pastymes to play and dally with kings and princes; whose honour, ye may say, is above all things, and more dear to us in the person of our good brother, than is any piece of our cause at the pope's hands. And therefore, if there be none other thing but our cause, and the other causes whereof we be advertised, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... took great delight to see them eat their meat. Turkey gentlewomen, that are perpetual prisoners, still mewed up according to the custom of the place, have little else beside their household business, or to play with their children to drive away time, but to dally with their cats, which they have in delitiis, as many of our ladies and gentlewomen use monkeys and little dogs. The ordinary recreations which we have in winter, and in most solitary times busy our minds with, are cards, tables and dice, shovelboard, chess-play, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... my path into a real country road—a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business, never once stopping to flirt with the blushing autumn woodland at its left, or to dally with the dimpling ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... rode. Marvelled the Daughters of the Sun, who stood Near her, around that wondrous splendour-ring Traced for the race-course of the tireless sun By Zeus, the limit of all Nature's life And death, the dally round that maketh up The eternal circuit of the rolling years. And now amongst the Blessed bitter feud Had broken out; but by behest of Zeus The twin Fates suddenly stood beside these twain, One dark—her shadow fell on Memnon's heart; One bright—her radiance haloed Peleus' son. And ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... with the same philosophic calm as upon wine. Love, too, was to be regarded as one of the contributions to life's pleasure. To dally with golden-haired Pyrrha, with Lyce, or with Glycera, the beauty more brilliant than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little hesitation ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... attention to the fact acknowledged by all thorough students of this subject, namely, that, other things being equal, it is particularly the individual who has linguistic abilities, who is especially good at verbal composition, that seems to have most incentive to dally with the truth. But beyond this we would insist that a combination of verbal ability with proportionate mental defects in other fields gives a make-up which finds the paths of least resistance directly ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... eatable, for dinner; Bligh having determined to preserve sacredly, and at the peril of his life, the engagement they entered into, and to make their small stock of provisions last eight weeks, let the dally proportion be ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... too disagreeable for him to dally with it. If the charge were a true one, no consideration was due; if untrue, the sooner that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... this terrible sin? have you even once in this way yielded to the tempter's voice? Stop, consider, think of the awful results, repent, confess to God, reform. Another step in that direction and you may be lost, soul and body. You cannot dally with the tempter. You must escape ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... slaver, that he took the shackles from his cargo after it had been a day or two at sea. The lust for procuring the maximum of victims, who must be delivered in a minimum of time and at the least expense, could not dally with schemes to temper their suffering, or to make avarice obedient to common sense. It was a transaction incapable of being tempered. One might as well expect to ameliorate the act of murder. Nay, swift murder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... will make the time thirty hours. Your posts can perform the distance in that time, and take care that they do not dally on the way." ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, for some definite and decided action. Less talking and more action shall henceforth be my motto. I have not now, it is true, any digested proposition to present to the council; but I soon will have one, unless others are offered; for, in this emergency, it is little short of a crime to dally ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... "AEneid" to make men feel that the palm of victory comes only to those who persevere to the end; that duty does not abdicate in favor of inclination; and that the high gods will not hold guiltless the man who stops short of Italy to loiter and dally in Carthage even in the sunshine of a Dido's smile. When Italy is calling, no siren song of pleasure must avail to lure him from his course, nor must his sail be furled until the keel grates upon the ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... a profitable hour on the pier-head with a guide-book called Baddely's Scotland, and one of Bartholomew's maps. I was beginning to think that Amos might be able to tell me something, for a talk with the captain had suggested that the Tobermory would not dally long in the neighbourhood of Rum and Eigg. The big droving season was scarcely on yet, and sheep for the Oban market would be lifted on the return journey. In that case Skye was the first place to watch, and if I could ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... autumn gales. Self-fertilization has been guarded against by precarious means, but the safest of all devices - separation of the sexes on distinct plants. These are absolutely dependent, of course, on insect messengers - not visitors merely. Bees, which always show less inclination to dally from one species of flower to another than any other guests, and more intelligent directness of purpose when out for business are the groundsel-bush's truest benefactors. This is the only shrub among the multitudinous composite ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... young Magian[11] dally with grace so coy and fine, My eye shall bend their fringes to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Tom from the wagon, as he drove into the forest path, "I'm strong for putting on my clothes before I sit down to dally with food." ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... these words, she put on a serious look, and gave orders that he should be taken out and administered twenty blows with the bamboo. When the servants perceived that lady Feng was in an angry mood, they did not venture to dilly-dally, but dragged him out, and gave him the full number of blows; which done, they came in to report that the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and "Eleanores"—ladies with whom he frequently plays strange, though, we admit, by no means ungraceful vagaries; and Mr Patmore, as in duty bound, and following the imitative bent of his genius, must also have his Geraldine to dally with. The two following stanzas of playful namby-pambyism, are a specimen of the manner in which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... an imposing presence. It was told of him that he considered but one symptom, and this he discovered with his hand on the patient's pulse and his eyes on a big loud-ticking watch in a hunting case. If the pulse was quick, he prescribed quinine, if sluggish, he ordered calomel. To dally with minor ailments was as much beneath him as to temporise with modern medicine. In his last years he was still suspicious of vaccination, and entertained a profound contempt for the knife. Beyond his faith in calomel and quinine, there were but two articles in his creed; he believed ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Promethean powder, And now was searching for the shot That laid MAGNANO on the spot, 630 Beheld the sturdy Squire aforesaid Preparing to climb up his horse side. He left his cure, and laying hold Upon his arms, with courage bold, Cry'd out, 'Tis now no time to dally, 635 The enemy begin to rally: Let us, that are unhurt and