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More "Dally" Quotes from Famous Books



... Cremorne Jonah had retired within himself terrified lest he should alarm her and put an end to their outings. So far she had timed their meetings for the daylight out of prudence, but, pricked on by curiosity, she had begun to dally on the return journey, desiring and fearing some token ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... "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 ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... 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 ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... 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 when the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... 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

... 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, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... uttered 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

... 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 ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... 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 or never. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... 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 ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... But Christabel did not dally long in the drawing-room. As she went upstairs and along the corridor she heard the snapping of the electric lights all over the house as the servants were preparing to retire. She paused just a moment in the alcove where the precious Rembrandt ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... 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 one purple soule shed, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... the 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 ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... 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, living, and beautiful as thou hast ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... some master-mind could be found which was a match for events, the millions would rule in anarchy. His iron will grasped the situation; and like William Pitt, he did not loiter around balancing the probabilities of failure or success, or dally with his purpose. There was no turning to the right nor to the left; no dreaming away time, nor building air-castles; but one look and purpose, forward, upward and onward, straight to his goal. He always hit the bull's-eye. His ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... sound diplomacy, and the result of such 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 Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were, their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... 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 ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... 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 ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... who are Christians and not Pagans, who believe that death is not an eternal sleep, who wrest from life its uses and gather from life its beauty,—why they should dally along the road, and cling frantically to the old landmarks, and shrink fearfully from the approaching future, I cannot tell. You are getting into years. True. But you are getting out again. The bowed frame, the tottering step, the unsteady ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... that sad 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 ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... bread-fruit, which is stated to have been scarcely 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 ever ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... We must dally there awhile before climbing, so I will go and bring back Ramure in extremis, who is waiting for me. But Joseph clings to me, and then I notice a movement of men about the spot where I left the dying man. I can guess what it means; it ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... little eyes fail to open and the batter takes on a greasy aspect, with a tendency to crawl and glide about, no time should be lost. Open all the windows at once and send the batter promptly to the swill-barrel. It is useless to dally with it. You will be sorry if you do. When it goes wrong, it is ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... signal to repair on board the frigate had been hoisted, 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 its appearance, and Mr Vanslyperken was forced to heave up his anchor. Still he did not like to ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... did not tarry a moment, but went straightway toward the bank. At the wooden 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 a sort ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... that then they had been three. Instinctively he looked at the table they had left—one placed at some distance from the girl, and hidden from her by an angle in the wall. It appeared that the third member had chosen to dally a few moments over his tobacco and a liqueur-brandy. Kirkwood could see him plainly, lounging in his chair and fumbling the stem of a glass: a heavy man, of somber habit, his black and sullen brows lowering and thoughtful above a ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... privileges which God had given her, and dilating delightfully of them before the devil, she lost the dread of the command from off her heart, which Satan perceiving, now added to his former forged doubt a plain and flat denial—'Ye shall not surely die.' When people dally with the devil, and sit too near their outward advantages, they fall into temptation—(Bunyan on Genesis, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... 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 me ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... 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), An' when De Blaw's environments induced ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... would go to 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, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... herself now! She hoped not, with all her heart, for she had heard Kjersti Hoel say that she did not like girls to lie abed late and dally in the morning. How mortifying it would be for her not to be on the spot as early as the others to-day, her very ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... 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 ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... my very goal in sight, Over my haste did sudden quiet steal; I thought to dally with my own delight, Nor rush on headlong to my garnered weal, But taste the sweetness of a short delay, And for a little moment ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... 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 yet the French have lost their strongest arms, Their fathers and their kin they will ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... bachelors made? Not by deliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding on from year to year with no sufficient matrimonial provocation. So of the nations with their wars. Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of killing, as the old maids ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... was ashamed of herself. He might be a cad, but he was real; his honest love possessed him body and soul. It was a matter of expediency to her; a thing to debate with herself, to dally over, ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... power of vengeance, and even prolonged the torture which accident had given him the means of inflicting. He stood like the inquisitor who marks his victim's anguish on the rack, and calculates his powers of further endurance. But he could no longer dally, even with this horrible gratification. His companion grew impatient. Eleanor's fair long tresses had escaped from their confinement in the struggle, and fell down her neck in disorder. Twining his fingers amidst its folds, Luke dragged her backwards from her hold, and, incapable ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... fled to him feeling confident that he would gather up the tangled and dropped threads of her life, and weave them, somehow, into a new and perfect pattern. She had so much to tell him! And he was there, close to her! Waiting, waiting for her to come to him and she could afford to dally by the wayside; gather up the precious memories—so like toys of the child she once had been and, by and by, she would go to him like a little girl tired of her day's wandering, and ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... is in life for a man, did he not have Hamlet's doubt to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the strength of the war we ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... pleased to call Bohemianism so 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

... secretly negotiating with him, and 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, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... embracing, so the ladies favored him with their looks, especially 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 of the world, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... 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 green ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... still look down on him, for then I shall be a Master of Arts. I have known since Childhood that Education is more desirable than Paltry Gold. Although the Newspapers and the General Public do not seem to be with me to any Extent, it is better to hob-nob with the Binomial Theorem than to dally with ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... company of wild beasts; and (as he saith) 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, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... you'll 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 ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... seventeenth century, Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, remarks that "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." It is not the least merit of the cat that it has banished from our sitting-rooms those frightful mimicries of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... 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 a moment a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... about fifty. We'll go pardners on the proposition, an' we'll dally 'round the range yonder an' see what we can see. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... as reason and common sense certainly suggest, that one's first duty would be to convince oneself that God did communicate these truths; and if so, then to accept them without further dally or comment. There is nothing to be done, once God reveals, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... was put before her. Would she dally with it, and succumb to it? And could anyone blame ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 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. Multum interest utrum peccare ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... the sole 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)

