"Giddy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strength to deal with it. Ah! what a vulgar thing does courage seem when we see nations buying it and selling it for a shilling a-day: ah! what a sublime thing does courage seem when some fearful summons on the great deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him audibly, "One way lies hope; take the other, and mourn for ever!" How grand a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Tommy in the ribs, but Tommy was as white as death and did not even feel it. Something had happened, something that made him feel giddy and very sick. That significant silence was to him nothing short of tragedy. He had seen his hero topple at a touch from the high pinnacle on which he had placed him, and he felt as if the very ground under his feet ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... found that the casement was set high in the roof, which sloped steeply from its sill to the eaves. He passed to the other window, in which a little wicket in the lattice stood open. He looked through it. In the giddy void white pigeons were wheeling in the dazzling sunshine, and, gazing down, he saw far below him, in the hot square, a row of booths, and troops of people moving to and fro like pigmies; and—and a strange thing, in the middle of all! Involuntarily, as if the persons ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... of knighthood produced a singular effect on my vain and giddy, countrymen, who, for twelve years before, had scarcely seen a star or a riband, except those of foreign Ambassadors, who were frequently insulted when wearing them. It became now the fashion to be a knight, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... know whether he suddenly became conscious of these things; but, giddy as he was, he understood that he had seen what he ought not to have seen, that he had just surprised the soul of his elder brother in one of its most secret altitudes, and that Claude must not be allowed to know it. Seeing ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... flag remained in the Page family until presented to the town a century after the close of the war. It is rather a pity that it did not come a little sooner, for an old lady of Page descent confessed that in her giddy girlhood she had irreverently ripped off the silver fringe to make trimming for ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... help, for he knew that both Josh and Will were smiling; but he felt as if the boat kept running away from beneath him, and then, out of a sheer teasing spirit, rose up again to give the soles of his feet a good push, and when it did this there was a curious giddy feeling in ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... begun In my youth's morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir'd ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... "A vain, giddy goose!" was her rapid estimate of Blanche; wherein, if she did Blanche a little injustice, there was some element of truth. "Calm and deep, like a river," she said to herself of Lysken: and ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... there an eternity till I heard a cry of desperate pain and anguish, and the white form flashed past me once more, and vanished, and with it the whole thing, and I was back again in the drawing-room, and I felt faint and giddy, and could not ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Fletcher, as they sat one evening talking in Thurston's study: "don't you think you'd better make peace with Allingford and the rest, and be a nice white sheep again, instead of a giddy old black one? I can tell you at present they don't look upon you as being a particular credit to ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... and who thought he was going out to his Uncle Joachim's chalet above Jenbach. This he had with him, and this he ate in the darkness and the lumbering, pounding, thundering noise which made him giddy, as never had he been in a train of any kind before. Still he ate, having had no breakfast, and being a child, and half a German, and not knowing at all how or when ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... short skirts, and stockings over her shoes—and they set out together, in the brilliant light of a sun rapidly declining toward the western horizon, though it had but just passed the low noon. The moment she stepped from the threshold, Joan was invaded by an almost giddy sense of freedom. The keen air and the impeding snow sent the warm blood to her cheeks, and her heart beat as if new-born into a better world. She was annoyed with herself, but in vain she called herself heartless; in vain ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... off these torments at once? I an't married to Tabby, thank Heaven! nor did I beget the other two: let them choose another guardian: for my part I an't in a condition to take care of myself; much less to superintend the conduct of giddy-headed boys and girls. You earnestly desire to know the particulars of our adventure at Gloucester, which are briefly these, and I hope they will go no further: — Liddy had been so long copped up in a boarding-school, which, next to a nunnery, is the worst kind of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... a foe defied! With all that habit of familiar fame, Doomed to exhaust the dregs of life in shame! The sole sad refuge of thy baffled art To act a stateman's dull, exploded part, Renounce the praise no longer in thy power, Display thy virtue, though without a dower, Contemn the giddy crowd, the vulgar wind, And shut thy eyes that others may ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all his servants; and in his house by the forest Sylvina's father was more lonesome now than ever. Sylvina had been a dutiful daughter, and she tried hard to be a dutiful