whole, Fall on, and happy ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... certain groves—these are but ingredients, they are not the secret of the philtre. The place is sanative; the air, the light, the perfumes, and the shapes of things concord in happy harmony. The artist may be idle and not fear the "blues." He may dally with his life. Mirth, lyric mirth, and a vivacious classical contentment are of the very essence of the better kind of art; and these, in that most smiling forest, he has the chance to learn or to remember. Even on the plain of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Hamar did not dally. He quietly slipped through the open door, and darting swiftly along a stone passage, found his way to the entrance, which was blocked by two constables with their ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... there's no railway beyond Victoria Nyanza. Anything at all might happen in those great spaces beyond Uganda. Borderlands are quarrel-grounds. I should say the junction of British, Belgian, and German territory where Arab loot lies buried is the last place to dally in unarmed. You fellows 'ud better scour Zanzibar in the morning for the best guns ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... No, sir, Ile fight now, and the terror be Of all you champions to such as shee. 60 I did but thus farre dally; now observe. O all you aking fore-heads that have rob'd Your hands of weapons and your hearts of valour, Joyne in mee all your rages and rebutters, And into dust ram this same race of Furies; 65 In this one relicke of the Ambois gall, In his ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... these books, we should come to some conclusion as to what Heaven is. Let us call it, for the sake of our hypothesis, the most work one can do for the least self-interest, and let it go at that and get on with the story. For this story has to do with large and real affairs. It must not dally here with the sordid affairs of a lady who certainly was no better than she should be and of a gentleman who was as the hereinbefore mentioned receipts will show, much worse than he ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the carrot, decided to go elsewhere. He backed away and blatted. Little Jim took a quick dally round a veranda post. High-Tail plunged and ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... do better," answered the Fleming. "But would your reverence have me dally until the question amongst the garrison be, whether a plump priest or a fat Fleming will be the better flesh to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... not," he continued, "that the king's men look for thee either as the young lord or as the false priest's novice? Dally no longer, but ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... Damocles admired and loved, though even they were apt to be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang, and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts'-delights, to use unkind measures towards the good bunnia and sowkar who had lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... quieted down into an anger of white heat; "since you prefer those disreputable strangers to your family, go to them. I wash my hands of you, and shall write to your father to this effect to-night. I'm a prompt man and don't dilly-dally." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off at a tangent into the theory of possession by evil spirits. Since his rejection of science, he had lapsed into certain forms of mediaevalism, and he now began to dally with the theory of a malign incarnation which he elaborated until it became ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... pain, as a punishment inflicted by cowardice and timidity, we care not for his opinion. Can it be right to tend and care for the body that has an hereditary predisposition to some malady, and are we to neglect the growth and spread in the young character of hereditary taint of vice, and to dally with it, and wait till it be plainly mixed up with the feelings, and, to use the language of Pindar, "produce malignant fruit in ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... was much loss of time and great disaster. In accordance with this crafty system, the agent expressed the opinion that it would "be good and requisite for the English government somewhat to temporise," and to dally for a season longer, in order to see what measures the States would take to defend themselves, and how much ability and resources they would show for belligerent purposes. If the Queen were too eager, the Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were, their power, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sweir to sally, And at the door-cheeks daff an' dally, Seen's daidle thus an' shilly-shally For near a minute - Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley, The deil was ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gossiping that it sometimes becomes insignificant. His enemies called him immoral, which appears to have been a gross calumny so far as his private life was concerned, and is certainly a gross exaggeration as regards his writing. But he was rather too much given to dally about voluptuous subjects with a sort of chuckling epicene triviality. He is so far from being passionate that he sometimes becomes almost offensive. He is terribly apt to labour a conceit or a prettiness till it becomes vapid; and his "Criticism on Female Beauty," though it contains some ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... children to succeed her through the royal line of her great father. Christina consented to be crowned, but she absolutely refused all thought of marriage. She had more suitors from all parts of Europe than even Elizabeth of England; but, unlike Elizabeth, she did not dally with them, give them false hopes, or use them for the political advantage ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Sir John Fenwick, eagerly. "You have yourself admitted that you saw nothing, heard nothing at all treasonable—you cannot dally with a man whose life is in jeopardy. What evidence can you give with regard to the Duke that can at all ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... girls,—young ladies, for those who prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,—all in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cloud and sunshine;—the vineyard shall not be forever trodden down, the gaps shall be amended, and the fruitful branches once more dressed and trimmed. Even this day—ay, even this hour, I trust to hear news of importance. Dally not—let us on—time is brief, and judgment ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... busy day, and he didn't have time to dally long in talk. So he went off, and Durland sent Tom Binns, who was acting as his orderly for the day, to bring ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... way into his paper and was then copied into hers. The public grew uneasy. It would swallow any story it was told about the Heir Apparent, for instance and a Russian Grand Duke—is it not the sublime prerogative of American women to dally with such small game as those gentlemen— but it kicked against the probability of such an actual fact as the hammock already described which seemed too ridiculous a whim to possess any real existence. However, the tongues ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... no time like the present. Why dilly-dally? We both realize that this is a crying need. Then why not do something about it? If you will find out who is the best man for us, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... the spirit which had lain behind it. It was not seemly, they said, that Humanitarians should have recourse to violence; yet not one pretended that anything could be felt but thanksgiving for the general result. Ireland, too, must be brought into line; they must not dally ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... any longer to take a step which, in one way or another, must