... 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 ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... 660 As fills a 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. 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... train, discipline, drill, inculcate, instil, indoctrinate. Thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, reflective, pensive, wistful. Tire, weary, fatigue, exhaust, jade, fag. Tool, implement, instrument, utensil. Trifle, dally, dawdle, potter. Try, endeavor, essay, attempt. Trust, confidence, reliance, assurance, faith. Turn, revolve, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... 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, and ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... 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

... of giving free vent to the anger that raged in my heart, as I longed to do, I thought it wise to dally with the chevalier and keep him as long as possible on the wrong scent, for every moment of delay to the chevalier was setting mademoiselle farther on ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... queasiness, and I spent 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 get wind of any big cargo ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... to cut thee; a Lady traytor? Perish by a proud Puppet? I did you too much honour, To tender you my love, too much respected you To think you worthy of my worst embraces. Go take your Groom, and let him dally with you, Your greasie Groom; I scorn to imp your lame stock, You are not fair, nor handsome, I lyed loudly, This tongue abus'd you when it ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont

... quoted, inaccurately, 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 an article ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... Children, and Friends, and whosoever is dearest to them under the Sun (all these being in the visible danger of a present ruine and destruction) they must now or never appear actively, each one stretching himself to, yea beyond his power. It is not time to dally, nor go about the businesse by halfes, nor by almost, but altogether zealous: Cursed be he that doth the Work of the Lord negligently, or dealeth falsly in the Covenant of God. If we have been so forward to assist our Neighbour Kingdomes, shall we ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... time, bent upon pleasure, who attend the balls 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 your shoulders. Be not too sure that I complain ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... the young girl, good-naturedly; 'but really I wish you would not dally so long. It is of very little consequence, I think, how ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various

... not mean to dally with you this morning. So God bless you! Take care of yourself, and sometimes fold ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... maid is fair, Of 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

... 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 different voices ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... it may best strike home, If leisure were to dally with such thoughts, The sword that Hector gave, the bitterest foe And worst that I did ever treat withal; And it is planted in the soil of Troy, That hostile soil, fresh whetted for its work. Carefully have I fixed it where it ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... "Why do we dally here?" she demanded. "The story's all told, and I've given my word that the fellow should go free. There's little loss—a few jewels and an old glove. Nay, nay, Lord Percy. My word is given. You shall neither go yourself nor send your ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... to the ladies' 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 ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... 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 Jack ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland

... 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. Lily of the ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... driving 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 ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... able to do business. And though my heart shuck like a ager, I laid down on that table same as a soldier. When I got up, I were blind as ever, with rags tied thick around my eyes. And I sot there patient day after day, and the doctor he 'd drap in and cheer me up. 'Aunt Dally,' he would say—he claimed he never had no time to git out the Dalmanuthy—'in just a leetle while you 'll be a-trotting around the Blue Grass here worse 'n a race-hoss; but you got to git your training gradual.' ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman

... 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 to spare before, ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... and pacification of Lower Burmah, and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the decisive ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... 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 along The dreaded ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... fike,' to dally about a business; to lose time by procrastination while appearing to ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... brain is dull and heavy, and the 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 running out, and staggering out of camp after a very scanty meal they hauled the sled through the slush they churned up for an hour or so. Then they stopped, gasping, the Indian ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... 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, ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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 ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... with God's world"—and poet and plagiarist, courtier and courtesan, Kipling and cant—these now dally by the banks of the Thames and dine off the peoples of the earth, just as once the degenerate populace of imperial Rome fed upon the peoples of the Pyramids. But the thing is near the end. The "secret of Empire" is no longer the sole ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... 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 ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears. Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureat 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 hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou to our moist vows denied, Sleep'st by ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... 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 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

... 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... not buy it: he had not the money; but he would gladly dally with the notion of being its possessor. To part with it, the moment after having held it in his hand and gloated over it for the first time, would be too keen a pain! It was unreasonable to have to part with it at all! He ought to be its owner! Who could be such an owner to a thing like that ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... "this is no time to dally; on every side I see a pitfall. Let every man look to himself. If I must play in my last ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Sands 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 ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... a costume in the milliner's window; and when she reached the lime-tree walk, with its high, umbrageous arches and stir of passers-by in the dim alleys, she took her place upon a bench and began to dally with the pleasures of the hour. It was cold, but she did not feel it, being warm within; her thoughts, in that dark corner, shone like the gold and rubies at the jewellers; her ears, which heard the brushing of so many ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Together, or all 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 touches ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... must to sleep, Sal, soda you, For here I must not dally, For that bull-dog I hear, like me, Is ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... my altars hath he hung his lance, His batter'd shield, his uncontrolled crest, 104 And for my sake hath learn'd to sport and dance To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest; Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red Making my arms his field, his ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... which some called hard, though I never found 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

... future lives to spiritual heights of which we cannot even conceive at the present. If we apply ourselves to learn the lessons of life, we shall of course advance much faster in the school of life than if we dilly-dally and idle our time away. This, on the same principle which governs in one of our ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... time thirty hours. Your posts can perform the distance in that time, and take care that they do not dally on ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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, And your ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter

... 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, and ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... all through supper, and little less so afterwards. She was sent to her room earlier than usual, that she might make up in advance for the early start of the journey, and she did not dally with her disrobing, the room being almost arctic in its coldness. But after she had put on the short night-rail that was the bed-gown of the period, the girl paused for a moment in front of her mirror, even though she shivered as she ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... 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