wife; but nothing that she did was properly construed by her old husband. If she laughed and was gay, he called her giddy; if she seemed sad, he told her she was pining for her 'pauper lover;' if she showed him marked affection, he thought she was but cajoling to deceive him. Ah dear, ah dear, how miserable she was! for her ways were not his ways, because his age ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... "gentle and refining influence" sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... nothing wonderful in them, nothing that she might not have expected; and yet the surprise turned her giddy for a moment or two. She never thought of seeing him again, never. But to think of his caring for another woman as much as he had done for her, nay, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... learned men (say his own and Philip Melanchthon's) when they agreed in the name of Christ. Oh what quackery! There was found a Kemnitz to try the Council of Trent by the standard of his own rude and giddy humour. What gained he thereby? Infamy. While he, unless he takes care, shall be buried with Arius, the Synod of Trent, the older it grows, shall flourish the more, day by day, and year by year. Good God! what variety of nations, what a choice assembly of Bishops of the whole world, what ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... such a giddy hour, seated in person upon her car, in spirit upon her imagination, Fanny rode down the mountain into ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... both testify that the panic of the Eleventh Corps produced a gap in the line, and that this was the main cause of disaster on this field. But the fatal gap was made long before the Eleventh Corps was attacked. It was Hooker's giddy blunder in ordering away, two miles in their front, the entire line from Dowdall's to Chancellorsville, that ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... of the theater. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... to his forehead. The gleam of the sleek, smooth water flowing past his feet made him giddy. He wondered vaguely if the strange, dull feeling that was creeping over his senses was the result of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... visionary confluence of lines and colors, a soft stir of bloom like a flowery expanse moved by the air. This ecstatic effect was not exclusive of facts which kept one's feet well on the earth, or on the roof of one's college barge. Out of that "giddy pleasure of the eyes" business lifted a practical front from time to time, and extended a kind of butterfly net at the end of a pole so long that it would reach anywhere, and collected pennies for the people in boats who had been singing ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... heavier than the foot-passenger and the llama, and, as they had something exceedingly fragile in their appearance, the Spaniards hesitated to venture on them with their horses. Experience, however, soon showed they were capable of bearing a much greater weight; and though the traveller, made giddy by the vibration of the long avenue, looked with a reeling brain into the torrent that was tumbling at the depth of a hundred feet or more below him, the whole of the cavalry effected their passage without an accident. At these bridges, it may be remarked, they found ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... clocks will go as they are set; but man, Irregular man's ne'er constant, never certain: I've spent at least three precious hours of darkness In waiting dull attendance: 'tis the curse Of diligent virtue to be mix'd, like mine, With giddy tempers, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... elopement of this remarkable couple one must remember that they were no longer giddy and rash youth. Browning was thirty-four and the romantic Juliet was three years older. Again it must be remembered that the objecting father was a most unreasonable and selfish man. The climax of his selfishness ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... naughty at first, but the sight of Pat's black head arrested their crying, and Dick and his dog kept them amused till they got out at the next station. "A pity to bring children up like that," said the country-woman, confidentially. "Sweets enough to make 'em bad for a week, to say nothing of the giddy-go-rounds and ginger-bread. Ah, well, 'twasn't like it in my young days. Not that I'm against a good wholesome cake or two, especially for young folks. I'll give you one if you'll read this letter to me?" she added, looking inquiringly at Dick. "You see, I'm going ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... bade Clara farewell, and from the door of the church watched her receding figure until she disappeared around the turn of the road. From that moment Clara was invested by her schoolmates with all the dignity of a heroine of romance, and half the giddy girls in school teazed her mercilessly, and then laid their heads upon their pillows only to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Bosun yelled. The Dauber laid Out on the yard, gripping the yard, and feeling Sick at the mighty space of air displayed Below his feet, where mewing birds were wheeling. A giddy fear was on him; he was reeling. He bit his lip half through, clutching the jack. A cold sweat glued the ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... home defence against enemy aircraft, with Sir Percy Scott as his expert adviser. But the status of Sir Percy, who, as officially announced, "has not quite left the Admiralty and has not quite joined the War Office," seems to suggest "a kind of giddy harumfrodite—soldier an' ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... this world's good, accounting this the greatest, if not the only blessedness, to have their corn, wine, and oil increase in abundance, and reckoning those that are most serious about, and earnest after the world to come, men of foolish spirits, giddy brains, and worthy to be branded in the forehead for simple deluded ones. But surely he is the most fool that will be one at last; and he that God calls so (Luke 12:20) will pass for one in the end; yea, within a short time, they themselves shall change their notes. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... we require in good seamen for our navy, and which is acquired in scenes of peril 'upon the high and giddy mast', is as much their property as that which other men acquire in schools and colleges; and we had no more right to seize and employ these seamen in our battles upon the wages of common, uninstructed labour, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the unfortunate youth was momentary. Faint from the blood he had lost, and giddy from the excitement of his feelings, he sank back exhausted on his pillow, and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... replied the other, composedly. "When you travel in German Switzerland you will see pastors preaching on giddy heights, standing on rocks or rustic pulpits of the trunks of trees. A few shepherds and cheese-makers, their leather caps in their hands, and women with their heads dressed up in the costume of the canton group themselves about in picturesque attitudes; the scenery is pretty, the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... teach me the folly of allowing even my thoughts to wander from her cold face, the Northland meted swift punishment. The packed snow of the trail beneath my feet gave way, there was a sharp click of steel meeting steel, and a shooting pain that ran from heel to head. For a moment I was sick and giddy from the shock and sudden pain, then, loosening the pack from my shoulders, fell to digging the snow with my mittened hands away from what, even before I uncovered it, I knew to be a bear trap that had bitten deep into my ankle and held it in vise clutch. Roundly I cursed at ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... never seen aught of him but his productions, and had formed the loftiest estimate of his personal character from the pure tendency of his effusions, were astonished and grieved when introduced to the author.—His head made giddy by the praises of young and old, he forgot himself, and possessing most shrewd good sense, he would talk the reverse. He became fantastic in apparel, as he did likewise in his style of writing; made himself too common, and almost ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... coming, of what continues coming, upwards from the realm of Night!—Chaumette, by and by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already descries: mellifluous in street-groups; not now a sea-boy on the high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the common people, with long curling locks, on bourne-stone of the thoroughfares; able sub-editor too; who shall rise—to the very gallows. Clerk Tallien, he also is become sub-editor; shall become able editor; and more. Bibliopolic Momoro, Typographic Pruhomme ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was now quite giddy as before, When she slept by him, tired out, and her hair Was mingled with the rushes on the floor, And he, being ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... its salad days, than to my intercourse with Minna Planer, who was employed in that magic trifle as the Amorous Fairy. Indeed, in the midst of this dust-cloud of frivolity and vulgarity, she always seemed very much like a fairy, the reasons of whose descent into this giddy whirl, which of a truth seemed neither to carry her away nor even to affect her, remained an absolute mystery. For while I could discover nothing in the opera singers save the familiar stage caricatures and grimaces, this fair actress differed ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he read the signature with the words outlined above, he was spellbound. For a moment he seemed almost paralyzed, unable to move. His brain whirled, and, when he at last sank back in his chair, his face was blanched and he felt giddy and faint from the discovery which he had made. Gradually he became conscious of his surroundings. Again he heard, as in a dream, the conversation in the adjoining room. ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... This giddy hair-brained king, whom old Tiresias Has thunder-struck with heavy accusation, Though conscious of no inward guilt, yet fears: He fears Jocasta, fears himself, his shadow; He fears the multitude; and,—which is worth An age of laughter,—out of all mankind, He chuses me to be ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... distant uplands in the dawn. And she has had some dark experience Of graceless man's ingratitude; and hence Her ways have not been ways of pleasantness, Nor all her paths of peace. But her distress And grief she has lived past; your giddy round Disturbs her not, for she is learned profound In deep brahminical philosophy. She chews the cud of sweetest revery Above your worldly prattle, brooklet merry, Oblivious of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... skill for a season, and found it in vain, she vanished altogether from them, and they saw her no more. But their dangers were not over yet. When Gottlieb passed along this road, he had gone on so boldly, that I had not noticed how fearful it was in parts to any giddy head or fainting heart. But now I saw well how it terrified Furchtsam. For here it seemed to rise straight up to a dangerous height, and to become so narrow at the same time, and to be so bare of any side- wall or parapet, that it was indeed a giddy thing to pass ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... This dance is, in the higher circles, sufficiently voluptuous; but here the emotions of it were far more faithful interpreters of the passion, which, doubtless, the dance was intended to shadow; yet, ever after the giddy round and round is over, they walked to music, the woman laying her arm, with confident affection, on the man's shoulders, or around his neck. The first couple at the waltzing was a very fine tall girl, of two or three and twenty, in the full bloom and growth of limb and feature, and a fellow ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... made her head drowsy; and there was a great staircase with carved balustrades and dark slippery stairs, and the doors were all shut, and there was not a sound in the whole house, except the singing of some birds. Fluff began to feel giddy. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and it shows how hateful to the king she must have been, that, when Napoleon died he was told his greatest enemy was dead, and he answered, "When did she die?" But if he had been a good man himself, and not selfish, he would have borne with the poor, ill brought up, giddy girl, when first she came, and that would have prevented her ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... live in cities—and to join The loud and busy throng, Who press with mad and giddy haste, In pleasure's chase along; To yield the soul to fashion's rules, Ambition's varied strife; Borne like a leaf upon the stream— Oh! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... an old acquaintance of hers, and one of the finest fancy skaters in Toronto. During her daughter-in-law's absence at the rink, Mrs. Wilkie the elder took upon herself to lecture her son on his wife's giddy behaviour, and so worked upon his feelings that he regularly gave way, and allowed his mother to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... reality of his prison walls; the delicate food became bread and water; the servants disappeared like spectres; but in the empty cells, in the dark corners near the floor, he still fancied that he saw two sparks of light coming and going, appearing and then vanishing away. He watched them till his giddy head would bear it no longer, and he closed his eyes and slept. When he awoke he was much better, but when he raised himself and turned towards the stone—there, by the bread and the broken pitcher, sat a dirty, ugly, wrinkled toad ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... feats were received, are unimaginable by sober-sided people. Tired of my single exhibition, I seized the prettiest of the group by her slim, shining waist, and whirled her round and round the court in the quickest of waltzes, until, with a kiss, I laid her giddy and panting on the floor. Then, grasping another,—another,—another,—and another,—and treating each to the same dizzy swim, I was about waltzing the whole seraglio into quiescence, when who should rise before us but the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... an instant she recovered her self-possession. It must be that he had been faint or giddy, nothing more. It could not have been recognition that had startled him from his earnest contemplation, for he had not been looking toward her, but, with his body half turned away, had been gazing up at the highest story ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to notice as he ate his dinner that the giddy prattle above had ceased, and with his back turned toward the couple when he appeared on deck again, he lounged slowly forward until the skipper called him ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... earth and air dance their giddy flight from flower to flower. 'Tis now they collect and exchange their greetings; the wood is filled with them, the meadows teem with them, the hedges at the river side have them hidden among the deep green ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... forefathers, and the enemies taking up Christ's march-stones (which were the bounds set by the Most High, when he divided to the church of Britain its inheritance, and separated the sons of Adam, Deut. xxix. 8.), the giddy church straying in the wilderness is much fallen out of sight either of pillar of cloud or fire. Our intermixtures are turned pernicious to the glory and honour of Christ's house which should not be a den of buyers and sellers. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... be an English gentleman. Therefore I met her out one evening and took her for a long walk, pretending to be deeply smitten by her charms. From the first moment I began to talk with her I saw that she was not the shallow giddy girl I had believed her to be. She, no doubt, appreciated my attentions, for I took her to a cafe on the opposite side of the town, where we should not be recognised, and there we sat a long time chatting. She seemed extremely ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... true, and that under the circumstances I dared not have fired, so I lay perfectly still, trying to think out what to do, for the animal seemed determined not to leave me, and I began to grow giddy as ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... directly into his lungs, and into contact with a large surface of mucous membrane, and, indeed, with the blood itself. Were the New York cigar-makers to smoke a cigarette in the same way it would make him so giddy that he would be compelled to give it up long before it was consumed. That the smoke does go into the lungs is proved by the fact that a cigarette smoker can inhale the smoke and exhale it again after ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... to anything. And for this reason it was that all the men in the two mansions of Ning and Jung had been successful in their attentions; and as this woman was exceptionally fascinating and incomparably giddy, she was generally known by all by the name ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Unfortunately, they did not stop at Braunberger; and while my glass was still half full, N. ordered a bottle of champagne. When the first had disappeared, T. ordered a second; then, even before this second battle was drunk, both of them ordered a third in my name and in spite of me. I returned home quite giddy, and threw myself on the sofa, where I slept for about an hour, and only ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his age somewhat affected and chilled his genius, yet he knew of other models than Racine and Boileau. He drank of "Siloa's brook." He admired and imitated the poetry of the Bible. He loves not, indeed, its wilder and higher strains; he gets giddy on the top of Lebanon; the Valley of Dry Bones he treads with timid steps; and his look up to the "Terrible Crystal" is more of fright than of exultation. But the lovelier, softer, simpler, and more ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... away. Slowly and proudly he made his way through the giddy crowd, without a word of recognition for the frivolous Poles who saluted him as ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... I'll tell you. In my day, children of fourteen and fifteen did n't dress in the height of the fashion; go to parties as nearly like those of grown people as it's possible to make them; lead idle, giddy, unhealthy lives, and get blase' at twenty. We were little folks till eighteen or so; worked and studied, dressed and played, like children; honored our parents; and our days were much longer in the land than ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... round in a circle makes one giddy, or following the same path stupefies. How does the polar bear feel, I wonder, after he has walked up and down in his cage ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... concern you but in a very secondary degree— that is, it does not concern you, as a giddy young fellow, who takes pleasure in contradicting his father; but it concerns the country, sir; and the county, sir; and the public, sir; and the kingdom of Scotland, in so far as the interest of the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the floor. I had made up my mind to sham weak, but I did not need to pretend at first, for having been six weeks in bed, I felt strange and giddy when I got up. I slipped on my clothes and went out on deck, staggered to the bulwarks and held on. The fresh air soon set me straight, and I felt that I was pretty strong again. However, I pretended to be able to scarce stand, and, holding on ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... as for parties, Oxford, had seemed to her in the summer term the most gay and giddy place she had ever been in, and that she had always understood that in the October and Lent terms people dined ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... succeeds his father, as the last King of France. He is youthful, uneducated, imbecile. He is wedded to a giddy superficial queen. Both are infidels and incapable of any intelligent acts of government. With imbecility and credulity on the throne, corruption continues to prevail among high and low. Instead of individual thrift ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... concealing, all The uncouth trophies of the hall. Mid those the stranger fixed his eye Where that huge falchion hung on high, And thoughts on thoughts, a countless throng, Rushed, chasing countless thoughts along, Until, the giddy whirl to cure, He rose and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... down every morning and selects dainties for the sick-room from the public breakfast table; those who are near enough to do so inquire in dulcet tones, 'How is your invalid this morning?' The reply is, 'Better, much better,' which somehow falls short of expectation. Even the most giddy and frivolous of girls has no excuse for frightening people ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... A giddy youth, who had resigned his fellowship at Oxford, brought his fortune to Bath, and, without the smallest skill, won a considerable sum; and following it up, in the next October added four thousand pounds to his former capital. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... wear it? who can curiously behold The smoothness and the sheen of beauty's cheek, Nor feel the heart can never all grow old? Who can contemplate fame through clouds unfold The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb? Harold, once more within the vortex rolled On with the giddy circle, chasing Time, Yet with a nobler aim than ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... and little lines of steamers. Indeed, if one wanted to give a rich child a perfect model or toy, one could not give him anything better than an Italian lake), and when I had long gazed at the town, standing, as it seemed, right in the lake, I felt giddy, and said to myself, 'This is the lack of food,' for I had eaten nothing but my coffee and bread eleven miles ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... millions— bring me sleep eternal. But no, the stars are above the night, and above the stars is—what? Yes; the hour I dread like every other mortal with my body, and yet dare to long for with my spirit, has come. I am about to cast off Time, and pass into Eternity, to spring from the giddy heights of Space into the uncertain arms of the Infinite. Yet a few minutes, and my essence, my vital part, will start upon its endless course, and passing far above those stars, will find the fount ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... in marble halls, In Pleasure's giddy train, Remorse is never on that brow, Nor Sorrow's mark of pain. Deceit has marked thee for her own; Inconstancy the same; And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam Athwart thy ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... was