bring the weary question to a close. If the pope meant well, he would welcome a resolution which made further procrastination impossible; if he did not mean well, he could not be permitted to dally further with the interests of the English nation. Within a few days, therefore, of Bonner's return from Bologna, he took the final step from which there was no retreat, and "somewhere about St. Paul's day,"[405] Anne Boleyn received the prize for which she had thirsted seven ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... sensation of an anticipated visit probably caused us to dally less than usual over our morning meal. At all events, when we rose from the table and went on deck the boat was still nearly a mile distant. And a very curious object she looked; for the weather being stark calm, and the water glassy smooth, the line of the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... hunters, the foresters, the cragsmen of the Austrian Alps are no mean antagonists, as all of us know who have shot and climbed with them. Very fine men, they shoot quick and straight, and when an officer of Alpini tells us not to dally to admire the scenery, because we are within view of an Austrian post within easy range, we recall old days and make no ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... hence, and we shall be safe in the hostel at Dogmersfield. Come on, my boy," to Stephen, "the brave hound is quite dead, more's the pity. Thou canst do no more for him, and we shall soon be in his case if we dally here." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "I'm not supposed to dally with it myself, having been brought up on cistern water, but I find in traveling that I entertain a more kindly feeling for you strange foreign people when I carry a medium-sized headlight. Come along, now. Don't compel ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Massachusetts. These are idle speculations, and yet, when we reflect that Oliver Cromwell was on the point of embarking for America when he was prevented by the king's officers, we may, for the nonce, "let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise," and fancy by how narrow a chance Paradise Lost missed being written in Boston. But, as a rule, the members of the literary guild are not quick to emigrate. They like the feeling of an old and rich civilization about them, a state of society which America ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... mount on my swiftest horse, And I'll direct thee how thou shall escape By sudden flight. Come, dally not; ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... pretence about Cornelia. She never, never even in the first place, made any possible effort to attract me. Can't you see that Cornelia looks to me to-day exactly the way that she looked to me in the first place; very, amazingly, beautiful. But a traveler, you know, cannot dally indefinitely to feed his eyes on even the most wonderful view while all his precious lifelong companions,—his whims, his hobbies, his cravings, his yearnings,—are crouching starved and unwelcome outside ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... I know a gent With whom it's some delight to dally. With me he makes an awful dent; I'd perish once or twice ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... watched the departure of his tormentor, and went straight to the potato-patch, duty and fear leading him by either hand. The weeds had no safety of their lives that day; he was in too great a hurry to dally, as he loved to do, over the bigger stalks of pigweed, the giants which he, with his trusty sword—only it was a hoe—would presently dash to the earth and behead, and tear in pieces. Even the sprawling pusley-stems, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... when the work wuz done, an' the miners rounded up At Casey's, to indulge in keerds or linger with the cup, Or dally with the tabble dote in all its native glory, Perfessor Vere de Blaw discoursed his music repertory Upon the Steenway gran' piannyfort, the wich wuz sot In the hallway near the kitchen (a warm but quiet spot), ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... and the bodies of the dead would reappear to testify. An impulse almost incontrollable bade Carthew rise from the thwart, shriek out aloud, and leap overboard; it seemed so vain a thing to dissemble longer, to dally with the inevitable, to spin out some hundred seconds more of agonised suspense, with shame and death thus visibly approaching. But the indomitable Wicks persevered. His face was like a skull, his voice scarce recognisable; the dullest of men and officers (it seemed) must have remarked that ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... er de little Rabbits, playin' out in de back-yard, come runnin' in hollerin', 'Oh, ma! oh, ma! I seed Mr. Fox a comin'!' En den Brer Rabbit he tuck de chilluns by der years en make um set down, en den him and Miss Rabbit sorter dally roun' waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin' for Brer Fox. En dey keep on waitin', but no Brer Fox ain't come. Atter 'while Brer Rabbit goes to de do', easy like, en peep out, en dar, stickin' fum behime de cornder, wuz de tip-een' ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... the vassals, hurriedly armed, come flocking. "Why does the horn sound? Why are we called to arms? Here we are with our weapons.... Hagen, what danger threatens? What enemy is near? Who attacks us? Is Gunther in need of us?" "Forthwith prepare, and dally not, to receive Gunther returning home. He has wooed a wife!" This still in a tone befitting the announcement of disaster. "Is he in trouble? Is he hard pressed by the foe?" "A formidable wife he brings home!" "Is he pursued by the hostile kindred of the maid?" "He comes alone, unpursued." ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... excellent lady quickly ascending a peak of those mountains, threw that semen into a golden lake. And then assuming successively the forms of the wives of the high-souled seven Rishis, she continued to dally with Agni. But on account of the great ascetic merit of Arundhati and her devotion to her husband (Vasishtha), she was unable to assume her form. And, O chief of Kuru's race, the lady Swaha on the first lunar ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the loveliest of brides; the seats beneath the great trees commanded the wild heights opposite. Forty of the finest horses in the country were in General Schuyler's stables, and many carriages. There was a constant stream of distinguished guests. But Hamilton, who could dally pleasurably for a short time, had no real affinity for anything but work. There being no immediate prospect of fighting, he retired again to the library and began that series of papers called The Continentalist, which were read as attentively as if peace ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... I pray thee, do not weep for me, neither pursue me thus ominously as I go to the stern shock of war. Turnus is not free to dally with death. Thou, Idmon, bear my message to the Phrygian monarch in this harsh wording: So soon as to-morrow's Dawn rises in the sky blushing on her crimson wheels, let him not loose Teucrian or Rutulian: let Teucrian and Rutulian arms have ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... long years the Socialists saw Church and State united against them, and both were therefore regarded with a common hatred. But no sooner does a serious difference arise between Church and State, than a portion of the Socialists begin immediately to dally with the former. [Footnote: 'Geschichte des Materialismus,' 2e Auflage, vol. ii. p. 538.] The experience of the last German elections illustrates Lange's position. Far nobler and truer to my mind than this fear of promoting Socialism by a scientific theory which the best ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Come, for the third, Laertes: You do but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... truly said that he had once, and once only, (for