... to her to dally with him no longer. He had dragged her out of that pool at Newport; now he must drag her ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... match, as before, Deerfoot allowed his antagonist to dally with him awhile before he took the aggressive. Passing him over his hip Terry gave Deerfoot such a violent fling that a pang of fear shot through him, lest he had broken the Shawanoe's neck; but though he shot headlong out of the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... "Claribels," and "Isabels," and "Adelines," 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

... 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, I believe. I recoil from serious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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

... 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

... 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 ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... is fain to go this way, and all to make sinners make sure of Heaven. So long as souls are senseless of sin, and what a damnable state they are in by nature, so long they will even dally with the Kingdom of Heaven and the salvation of their own poor souls; but when God cometh and showeth them where they are, and what it is like to become of them if they miss of the crucified Saviour, O, then, saith the soul, would I were sure of Jesus; what shall I do to get assurance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... 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 this kind of emotion to become languid, but ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... his halberd viciously. "Keep thy wit for the king's ear," he said. "The lady Suelva hath spoken her decision. We dally no longer." He bent down and lifted the squire's body over his back. Then he turned to the eunuch. "Take thou the old mute's corpse. I have kept his carcass these seven days; to serve as a pattern. So carry ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... 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 ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... 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 active and powerful where racial ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith

... 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 as they could desire, and entreated them ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... quality of its creme eclairs, which attract the gilded Staff in such large numbers that the interior is usually suffused like an Eastern sunset with a rich glow of red tabs and gilt braid. Within its walls junior subalterns, now, alas, a rapidly diminishing species, dally with insidious ices until their immature moustaches are pendulous with lemon-flavoured icicles and their hair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... 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 rest, and our blood decide the war; on that ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... aspect which the tyrannical nature 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 ...
— The Republic • Plato

... moderate, and consider the whole difficulty, and determine what is possible and just. We must not be led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober judgments would not approve in our cooler moments. We have higher aims; we will have more serious business than to dally with temporary measures. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... myself of 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 it. It reckons ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... imagine, as reason and common sense certainly suggest, that one's first duty would be to convince oneself that God did communicate these truths; and if so, then to accept them without further dally or comment. There is nothing to be done, once God reveals, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... "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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... well-attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears. Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureat 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 hurled, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... and windiness, On smiles, and signs, and 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 and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... 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, and she picked ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... till he thought that he was wholly cured; but it was like a cat with a mouse, for he suffered the worse for his respite, till at last he fell so low that he used to think of stories of men that had destroyed themselves, and though he knew it to be a terrible sin to dally with such thoughts, he could not wholly put them from him, but used to plan in his mind how he could do the deed best, that it might appear to be an accident. Sometimes he bore his trouble heavily, but at others he would rage to think that ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... dally prayers, and the prayers before a fight at sea, and his honest voice trembled, as, in the Prayer for all Conditions of Men (In spite of Amyas's despair), he added, "and especially for our dear brother Mr. Francis Leigh, perhaps ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... not 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 charge ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... of 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 ministers as these ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... 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 ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... your deliverance; you 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 with love." ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... 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 still ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... dastards dally— Do thou for thy country fight! 'Neath her noble emblem rally— "God, our country, and our right!" Listen! now her trumpet's calling On her sons to meet the foe! Woman's heart is soft and tender, But 'tis proud and faithful too: Shall she be ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... sweeps by, that seems to be Too deeply laden with sad thoughts of thee— Of thee, our absent one!— The roses blossom, and their beauties die, And the sweet violet opes its pensive eye By thee unseen; and from the old, beech tree Thy robin pours his song unheard by thee, Dally ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... Gossamer-light withal. The Subs., my peers, Envied the garment, ransacking the land To find a shirt its equal—all in vain. For, when we tired of shooting at the Hun And other Batteries clamoured for their share And we resigned positions at the front To dally for a space behind the line, To shed my war-worn vesture I was wont— The G.S. boots, the puttees and the pants That mock at cut and mar the neatest leg, The battle-jacket with its elbows patched And bands of leather, round its hard-used cuffs, And, worst of all, the fuggy flannel shirt, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... even of fervid sincerity and zeal, whose thoughts do not frequently run before or beside the moment's purpose; whose wits do not sometimes wander on to some other part of the case than that they are instantly discussing; who do not anticipate some future effect, or dally with some apprehension of future peril, while they should consider only the next word or sentence. This momentary desertion of the exact purpose never occurred to Follett; he fitted the thought to its place; the word to the thought; and allowed the action only to take care of itself, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... himself withdrawn from public gaze, those highest in rank might never forget when they approached him that he was a god. He showed himself to be a kind father, a good-natured husband,* ready to dally with his wives and caress them on the cheek as they offered him a flower, or moved a piece upon ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... 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

... 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 most ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... all the days since this letter began re-handling 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,' I believe. I recoil from serious names; they seem ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Theo did not dally with his dressing, you may be sure; he was far too hungry, and too eager to attack the ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... place in the plan of Mr. Sheldon's life. The race in which he was running was not to be won by a loiterer. The golden apples were always rolling on before the runner; and woe be to him who turned away from the course to dally with the flowers or loiter by the cool streams that beautified ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... should chance to hanker for a change from novels in which the hero and heroine dally over-long in falling in love you will get it by reading The Fur-Bringers (HODDER AND STOUGHTON). No time is wasted upon preliminaries, not a minute; and as soon as Ambrose Deane and Colina Gaviller ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... here," said I, "oh caddy boy, and tell me how it haps You cling so fast unto these links; not like the other chaps, Who like to dally on the streets and ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... 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