aroused. She herself was in a higher class than her sister, but she was greatly interested in Frances's success. For Frances was rather a giddy little person. Till the companionship and emulation at school had roused her, she had never bestowed more attention on her lessons than ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Psyches in all the agonies of the bursting chrysalis, but real little flesh-and-blood people in pinafores, approached by nobody's hand so nearly as George Eliot's. They are flawless: the boy who, having swung himself giddy, felt "the world turning round, as papa says it does, nurse,"—the other boy, who, immured in studies and dreams, found all life to be "a fairy-tale book with half the leaves uncut,"—the charming little snow-drop of a Carlotta, "who would sit next him, would stick her tiny fork ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... in dinner-conversation or the like: but the astonishing Russian-Turk War, which has sprung out of Poland, and has already filled Stamboul and its Divans and Muftis with mere horror and amazement; and, in fact, has brought the Grand Turk to the giddy rim of the Abyss; nothing but ruin and destruction visible to him: this, beyond all other things whatever, is occupying these high heads at present;—and indeed the two latest bits of Russian-Turk news have been of such a blazing character as to occupy ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... something of the fatiguing labours—of the stern attention to business—of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked and scandalised to behold this giddy, fashionable, and modish crowd. Demos, sweltering on the passing steamboat—able to see, and, at the same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom—jeered aloud as he passed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the goods that had been entrusted to him, tied them together, got them on his back, and began the difficult ascent a second time. The other was crying and moaning, so that we could plainly hear him from our elevation. He seemed giddy. After a moment or two he staggered, fell back and lay as if dead. Hastening over the slippery rocks, and then down precipitously on the loose debris, I gained the pass, 18,150 feet. Two reluctant men were immediately despatched to the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... There had come into his countenance the look of a man who has made up his mind to take the thing he wants. He drew forth his purse and paid down the sum in golden guineas and bank-notes, the painter's eyes gloating as they were counted on the table and his head growing giddy with his joy. He would have enough to live drunk for a year, after his own economical methods. A garret—and drink enough—were all he required for bliss. The picture was to be sent forthwith to Osmonde House, and these directions given, the two gentlemen turned to go. But at the door ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... am in the country doing nothing, I scarcely smoke at all, and do not feel the want of it there; nor do I then take at evening dinner more than one or two glasses of wine, and I have observed that the same quantity which would make me feel giddy in the country when in full health and vigour, would not have the slightest effect on me when taken after a hard day's work. I also observed that I can work longer without fatigue when I have had my ride, than when for any reason I have to give it up. I have carried this mode of ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... Cornishman and an Irishman together, however long they have been in England, and they begin to talk, it's worth while sitting out. B. explained in soft and winning words to the Judge that his life was a giddy round of society, long leave, and high pay, whilst he in the far North led a lonely life of continuous hard work and no pay to speak of; and the Judge, with equal if not greater fluency, described B.'s up-country life as perpetual ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... long ears fascinated her. Up and down, up and down. Ah! why didn't he stop? She attempted to shriek, but only succeeded in emitting faint gasps as "Dolly" swerved to avoid a small hole. Inside she seemed to be jolted to pieces. Her heart shook her chest, and a giddy feeling overpowered her. Her vision blurred, and her breath came ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... first time I have ever been to sea," Osgod said, "and I trust it will be the last. The tossing of the ship makes me strangely giddy, and many of the servants are downright ill with it. Why men should go on the water when they can walk upon the land is more than I can say. I think I will go and lie down under the shelter of the sail, for indeed I feel as if I were ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... of Commodore Van Kortlandt was drawn into the vortex of that tremendous whirlpool called the Pot, where it was whirled about in giddy mazes, until the senses of the good commander and his crew were overpowered by the horror of the scene, and the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... were in Belarab's keeping, and this was good, so far. The pity was that the Great Chief himself was not there. Then Lingard assumed a formal pose and Mrs. Travers stared into the great courtyard and with rows and rows of faces ranged on the ground at her feet felt a little giddy ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... had been born into a wrong world, he now told himself. He was aware that he did not know the world of every-day affairs; that he was not fitted to know it. The very thought of its swirling incomprehensible activities turned him giddy; and if he walked amid it daily it was for him pure visual perception. Beyond that perception he did not seek to look