more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality of the passion,) been desperately in love; in love, that is to say, in a terrific excess, so as to dally, under suitable circumstances, with the thoughts of cutting his own throat, or even (as the case might be) the throat of her whom he loved above all this world. It will be understood that I am not justifying such enormities; on the contrary, they are ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... My woonds too gently, dally with my dowbts And flutter my trewe feares: the even was calme, The skye untrobled, and the soon went downe Without disturbance in a temperate ayr. No, not the least conjecture coold be made Of such a suddeine storme, of which the woorld Till after midnight was not sensible. His hower was ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... the first giddy rapture of returning life, and was sure that I was steady on my feet, I dared to dally with the subject. I asked if bad news had come for Freule Menela, expressed devout relief that it had not, and piped regret at being deprived ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... Mr. Crewe, indulgently, "is a woman's point of view. A man cannot dally through life, and your kind of woman has no use for a man who dallies. First, I will give you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Barbarossa sound strategical instinct went hand in hand with the desperate valour of the corsair. To dally in the Golden Horn while so rich a prey was at sea to be picked up by his Christian foes was altogether opposed to his instincts: never to throw away a chance in the game of life had ever ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the old man knows—this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to the vessel again, a ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... not dally with his dressing, you may be sure; he was far too hungry, and too eager to attack ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... strength, consuming the vapors at a breath, and drinking up every bright dewdrop that welcomed him with a quiver of joy. The branches shook themselves in the gentle breezes his presence had called forth to dally amid their foliage and sport with the flowers; and every green thing put on a fresher beauty in delight at his return; while from the bosom of the trees—from hedgerow and from meadow—went up the melody ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... He knows less warmly shared by other traders; But soi-disant Crusaders Caught paltering with the Infidels, like traitors, And hot enthusiast Emancipators Who the grim Slavery-demon gently tackle, Wink at the scourge, and dally with the shackle, Such, though they vaunt their zeal and orthodoxy, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... indeed—I am not backward there. I protest, a freer drinker than friend Charlie you will find nowhere," with feverish zeal snatching his glass, but only in the sequel to dally with it. "By-the-way, Frank," said he, perhaps, or perhaps not, to draw attention from himself, "by-the-way, I saw a good thing the other day; capital thing; a panegyric on the press, It pleased me ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... that the palm of victory comes only to those who persevere to the end; that duty does not abdicate in favor of inclination; and that the high gods will not hold guiltless the man who stops short of Italy to loiter and dally in Carthage even in the sunshine of a Dido's smile. When Italy is calling, no siren song of pleasure must avail to lure him from his course, nor must his sail be furled until the keel grates upon the Italian shore. His navigating skill must guide him through the perils of Scylla ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... done; inasmuch as the Commodore is not exactly one to dally in such matters; and when his locks ticked, as he drew the hammers to half-cock, Chase quietly dismounted from his perch, and Shot's head and fore-paws appeared above the barrier; but not till Archer's hand gave the expected signal did the stanch ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... towers, Bounded by mountains, and bedded in flowers; Here hangs the blue bell, and there waves the broom; Nurtured by art, rarest garden sweets bloom; Heather and thyme scent the breezes that dally, Playing amang the green ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... went by, he found himself staying on in Old Trail Town, with this excuse and that, offered by himself to himself. As, for example, that in the factory there were old account books that he must go through. And having put off this task from day to day and finding at last nothing more to dally with, he set out one morning for the ancient building down in that part of the village which was older than the rest and was where his business was conducted when it ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to it too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; not there to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its part, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate its happiness and to amplify ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... if it be out of season. With the recollection of last night still so fresh, even the serious things of life seem trifles, far more its small conventionalities. Mr. Lyndsay, your friend has made his choice, but you are dallying between belief and unbelief. Oh, do not dally long! We need no spirit from the dead to tell us life is short. Do we not feel it passing quicker and quicker every year? The one thing that is serious in all its shows and delusions is the question it ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Journal Asiatique, nor I suppose E. B. C. neither. G. de Tassy is very civil to me however. How much I might say about your Letter to me! you will hardly comprehend how it is I almost turn my Eyes from it in this Answer, and dally with other matter. You make me sad with old Memories; yet, I don't mean quite disagreeably sad, but enough to make me shrink recurring to them. I don't know whether to be comforted or not when you talk of India as a Land of ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... of the whole force. Sure that is honour enough, and the sooner he hastens thither the better. He is gone to dally at Court and trifle with the Queen as of old. When I see these middle-aged folk, Queen and courtier, posing as lovers and indulging in youthful follies, I ask myself, will it be so with me? shall I dance attendance ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... uncle, who had quieted down into an anger of white heat; "since you prefer those disreputable strangers to your family, go to them. I wash my hands of you, and shall write to your father to this effect to-night. I'm a prompt man and don't dilly-dally." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... man who, with utmost fervour, has claimed for himself, that 'I have learned too much of God, to dally with Him, and to make bold with Him in these things,' ought surely to be believed; and if there be any one who is still unconvinced that Cromwell, of his own 'choice,' enticed the Earl of Rochester and his associates across the Channel, and admitted them into England, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... moon in changing than in chasteness. 'Tis not to be a courier, posting up To the seventh heav'n, or down to the gloomy centre, On the fool's errand of a wanton—pshaw! Women! they're made of whimsies and caprice, So variant and so wild, that, ty'd to a God, They'd dally with the devil for a change.— Rather than wed a European dame, I'd take a squaw o' the woods, ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... work, for less salary than a man should get; when the glorious out-of-doors called him and his soul rebelled against the despotism of fate! Yes, surely they were happy days. He smiled a moment as he thought of them; paused to dally with them on his way to an answer for Conward; then skimmed quickly down the surface of events to this present evening. More wonderful had the years been than any dream of fiction; no wizard's wand had ever worked richer magic. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile To see him play thy part. Pah! sickening thought! From that thou art exempt. Thou shalt not go! Thou dost not ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... at Milan and Pavia, are all carefully recorded. Nor does the series end here; in another sonnet the poet takes up the note of warning, and bids Lodovico beware of the new King of France and, ceasing to dally with Fortune, prepare to defend his fair duchy. The next time Pistoia took up his pen, it was to wail over the duke's fall and the ruin of Italy, and to hurl curses on the head of the false servants who had betrayed their trust and yielded up the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of his natural wit speak with hesitation, and let drop her fan, to see him recover it awkwardly. This is the whole foundation of Cynthio's recovery to the sprightly air he appears with at present. I grew mighty curious to know something more of that lady's affairs, as being amazed how she could dally with an offer of one of his merit and fortune. I sent Pacolet to her lodgings; he immediately brought me back the following letter to her friend and confidante Amanda in the country, wherein she has opened her heart ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... for the third. Laertes, you but dally, [Sidenote: you doe but] I pray you passe with your best violence, I am affear'd you make a wanton of me.[8] [Sidenote: ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... says after he'd thought o' the plan he went right to work to carry it out. He says it was one o' them plans as dilly-dally is death on. So he begun by makin' sure as she was pastin' labels on pickle-jars in the back wood-house 'n' then he went out by the shed 'n' got some old clothes-line as was hangin' there 'n' come round to where the bingin'-pole was 'n' whittled ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... lootenant, but it seems a useless thing our goin' up to the oak. I know the Cap' sayed we were to wait for them under it. Why cant we just as well stay heer? 'Taint like they'll be long now. They wont dally a minute, I know, after they've clutched the shiners, an' I guess they got 'em most as soon as we'd secured these pair o' petticoats. Besides they'll come quicker than we've done, seeing as they're more like to be pursooed. It's a ugly bit o' track 'tween here an' the big tree, both ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... he found himself in an unhappy mood. It seemed to him that his wits had come to a standstill; for three days no new mischief had come the way of his idle hands, and his regular, dally, mischievous practices had grown so regular as almost to have acquired the tastelessness of duties. The peculiar brightness and gaiety of Monte Carlo life had begun to pall upon him. Loneliness was eating into his soul; for of all the French boys who paraded ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... continued the maiden, in the same ravishing voice, 'thou revelest with thy fancies, and dost thou wonder that I, too, love to dally with my thoughts and dreams? The tiny creatures whom thou hast taken from me were, and still are, threads of my heart, which I permit at times to issue into the sunny light of day. Restore them, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... was extremely distasteful to the lady. But she was a philosopher where marriage was concerned, and she whole-heartedly hoped that her cousin Millicent would not dally too long with her opportunity and allow the matrimonial prize to escape. She was sincerely fond of Millicent, and desired for her the best things in the world. She sometimes said so with ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... it so; she carried herself proudly. Chaste in thought, frank in deed, she was a perfect specimen of the highly bred, purely English type of woman who, looking at facts squarely in the face, accepts them as facts and does not allow her imagination to dally in any atmosphere wherein they may be invested. To this type a vow is irrefragable. Loyalty is inherent in her like her blood. She never changes. What feminine inconsistencies she had at fifteen she retains at five-and-twenty, and preserves ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... when it was ladled out each man lighted his pipe or took a cigar, and the tongues began to wag. Other folk came and went; the old gentlemen were oblivious of anything but their own talk. Now and then a young gentleman of the town dropped in to take his modest half-pint of bitter beer and to dally in the presence of the barmaid; such looked with awe at the patriarchs: as for the patriarchs themselves they ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... that we criminalists "must not dally with mathematical truth but must seek historical truth. We start with a mass of details, unite them, and succeed by means of this union and test in attaining a result which permits us to judge concerning the existence and the characteristics of past events.'' ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of his daughter's public confession of shameful conduct with her book-agent boarder, he was a highly scornful man. He scorned her for her weakness in yielding to what he termed the "dally-faddle" of the book-agent, and he doubly scorned her for repudiating her former testimony. The moral side of the matter was obscure to him; ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... consider myself as it were at home in this singular country of Aheer—without, however, experiencing any desire to dally here longer than the force of circumstances absolutely requires. It must be confessed, as I have already hinted, that the town of Tintalous,[1] in front of which we are encamped, does not at all answer the idea which our too active imagination had formed. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... knights in England is attacked by a Spanish giant in the forest. A brave lad jumps in to save him, and receives the dagger in his own body. He comes to those who should love him, to have the flow of his precious blood stanched; but no, good lack; we love not brave lads—we dally away God's good time with cowards ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... were thrown from the windows at a West Hartlepool wedding party. One fell down the back of a schoolboy, burning him, and has been awarded 5 damages."—Eastern Dally Press. ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... is like a city without walls, into which any enemy can march unhindered. So long as God's 'Thou shalt not, lest thou die' rings in the ears, the eyes see little beauty in the sirens that sing and beckon. But once that awful voice is deadened, they charm, and allure to dally with them. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... with the silence of the Night, (Which veils her Blushes too) can say— I dare not? Or if she do, she'll speak it faintly o'er, And even whilst she so denies will yield. Go, go prepare your self for this Encounter, And do not dally as you did to day, And fright your Pleasure with the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... lack of strenuous diligence, he must attribute it less to lack of resolution, than to defect of physical force and energy. The many bad colds of which he speaks were warnings of the end, which came in the form of consumption. This lurking malady it was that made him wait, and dally with his talent. He hit on the idea of translating some of Bossuet's orations for a Scotch theological publisher. Alas! the publisher did not anticipate a demand, among Scotch ministers, for the Eagle of Meaux. Murray, ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... breakfast and gone forth, Mother Carey should wait lingering in the dining-room to cherish some delicate hot morceau and cup of coffee, till the tardy, soft-falling feet came down the stairs, and then sit patiently as long as he chose to dally with his meal, telling how little he had slept. Babie had tried her tongue on both, but Allen, when she shouted at his door that breakfast was ready, came forth no sooner, and when he did so, told his mother that he ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning—the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry—is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic representation of disorder, and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety that our morality should not take cold, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... wonderful; Charlotte he scarcely thought of at all except with vague approbation because she was Ina's sister. He took the girls into Andrew Drew's drug store for ice-cream soda. He watched, with happy proprietorship, the girls dally daintily with the long spoons in the sweet, cold mixture. Seen in the electric light of the store, they had a bewildering and fairly dazzling splendor of youth and bloom. Their faces, freshened to exquisite tints by the damp night air, shone forth ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sez, "Oh, do come along! we shan't git to that wheel to-day if you dally so, and begin to talk about wimmen ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... nut-brown colour, comely and fair-spoken, Worthy companion to an earl or so, But not a bride for Edgar, England's king. This will allay the strong effects in love Fame wrought in Edgar's mind of Alfrida. Well, I'll to court, and dally with the king, And work some means to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... in her chariot through the sky she rode. Marvelled the Daughters of the Sun, who stood Near her, around that wondrous splendour-ring Traced for the race-course of the tireless sun By Zeus, the limit of all Nature's life And death, the dally round that maketh up The eternal circuit of the rolling years. And now amongst the Blessed bitter feud Had broken out; but by behest of Zeus The twin Fates suddenly stood beside these twain, One dark—her shadow fell on Memnon's heart; One bright—her ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... this halo lives about The waiter's hands, that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each. He looks not like the common breed That with the napkin dally; I think he came like Ganymede, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... say, "if I, as it were, dally with the temptation, either from inadvertence or torpor, or slothful unwillingness to reject and repel it, is not that in a way taking pleasure in it?" "The evil of temptation is not measured by its duration: it may be working against us all our ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... bridge he met Caruthers, and halted to speak to him. It was the first time that the lawyer had ever received the great man's attention, but knowing the cause of the interest now manifested, he was determined to dally with it as ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... a mix'd Nature call'd Hermaphrodites, have had generally more Prudence and Conduct than to marry under such Incapacities, which would prevent an agreeable Consummation in the amorous Embrace, (however they may sport and dally with each other) as they must expect nothing but the greatest Resentment and highest Indignation from the Persons they have presumptuously espous'd, and must inevitably tend to their being expos'd to the World, as Prodigies ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... No, no! Do you know what it is to be heart- hungry? Do you know what it is to yearn for the Indefinable, and yet to be brought face to face, dally, with the Multiplication Table? Do you know what it is to seek oceans and to find puddles? That's my case. Oh, I am a cursed thing! [She ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... pleasant to dally there in the woods. He was unnecessarily awkward, that the slim fingers might touch his, and her little ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... selected, so that your familiarity should be only intellectual, not affectional. You are yet more acquaintances than companions. As sun changes from midnight darkness into noonday brilliancy, and heats, lights up, and warms gradually, and as summer "lingers in the lap of spring;" so marriage should dally in the lap of courtship. Nature's adolescence of love should never be crowded into a premature marriage. The more personal, the more impatient it is; yet to establish its Platonic aspect takes more time than is usually given it; so that undue haste puts it upon the carnal plane, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... like a toy, Love laughs and shows the silver arrow We knew so well as man and boy,— The shaft that stings through bone and marrow; Again our kindling pulses beat, With tangled curls our fingers dally, And bygone beauties smile as sweet As fresh-blown ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... favor of the French slaver, that he took the shackles from his cargo after it had been a day or two at sea. The lust for procuring the maximum of victims, who must be delivered in a minimum of time and at the least expense, could not dally with schemes to temper their suffering, or to make avarice obedient to common sense. It was a transaction incapable of being tempered. One might as well expect to ameliorate the act of murder. Nay, swift ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... her room, where she could give way to her tears. No weight of sorrow had ever pressed so heavily upon her as this clear perception (which she tried, as people usually do, to make still clearer to herself), that men love to dally with and exaggerate the evils which circumstances have once begun to inflict ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... cold of the dying season, rather braced Amuel when the time was come and he would step out bolder upon the day that he feared than he had perhaps for weeks. He longed on that day for a letter for the last house in the lane, there he would dally and talk awhile and look on church-going faces before his last tramp over the lonely wold to end at the dreaded door of the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... he will," said she; "with your good leave, talk of what you know something about; tell him I want him; why does the minx dilly dally so?" ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... would neuer yeeld to the like, hauing the Portugals and Spaniards in generall hatred euer since, and conceiueth much better of our countrey, and vs, then these our enemies report of. [Sidenote: Port Dally the chief place of trade.] For which I yeelded them hearty thanks, assuring them they should finde great difference betweene the loyalty of the one and disloyalty of the other; and so payed their dueties: and for that it was the chiefe place ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... a critical point now, and we halted and looked at each other. She would not give in, I felt. Beyond this I neither felt nor saw. A few moments yet were mine. The end was coming—I heard its rush—but not come. I would dally, wait, talk, and when impulse urged I would act. I am never in a hurry; I never was in a hurry in my whole life. Hasty people drink the nectar of existence scalding hot; I taste it cool as dew. I proceeded: 'Apparently, Miss Keeldar, you are as little likely to marry as myself. I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sensational serial which usually enthralled him—but not to-night. He allowed the paper to lapse on to the floor, and then rose impatiently, rearranged the thick dark blue curtains behind the radiator, and finally yielded to the silent call of the mechanical piano-player. He quite knew that to dally with the piano-player while smoking a high-class cigar was to insult the cigar. But he did not care. He tilted the cigar upwards from an extreme corner