... no time of 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 isolated intimacy than Dick could ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... 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)

... of it, and the heart of man 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

... 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 Mr. Garrick ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Your guilty scorn 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, and ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... 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 Biere, where the Angelus of Millet ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the third, Laertes: You do but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... stomach has received too much. This must be prevented in future, not by giving medicine, but simply by removing the infant from the nipple immediately it ceases to draw strongly, the moment it begins to dally ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... dazzled at the pompous aspect which the tyrannical nature 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 ...
— The Republic • Plato

... and broke up the army. The cost of the war of which the result was this fine addition to our Indian Empire, was two millions sterling; almost from the first the province was self-supporting and uninterrupted peace has reigned within its borders. We did not dally in those primitive smooth-bore days. Sir Charles Napier took the field against the Scinde Ameers on the 16th of February 1843. Next day he fought the battle of Meanee, entered Hyderabad on the 2Oth, and on the 24th of March won the decisive ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its 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 method in no ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... still alive and able to do business. And though my heart shuck like a ager, I laid down on that table same as a soldier. When I got up, I were blind as ever, with rags tied thick around my eyes. And I sot there patient day after day, and the doctor he 'd drap in and cheer me up. 'Aunt Dally,' he would say—he claimed he never had no time to git out the Dalmanuthy—'in just a leetle while you 'll be a-trotting around the Blue Grass here worse 'n a race-hoss; but you got to git your training gradual.' Then he 'd thin the bandages more and more, till a sort of gray twilight come ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman

... at 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 which our too active imagination had formed. Yet it is a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... have 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 ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... what else had she ever had to love? When once it was arranged that he should be allowed to speak to her, the thing was done. She did not at once tell him that it was done. She took some few short halcyon weeks to dally with the vow which her heart was ready to make; but those around her knew that the vow had been inwardly made; and those who were anxious on her behalf with a new anxiety, with a new responsibility, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... sea, Spaces unpeopled, wastes of 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, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... our leader to-day. There are by far too many blueberries in the first zone. No one, of course, intends to dally, but the purple beauties tempted, and too often we were seduced. Still such yielding spurred us on to hastier speed, when we looked up after delay and saw ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... the gilded Staff in such large numbers that the interior is usually suffused like an Eastern sunset with a rich glow of red tabs and gilt braid. Within its walls junior subalterns, now, alas, a rapidly diminishing species, dally with insidious ices until their immature moustaches are pendulous with lemon-flavoured icicles and their hair is whitened with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... York on the wire right away. It is as well Lyman and his pal should know Lola is sick and that they can't dally round forever." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... and weak unable limbs Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. But, O malignant and ill-boding stars! Now thou art come unto a feast of death, A terrible and unavoided danger: Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse; And I'll direct thee how thou shalt escape By sudden flight: come, dally not, be gone. ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... wager, 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 ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... disposition was 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... 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 ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... guessed this from the first. She did not speak at all for a minute, then she chose to dally with ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... 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

... 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, in his innocence, was ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray

... pocket, and knocked up with copulating, yet had had none of the excitants, with women that I have had there since. I rushed at cunt directly I saw it; my physical enjoyment was so intense, that I could not dally with my prick, but let it satisfy itself as soon as it liked. The varieties that Camille had given me left no taste for them. Cunt, belly, and thighs, seen, felt, and fucked in regular fashion, was my delight. Heaps of bills met me on my return. The thought ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... our party. It was the wise manner of the Maid to strike swift, blow upon blow, each stroke finding less resistance among the enemy, that had been used to a laggard war, for then it was the manner of captains to dally for weeks or months round a town, castle, or other keep, and the skill was to starve the enemy. But the manner of the Maid was ever to send cloud upon cloud of men to make escalade by ladders, their comrades aiding ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... I leave 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 different ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... dull and heavy, and the 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 running out, and staggering out of camp after a very scanty meal they hauled the sled through the slush they churned up for an hour or so. Then they stopped, gasping, the Indian slipped ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... doubtingly into Susan's face. She would not have chosen her for one of the "lively girls;" but, now, as Susan knew something was going on, perhaps it would be best to ask her, if—Mamie had conscience enough to dally with this if for a moment; perhaps she might have longer, if there had been time, but as it was now half-past seven, and the time was "eight sharp," and the girls were to be chosen and notified, there was not a moment for parleying, even ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... doughface [obs3][U. S.]. V. be irresolute &c. adj.; hang in suspense, keep in suspense; leave "ad referendum"; think twice about, pause; dawdle &c. (inactivity) 683; remain neuter; dillydally, hesitate, boggle, hover, dacker[obs3], hum and haw, demur, not know one's own mind; debate, balance; dally with, coquet with; will and will not, chaser-balancer[obs3]; go halfway, compromise, make a compromise; be thrown off one's balance, stagger like a drunken man; be afraid &c. 860; let "I dare not" wait upon "I would" [Macbeth]; falter, waver vacillate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... 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 ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... 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 ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... was as though he dismissed it. "My compliments to her mother and remember that I have your word. Don't dilly-dally. Good God, sir, can't you realise that any day now you may be drafted? You've no time to lose. If I were your age, I'd enlist to-morrow. Don't stand on one ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... 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 the maids follow suit. It's all ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... 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

... 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 very ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... added Peggy with a laugh, as she rolled down her sleeves. "And don't thee dally too long talking with thy friends, Peggy. ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... not dally with old Mr. Taylor here—for us he was only Mrs. Taylor's husband, a kind of useful marital appendendum. He was a merchant on 'Change, with interests in argosies that plied to Tripoli—successful, busy, absorbed, with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... 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. Multum interest ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... be well seconded. But have a care. Dally with no traitors. Speak fairly of your master's friends.' He touched her above the left breast with a claw-like finger. 'The Italian writes: "Whoso mocketh my love mocketh ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... Grace intend to be present at the coronation, he may dally here no longer. . . Say you not so, Dacre?" as the ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... 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 in shape, but slightly narrower at ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... 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 ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... women came out on the road to see him off. He did not dally, jumped on to the front of the cart and ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... 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 ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... kindly man. He couldn't have taken Mr. Spurlock back to Hong-Kong with him, so he considered it would be needless to give an additional shock. He asked me to watch Mr. Spurlock's movements and report progress. He admitted that it would bore him to dally here in Canton, with the pleasures of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... 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

... of ruin They dally—the thoughtless ones, They dance and they dream By the side of the stream, As long ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... grimaces. As Mrs Causand and I stood contemplating the tranquil and beautiful scene, trying to see as little of the person before us as possible, one of her beautiful arms hung negligently over my shoulder, and now she would draw me with a fond pressure to her side, and now her exquisite hand would dally with the ringlets on my forehead, and then its velvety softness would crumple up and indent my blushing cheek, that burned certainly more with pleasure than with bashfulness. I cannot say that the usher bore all this very stoically, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... 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 ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... agreed that he would bring Paige to rational terms, and with Clemens made a trip to Chicago. All agreed now that the machine promised a certain fortune as soon as a contract acceptable to everybody could be concluded—Paige and his lawyer being the last to dally and dicker as to terms. Finally a telegram came from Chicago saying that Paige had agreed to terms. On that day Clemens wrote in ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... first time 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. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... fascinates me in all its shades and forms! I let it play with my destiny as much from reason as from love, for we know that nothing can subdue it. I worship it in myself, I worship it in all of us! It may exhaust us in the performance of superhuman tasks, it may let us merely dally with the delight of being beautiful, it may chain us to our bodies or deliver us from their tyranny, it may adorn life or give it, enrich it or kill it: always and everywhere it arouses my eager interest. Ever unexpected and changeful, it floats in front of our woman's souls like ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... result of such 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 Provinces would become jealous, "yielding, as it were, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... at no period of development do their brains perfectly agree; nor could perfect agreement be expected, for otherwise their mental powers would have been the same. Vulpian (2. 'Lec. sur la Phys.' 1866, page 890, as quoted by M. Dally, 'L'Ordre des Primates et le Transformisme,' 1868, page 29.), remarks: "Les differences reelles qui existent entre l'encephale de l'homme et celui des singes superieurs, sont bien minimes. Il ne faut pas se faire d'illusions ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... halfpennies 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

... of a night And yield thee to each soft delight. Then, monarch of the Vanar race With loving arms thy friends embrace. Gifts on thy faithful lords bestow, Bid each and all farewell, and go. Show in the streets once more thy face, Install thy son to fill thy place. Dally a while with each dear dame; And then my strength thy pride shall tame For, should I smite thee drunk with wine Enamoured of those dames of thine, Beneath diseases bowed and bent, Or weak, unarmed, or negligent, My deed would merit hate and scorn As his who slays ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... from the hands of Her Majesty and bring it to them in their provinces. This messenger was also secretly instructed to find out what the contents of the edict were, and if it was contrary to the desires of the Governor, he was to dilly-dally on the way home until the Boxer trouble was ended or until the foreigners had all been removed from the territory. And it was such conduct as this on the part of three Chinese and one Manchu viceroys that saved China from being divided up among the Powers in 1900, ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... 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! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... will 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, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... ten thousand men! 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 ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... say, their time ere then was up— The harvest in—yet still they seemed to tarry, They'd quaffed the measure of their sparkling cup, They'd done their tithe of mischief like Old Harry, And so the days went on with dilly-dally, The Pater seemed unable to decide, At which their expectations seemed to rally, They hoped he'd stay another month beside, While in this doubtful state the ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... be to me," grunts he, "This glory trail is rough, Yet even till the Judgment Morn I'll keep this dally 'round the horn, For never any hero born Could stoop to ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... very difficult word. Before it was applied to a Londoner it meant a milksop. It is thus used by Chaucer. Cooper renders delicias facere, "to play the wanton, to dally, to play the cockney." In this sense it corresponds to Fr. acoquine, made into a coquin, "made tame, inward, familiar; also, growne as lazy, sloathful, idle, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... third, Laertes: you but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... things, and I tell you I took it. Now, Marion, while I blame myself as no other person ever can, I still blame others. I was never taught as I should have been about the sacredness of human loves, and the awfulness of human vows and pledges. I was never taught that for girls to dally with such pledges, to flirt with them, before they knew anything about life or about their own hearts was a sin in the sight of God. I ought to have been ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... for the former murder and captiuity of our nation, and 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: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... 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 ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... 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 of ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... luggage to leave with Kitty, neither did she dally in her exit. Rather, she was in the car and waiting, before Margaret and Louise could possibly get down the stairs ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... crown in 1574 before he obtained his patent. How these years preyed upon the noble enthusiasm of Gilbert we may understand from a letter commonly attributed to him, which was handed to the queen in November, 1577: "I will do it if you will allow me; only you must resolve and not delay or dally—the wings of man's life are plumed with ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... lose my purity? to walk 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! Thou dost not ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... seemed to know why. The last group that I talked with said that the vanguard of the German cavalry was only about fifteen miles out of town and would be in this morning. They were all tremendously excited and did not dally by the wayside to chat about the situation with me. I can't say that I blame them, particularly in view of what I have ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... 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 regain some ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... describe our evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The way-side joys are better than the final successes. The flowers along the vista, brighter than the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not dally on my way, turning to the right and the left for beauty and caricature. I will balance on the strict edge of my narrative, as a seventh-heavenward Mahometan with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise treads Al Serat, his bridge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... tenderest tone, Gossamer-light withal. The Subs., my peers, Envied the garment, ransacking the land To find a shirt its equal—all in vain. For, when we tired of shooting at the Hun And other Batteries clamoured for their share And we resigned positions at the front To dally for a space behind the line, To shed my war-worn vesture I was wont— The G.S. boots, the puttees and the pants That mock at cut and mar the neatest leg, The battle-jacket with its elbows patched And bands of leather, round its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... 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