of his mouth, and through the celestial smoke gazed at the titles of the new music rolls ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... name," he said, "was Juniper, but as oft as not I'd call her June, for she was like that. A rose in the house, boy. Maybe you think my Jill has her share of looks? She has her mother's leavings, let me tell ye. So you may judge. But what's this Robin to dilly-dally with her daughter, till the gal can't sleep o' nights for wondering will he speak in the morning or will he be mum? And so she becomes worse than no use in kitchen and dairy, and since sickness is catching ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... various kinds of birds and animals. That excellent lady quickly ascending a peak of those mountains, threw that semen into a golden lake. And then assuming successively the forms of the wives of the high-souled seven Rishis, she continued to dally with Agni. But on account of the great ascetic merit of Arundhati and her devotion to her husband (Vasishtha), she was unable to assume her form. And, O chief of Kuru's race, the lady Swaha on the first lunar day threw six times into that lake the semen ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Mr. Johnson answered, "I doubt if many a great genius would work at all without bribes and necessities; and so a man had better marry a poor Muse for good and all, for better or worse, than dally with a rich one. I make you my compliment to your play, Mr. Warrington, and if you want an introduction to the stage, shall be very happy if I can induce my friend ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... same twist transformed my path into a real country road—a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business, never once stopping to flirt with the blushing autumn woodland at its left, or to dally with the dimpling ravine ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it dally at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,—parent, child, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... sit writing here, sick and grown old, Not my least burden is that dulness of the years, querilities, Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui, May filter in my dally songs. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... continued, without any pause. "He sought our hospitality and he at once obtained it. For two days he dwelt with us, spending his time for the most part in idle fashion, wandering about along the seashore or on the cliffs, but always with the look on his face of a man who does but dally with some fixed purpose. His doings were nothing to me, but by chance, from one of the brethren, I learnt that he was no stranger to the island—that once, many years ago, he had been the guest of the lord who ruled the little territory, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you guilty of this terrible sin? have you even once in this way yielded to the tempter's voice? Stop, consider, think of the awful results, repent, confess to God, reform. Another step in that direction and you may be lost, soul and body. You cannot dally with the tempter. You must escape now ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough. Even the long hours, the early rising and the regularity enforced by the clangor of the bell were good discipline for one who was naturally inclined to dally and to dream, and who loved her own personal liberty with a willful rebellion against control. Perhaps I could have brought myself into the limitations of order and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the call to get drunk was not very loud in my ears. Had it been loud, I would have travelled ten times the distance to win to the saloon. On the other hand, had the saloon been just around the corner, I should have got drunk. As it was, I would sprawl out in the shade on my one day of rest and dally with the Sunday papers. But I was too weary even for their froth. The comic supplement might bring a pallid smile to my face, and then ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the gist of his saying, that upon that line of boundary or limit that divided the North from the South a palace be made, where in the Northern courts should summer be, while in the South was winter; so should he move from court to court according to his mood, and dally with the summer in the morning and spend the noon with snow. So the Sultan's poets were sent for and bade to tell of that city, foreseeing its splendour far away to the South and in the future of time; and some were found fortunate. ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... Rosalynde, whom the beauty and valor of Rosader had already touched: but she accounted love a toy, and fancy a momentary passion, that as it was taken in with a gaze, might be shaken off with a wink, and therefore feared not to dally in the flame; and to make Rosader know she affected him, took from her neck a jewel, and sent it by a page to the young gentleman. The prize that Venus gave to Paris was not half so pleasing to the Troyan as this gem was to Rosader; for if fortune had sworn to make him sole monarch ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... pity, however, should never be long, it being said, not without reason, that "nothing dries up so soon as tears." If time can mitigate the pangs of real grief, of course the counterfeit grief assumed in speaking must sooner vanish; so that if we dally, the auditor finding himself overcharged with mournful thoughts, tries to resume his tranquility, and thus ridding himself of the emotion that overpowered him, soon returns to the exercise of cool reason. We must, therefore, never allow ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... them, my boy. Frank, Frank, it is horrible to incite you to prevaricate and dally with the truth, but it is to save your father's life. Be silent. On my head be the sin, and I ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... his folly now, his madness, in allowing himself to dally with a baseless hope, which, while never daring to own its own existence, had yet so mingled its enervating poison with every vein that he had now no strength left to endure the disappointment so certain and so near. At the ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... surely the reigning king. From the Olympian disenchantment of his tolerant urbanity, all eruptive seriousness foams back spray-tossed and scattered. And yet such a master of the art of "suspended judgment" was he, that he permits himself to dally very pleasantly with the most passionate illusions of the human race. He is too deep a sceptic even to remain at the point of taking seriously his own ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... traitors, I was limited For four-and-twenty years to breathe on earth? And, had you cut my body with your swords, Or hew'd this flesh and bones as small as sand, Yet in a minute had my spirit return'd, And I had breath'd a man, made free from harm. But wherefore do I dally my revenge?— ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... yourself, and the birds come round and look at you; and your smoke dissipates upon the afternoon under the blue dome of heaven; and the sun lies warm upon your feet, and the cool air visits your neck and turns aside your open shirt. If you are not happy, you must have an evil conscience. You may dally as long as you like by the roadside. It is almost as if the millennium were arrived, when we shall throw our clocks and watches over the housetop, and remember time and seasons no more. Not to keep hours ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trifling was much loss of time and great disaster. In accordance with this crafty system, the agent expressed the opinion that it would "be good and requisite for the English government somewhat to temporise," and to dally for a season longer, in order to see what measures the States would take to defend themselves, and how much ability and resources they would show for belligerent purposes. If the Queen were too eager, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by a flood of pity for Diana. She felt sure that Diana was in love with Bellew, and feared that he had not told her the truth. On the other hand, he might honourably have done so, and Diana being the reckless scatterbrain she was, still chose to dally on the primrose path of danger. It was hard ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... widow must not dally He must make hay while the sun doth shine He must not say 'Widow, ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... let it waste. The rising deluge is not stopt with dams; Those it o'erbears, and drowns the hopes of harvest; But, wisely managed, its divided strength Is sluiced in channels, and securely drained. First, let small parties dally with their fury; But when their force is spent and unsupplied, The residue with mounds may be restrained, And dry-shod we may pass the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... confirm me in my verdict. From thence to my Lord's and despatched Mr. Cooke away with the things to my Lord. From thence to Axe Yard to my house, where standing at the door Mrs. Diana comes by, whom I took into my house upstairs, and there did dally with her a great while, and found that in Latin "Nulla puella negat." So home by water, and there sat up late setting my papers in order, and my money also, and teaching my wife her music lesson, in which I take great ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... valley By young graves weep; The daisies love to dally Where maidens sleep. May their bloom, in beauty vying, Never wane Where thine earthly part is lying, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the sake of our hypothesis, the most work one can do for the least self-interest, and let it go at that and get on with the story. For this story has to do with large and real affairs. It must not dally here with the sordid affairs of a lady who certainly was no better than she should be and of a gentleman who was as the hereinbefore mentioned receipts will show, much worse than ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to things or actions, on the ground of some sort of connexion between the one and the other. [Footnote: Several other such words we have in common with the French. Of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus. For 'lambiner,' to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, but accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's Provincial Letters will remember Escobar, the famous casuist of the Jesuits, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... carrying of moderate weights upon a padded wooden cap which he has devised for this purpose; and certainly the straightest female figure with which I am acquainted—aged seventy-four—is said to have been formed by the youthful habit of pacing the floor for half an hour dally, with a book upon the head, under rigid maternal discipline. Another traditional method is to insist that the damsel shall sit erect, without leaning against the chair, for a certain number of hours daily; and Sir Walter Scott says that his mother, in her eightieth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... hearts, And when he found them in a proper train He thought all else superfluous and vain: But in that training he was deeply taught, And rarely fail'd of gaining all he sought; He knew how far directly on to go, How to recede and dally to and fro; How to make all the passions his allies, And, when he saw them in contention rise, To watch the wrought-up heart, and conquer by surprise. Our heroine fear'd him not; it was her part To make sure conquest of such gentle heart - Of one so mild and humble; for she saw In Henry's ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... of India who are linked together by only one bond—the government extended to them by the British Empire. Nor need we stay now to speculate on the nationalities which will arise from the wreckage of Turkey, Austria, or Russia, nor shall we dally with the Balkan jumble of nationalities. We simply note that these instincts or feelings which compel men of like speech, habits, and traditions to group themselves into independent national units are most ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... he doth but dally, While in his hold-fast foot the weak mouse panteth: Her sad behaviour feeds his vulture folly, A swallowing gulf that even in plenty wanteth: His ear her prayers admits, but his heart granteth No penetrable entrance to ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... people can hardly be overestimated, and it is doubtful if holidays would ever have become legalized had they not proved of distinct value to the masses. To have one day each week free from the steady grind of one's dally work is a great relief, but to have a holiday is something still better, for it usually means a day set ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... Camp at evening and mush away to Town To dally with the hootch a bit, but the feeling will not down. You may mix up in a poker game, or try the dance hall's lure But you're fighting off a feeling, that the old cures cannot cure. You've got that longing feeling that there's ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... known that Miss Campion was excelling herself in honor of her nephew's bride, and the bride herself was alluringly rumored to be a personality. It is doubtful if anyone really believed the "part Indian" suggestion, but there were those who liked to dally with it. Its possibility was a taste of lemon on a ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... father's eyes with light; And pleasures flow in so thick and fast Upon his heart, that he at last Must needs express his love's excess With words of unmeant bitterness. Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a widow must not dally, He must make hay while the sun doth shine; He must not stand with her, Shall I, Shall I? But boldly say, Widow, thou must ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... even more notice than the limb of the law; a gigantic, well-groomed man, with keen, close-set eyes, and that indefinable easy movement and polished bearing that come from confidence, health, and travel. Unlike the others, he did not dally on the beach nor display much interest in his surroundings; but, with purposeful frown strode through the press, up into the heart of the city. His companion was Struve's partner, Dunham, a middle-aged, pompous man. They went directly to ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the circumstances, Hannah had dallied—thus far I had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now there remained nothing to dally with any longer—and she rushed along in her narrative, hurrying to tell—I hurrying to hear. A second, a third examination had ensued, then a final committal—all this within a week. By that time all the world was agitated ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... big and finely built a fellow for his age, and so beautiful to look upon, that there were ladies who even tried their bright eyes upon him as if he had been a man instead of a youth; and he encountered many youngsters of his years who had already done much more than dally on the brink of life, some, indeed, having plunged deep ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to your ways in upland Puna; Walk softly, commit no offense; Dally not, nor pluck the flower sin; Lest God in anger bar the road, And you ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... 'ee wot it is, Nelly Blyth," said the man, in a somewhat stern tone of voice; "it won't suit me to dilly-dally in this here fashion any longer. You've kept me hanging off and on until I have lost my chance of gettin' to be mate of a Noocastle collier; an' here I am now, with nothin' to do, yawin' about like a Dutchman in a heavy swell, an' feelin' ashamed ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
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