... 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 in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... men and women in the hayfield gets the work done. One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short—when the grass is in bloom, just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... he hung his lance, His batter'd shield, his uncontrolled crest, 104 And for my sake hath learn'd to sport and dance To toy, to wanton, dally, smile, and jest; Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red Making my arms his field, his ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare

... 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

... precipitate flouts Is not his fashion. The Anti-Slavery zeal, with him a passion, 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, Seem—for philanthropists—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... expert 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 In speeding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... 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 in shape, but slightly narrower at the ends ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... 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 with love." ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... hostility of 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

... the world, that, my dear; begin with whatever is next your plate. If you think you are wrong at any time, dally a little, and watch your hostess. By the way, this invitation is for two weeks ahead, and Thanksgiving is next week, Thursday; you shall practise here! I was going to see you soon, to invite all three of you to dine with us that day; will you come? We shall ask the Grandets ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... 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 ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... wherefore?" said 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 ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... and from the deep-voiced valley, The snow-white mists are slowly upward wreathing: Now floating wide, now hovering close, to dally With sportive winds, around them lightly breathing, Till, in the quickening Spring-shine through them creeping, Their gloomy power dissolves in warmth and gladness; While swift, new tides through Nature's heart-pulse sweeping. Floods all her veins with a delicious madness. Warmed into life, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various

... "oh caddy boy, and tell me how it haps You cling so fast unto these links; not like the other chaps, Who like to dally on the streets and play the game ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... self-centered, free-willed; immune from any possibility of offending the universe. The whole problem of life and death, in so far as it relates to our individual selves, is "up to us." We can delay arrival at the goal of our desires; we can dally by the wayside if we will. Only our own loss, our own suffering, our own unsatisfied longing shall punish us. But who is so stupid that he would remain wandering in the bleak and barren desert, when he might by a turn of his ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... fifty-six miles from London to Canterbury (which is by no means impossible), or two days (which seems more likely), or four. The route of the pilgrimage must have been one in parts of which it is pleasant even now to dally, when the sweet spring flowers are in bloom which Mr. Boughton has painted for lovers of the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... 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 very gate of his father's house he paused. A powerful impulse ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... of wild beasts; and (as he saith) 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 ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... 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 enough to grow familiar. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... which 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 it ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... 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 turned my ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... 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: foster no ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... wherefore spake you not before? We dally with our lazy moments here, And hers are number'd. Horses there, without! I am much beholden to the King, your master. Why did you keep me prating? ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... as for that, I know a gent With whom it's some delight to dally. With me he makes an awful dent; I'd perish once or ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... 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. To my surprise we found ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... even in those years 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, but slow in his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... 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 had shown in his last moment with her. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... for all Bill's lack of brilliancy, these two were just a pair of simple creatures, loyal and honest, and deeply in love. So they dallied as all true lovers must dally with those first precious moments which a Divine Providence permits to flow in full tide but ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... are pleased to call Bohemianism so 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 ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... occasional straws. "Ah, here at last," said I, "is one coming." But a nearer view only completed my discomfiture, for it was one of those greasy-shiny hats which go with frayed trousers and broken boots, and which are the symbol of "better days," of hopes that are dead, and "drinks" that dally, of a social status that has gone and of a suburban villa that has shrunk to a cubicle in a Rowton lodging-house. I looked at greasy-hat and greasy-hat looked at me, and in that momentary glance of fellowship we agreed that we ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... gentle winds sally Upon every Valley, And many times dally And wantonly sport, About the fields tracing, Each other in chasing, And often imbracing, In ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... naturally imagine, as reason and common sense certainly suggest, that one's first duty would be to convince oneself that God did communicate these truths; and if so, then to accept them without further dally or comment. There is nothing to be done, once God reveals, but to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... Happy days? When he worked more hours than a man should 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 ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... and halfpennies 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

... 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, And your pard can't ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter

... know the fact; for had not the Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and 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 ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... the Shining Light was my workshop. On the bench, stout-hulled and bravely masted, was a bark to be rigged. My fingers itched to be dealing with the delicate labor. 'Twas no time now, thought I, all at once, to dally with the child. The maid was a sweet maid, an amiably irritating maid, well enough, in her way, to idle with; but the building of the ship was a substantial delight, subject to the mastery of a man with hands and a will, the end a sure ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... look into the thoughts and habits of your life, some of you may be compelled to acknowledge that this case is not unfamiliar to you. So men sometimes dally with a temptation, and linger beside it, courting its company, instead of flinging it away from them, as the snare of the devil, because of some secret hope that by-and-by God will place them out of the way of it, or give them some new strength against ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... 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 the morning. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... 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 Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... must have thought you had a band of hunters behind you. Two furlongs 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

... due to the quality of its creme eclairs, which attract the gilded Staff in such large numbers that the interior is usually suffused like an Eastern sunset with a rich glow of red tabs and gilt braid. Within its walls junior subalterns, now, alas, a rapidly diminishing species, dally with insidious ices until their immature moustaches are pendulous with lemon-flavoured icicles and their hair is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... did he not have Hamlet's doubt to face, I think perhaps we would all be better off for no knowledge of that subjective war. Man has too much to do to lift himself out of the still clinging primordial slough to dally with subjectiveness. We should be acting, aggressive, strident in the strength of the war we ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... female Pisachas, terrible spirits, and 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 Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... intention of writing a paper in the 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 Exile—. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... radical book—perhaps the most 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 enough to last until midsummer, and by ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... 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, I believe. I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to accept this unstinted hospitality for a few days, while I ran over the town, the hills, and the paseos; but I could not consent to dally long eating the bread of idleness and charity. I observed that my friend Carlo was either the most prudent or least inquisitive man I knew, for he never asked me a question about my early or recent history. As he would not lend the conversation to my affairs, I one day took the liberty ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... 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 any longer." ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... mouth to eat withal; it is hard and, as it were, 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 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... that little confidence; but I must not dally. What arms have you in the house, and ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... from school on Wednesday, certain that his treasure would be awaiting him. He did not dally along the road looking for birds' nests as was his usual custom. Neither did the butterflies interest him. He had something more important on hand, which absorbed all ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... Kingly Law. And when the People are burthened herewith, and groan waiting for deliverance, as the oppressed People of England do at this day, it is then the work of a Parliament to see the People delivered, and that they enjoy their Creation's Freedom in the Earth. They are not to dally with them, but as a father is ready to help his children out of misery when they either see them in misery, or when the children cry for help, so should they ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... You cannot dally with brilliant indirectness; you must make every man and woman understand that you are goldenly sincere, forcefully earnest, earnestly honest, high of intention, sound of purpose, direct of method. Out of all these you will finally wring everything which the college is designed ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... never found 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 ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... startled by Amy's vehemence, replied: "Why, God, ha' mercy, woman! Tell me, for I will know, whose wife, or whose paramour, art thou? Speak out, and be speedy. Thou wert better dally with a lioness ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... his signal to repair on board the frigate had been hoisted, 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 its appearance, and Mr Vanslyperken ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... shoulders to work an' ne'er be danted, Think yer behint an' there's no time to dally, For na is the time yor assistance is wanted I' makkin yor ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... and discretion, Courtiers gay and gallant knights, With the wanton damsels dally, But the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... 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 ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... 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 pushed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... lonely gift of immortal life. Not that he ever really had any doubt about it; no, indeed; but it was his security, his consciousness that he held the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand, that made him dally a little, now that he could quaff immortality as soon ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... heart? He will not last the night through. Got you not our messages, sent hours ago? How can you show yourself so careless—so cruel? But tarry no longer now you are here. He has asked for you twice. Take care lest you dally ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... 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, and the other ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... to be present at the coronation, he may dally here no longer. . . Say you not so, Dacre?" ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... had overslept herself now! She hoped not, with all her heart, for she had heard Kjersti Hoel say that she did not like girls to lie abed late and dally in the morning. How mortifying it would be for her not to be on the spot as early as the others to-day, ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... well seconded. But have a care. Dally with no traitors. Speak fairly of your master's friends.' He touched her above the left breast with a claw-like finger. 'The Italian writes: "Whoso mocketh my love ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... 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 rest, and our blood decide ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... nation, and 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... 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

... 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. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... their Wives, Children, and Friends, and whosoever is dearest to them under the Sun (all these being in the visible danger of a present ruine and destruction) they must now or never appear actively, each one stretching himself to, yea beyond his power. It is not time to dally, nor go about the businesse by halfes, nor by almost, but altogether zealous: Cursed be he that doth the Work of the Lord negligently, or dealeth falsly in the Covenant of God. If we have been so forward ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... 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 of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... sight As fills a 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 save from rage and pain, So talks as it's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... but life went gayly, gayly In the house of Idah Dally; There were always throats to sing Down the river bank ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... between the two your breast:— Freedom's bold fighters, who now proudly rally, In nature's life and legend dreamy rest; The former chide, the latter lures to dally. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... exclaimed Judith. "She's as irresponsible and careless as a child. She was always late to school, and losing her pencils and forgetting her books. We used to call her 'Daisy Dilly-dally.' She's such a dear little butterfly, though, and it doesn't seem possible that we are the same age—twenty-three. I feel ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston

... been any particular element," she broke in, trying desperately to stave off what she felt in his tone. "I love the wild, where I can ride, and ride, and never meet a human being—where I can dream and dally and feast my eyes on a landscape man has not touched. I have lived most of my life in New York, and I love nature so well that I'm inclined to be jealous of her. I want her left free to work out all her whims in her own way. She has a keen sense of ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... angels and 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

... 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 ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... 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

... a widow must not dally He must make hay while the sun doth shine He must not say 'Widow, be ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... Nay, 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 ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd

... 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 ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... It was as though he dismissed it. "My compliments to her mother and remember that I have your word. Don't dilly-dally. Good God, sir, can't you realise that any day now you may be drafted? You've no time to lose. If I were your age, I'd enlist to-morrow. Don't stand on one foot, you ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... 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 ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... enthusiasm of Gilbert we may understand from a letter commonly attributed to him, which was handed to the queen in November, 1577: "I will do it if you will allow me; only you must resolve and not delay or dally—the wings of man's life are plumed ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... 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 a ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... he looks 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 ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... in 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 ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... herself, and when Milly, who arose to leave the room, again told her not to care, as all the blacks were for her, she felt that she was not utterly alone in her wretchedness. Still, the sympathy of the colored people alone could not help her, and dally matters grew worse, until at last even Nellie Douglass's faith was shaken, and 'Lena's heart died within her as she saw in her signs of neglect. Never had Mr. Livingstone exchanged a word with her upon the subject, but the reserve ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... clean bright berries, or pale 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 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 furnish ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Cyrus, and now belonging to the king. She was 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 me shall rue it;" so that she seemed to the company a sullen ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... millions of diverse peoples 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 active and powerful where ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith

... as before, Deerfoot allowed his antagonist to dally with him awhile before he took the aggressive. Passing him over his hip Terry gave Deerfoot such a violent fling that a pang of fear shot through him, lest he had broken the Shawanoe's neck; but though ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... mad Wizzards and Witches who give themselves to the Devil, (being inclosed in a Circle, 7. calling upon him with Charms) V dementibus Magis & Lamiis qui Cacodmoni se dedunt (inclusi Circulo, 7. eum advocantes Incantamentis) they dally with him, and fall from God! for they shall receive their reward with him. cum eo colludunt & Deo deficiunt! ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius

... 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 ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland

... 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)

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... 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] ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... especially remember 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.'' The ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... 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 man ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... 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. Multum interest utrum peccare quis nolit, aut nesciat: [Footnote: ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... fair surface. But he arose gloriously in the coming morning, and went upward in his 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

... it that the Gods inspire, Euryalus, this fever of the breast? Or make we gods of but a wild desire? Battle I seek, or some adventurous quest, And scorn to dally with inglorious rest, See yonder the Rutulians, stretched supine, What careless confidence is theirs, oppressed With wine and slumber; how the watch-fires shine, Faint, few, and far between; what silence ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... wastes of 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 fly To seek my home in other lands. For why Should Lilith ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... 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 ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... lover" that I have suffered. Not at all. It is that this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and I meet it, and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a pleasing fiction, how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate it—a trifle to talk of, a dainty to dally with, a joy to the juvenescent, a blessing to the book-writer, yet never an inconvenience. But it is a practical reality, and it has great effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite nice-tempered people, brought to a shadow ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... I say, their time ere then was up— The harvest in—yet still they seemed to tarry, They'd quaffed the measure of their sparkling cup, They'd done their tithe of mischief like Old Harry, And so the days went on with dilly-dally, The Pater seemed unable to decide, At which their expectations seemed to rally, They hoped he'd stay another month beside, While in this doubtful state the days ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... 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 and Charybdis ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... transferred 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, whose convenient ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... free vent to the anger that raged in my heart, as I longed to do, I thought it wise to dally with the chevalier and keep him as long as possible on the wrong scent, for every moment of delay to the chevalier was setting mademoiselle farther on ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... side. There is little to nourish and delight the sense of beauty there." A certain crudeness is inevitable in a new country, and will be outgrown; age is a great artist. Man usually mars with his first strokes; and it is only when he has met his practical needs that he will dally with aesthetic considerations. Many of our older cities and villages have partly outgrown the awkward age, become dignified in the shade of spreading trees, and fallen somehow into a kind of unity; a few of them, especially near the Atlantic seaboard, where the stupid rectangularity of the towns ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... excited grandam. "But why so dead-alive? Once more the luck is yours! Play your knave! play Irby! He's just been here! He will return! He will propose this evening if you allow him! Let him do it! Let him! Mobile may fall any day! If you dilly-dally till those accursed Callenders get back, asking, for instance, for their—ha, ha!—their totally evaporated chest of plate—gr-r-r! Take him! He has just shown me his uncle's will—as he calls it: a staring forgery, but you, h-you won't mind that, and the 'ladies' man'—ah, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... 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 go to-morrow to ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... Come, for the third, Laertes: You do but dally; I pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed, Daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 150 And strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies. For so to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. Ah me! Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurl'd Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides. Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world; Or whether thou to our moist ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... the Finsbury leather trade, had been cut to the quick; even Morris's strong sense of duty to himself was not strong enough to dally within those walls and under the shadow of that bankruptcy; and presently the manager and the clerks would draw a long breath, and compose themselves for another day of procrastination. Raw Haste, on the authority of my Lord Tennyson, is half-sister to Delay; but the Business ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... the 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

... done, 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 ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... 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 ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... 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

... moment. There are few speakers, even of fervid sincerity and zeal, whose thoughts do not frequently run before or beside the moment's purpose; whose wits do not sometimes wander on to some other part of the case than that they are instantly discussing; who do not anticipate some future effect, or dally with some apprehension of future peril, while they should consider only the next word or sentence. This momentary desertion of the exact purpose never occurred to Follett; he fitted the thought to its place; the word ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... actually between him and the audience, Aram indulged in a 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 ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... younger, but bigger brothers in the city. The lanes between the log-houses are embowered in a modest way, and the drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are bons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of date. There is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new order of the world. Dumas does not dally nor doubt: he takes his side, he rushes into the smoke, he strikes his foe; but there is never an unkind word on his lip, nor a grudging thought ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... 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 light; ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... the recompense reserv'd for me? Dar'st thou thus dally with Abdalla's passion? Henceforward, hope no more my slighted friendship; Wake from thy dream of power to death and tortures, And bid thy ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson









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