and so he ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... But alas and alackaday for the instability of youthful affection! It befell in an evil time that there came over from the land of Nod a frivolous and gorgeously apparelled beau, who, with finely wrought phrases, did so fascinate the giddy Mizpah that incontinently she gave Methuselah the mitten, and went with the dashing young stranger of 102 ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... great Alexander: For both were of best feature, of high race, Year'd but to thirty, and, in foreign lands, By their own people alike made away. Sab, I know not, for his death, how you might wrest it: But, for his life, it did as much disdain Comparison, with that voluptuous, rash, Giddy, and drunken Macedon's, as mine Doth with my bondman's. All the good in him, His valour and his fortune, he made his; But he had other touches of late Romans, That more did speak him: Pompey's dignity, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... lightest and seemingly most harmless things in the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself completely into his power, and is ruined,—all in jest." Likewise, the most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... a carpet-dance improvised; and then sometimes Nan was dragged in to make up a set at some square dance. She got through it mechanically; but it afforded her no special pleasure; and as for round dances, she said they made her giddy, and so she got excused. Giddy she said; and yet she could walk, without the slightest sensation in the brain, along the extreme verge of those high chalk-cliffs, to watch the jackdaws, and hawks, and gulls at ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I don't feel as if I had—something outside me—" He stopped; he felt as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the window, looking across his own woods to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... revenue bring him back, I would freely give it to his enemies, And think I gain'd, having bought so dear a friend. Q. Isab. Hark, how he harps upon his minion! K. Edw. My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow, Which beats upon it like the Cyclops' hammers, And with the noise turns up my giddy brain, And makes me frantic for my Gaveston. Ah, had some bloodless Fury rose from hell, And with my kingly sceptre struck me dead, When I was forc'd to leave my Gaveston! Lan. Diablo, what passions call you these? ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... time I was so dizzy holding my head down, that I was obliged to raise it. I was so giddy and confused that I came very near rolling off the top of the bay window; and in my efforts to save myself, I made a noise, which disturbed the conference. Tom and my uncle were alarmed. I heard them rush out of the room. Without waiting to ascertain their intentions, I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... much, then certainly the new inclines distressingly toward the refined—the stage that once was so full of knockabout is now so full of stand-still; variety that was once a joy is now a bore. Just some uninteresting songs at the piano before a giddy drop is not enough these days; and there are too many of such. There is need of a greater activity for the eye. The return of the acrobat in a more modern dress would be the appropriate acquisition, for we still have appreciation for all those charming geometrics ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... For on rising in the morning she felt ineffably feeble and forlorn; she seemed to have scarcely closed her eyes, when she must be up and doing. The tiny hand-basin scarcely held enough water to cool her brow, still giddy from the sea-passage; to do her hair she had to borrow a minute hand-glass from her neighbour, and when after early mass in the chapel she found other prayers postponing breakfast, she fainted most alarmingly and dramatically. She was restored and refreshed ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... arrow; so, as he thought, "I will go and seize the bird," and was come close to the hunter, the hunter shot an arrow at the Lion and hit him. Then the Lion fell back, and having got up and fallen down three times, the arrow took effect and he felt giddy. In the same moment the hunter had disappeared[1] so that he saw him no more. Then the Lion recovered his courage and went very ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... this duty of flying in his earlier days of research; the machine had been his end, but now things were opening out beyond his end, and particularly this giddy whirl up above there. He was a Discoverer and he had Discovered. But he was not a Flying Man, and it was only now that he was beginning to perceive clearly that he was expected to fly. Yet, however much the thing was present ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... him? And thus he went on winding himself up, irritated by the strange hereditary lesion which sometimes so greatly assisted his creative powers, but at others reduced him to a state of sterile despair, such as to make him forget the first elements of drawing. Ah, to feel giddy with vertiginous nausea, and yet to remain there full of a furious passion to create, when the power to do so fled with everything else, when everything seemed to founder around him—the pride of work, the dreamt-of glory, the whole of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... was shaken; but even as I began to thrill with a hope so high that it was giddy with fear, she was once more ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Charles II.—known to remark that it was the roast beef and reading of the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness of the English.[377] The true-born Englishman retorted with many a jibe at the "gay, giddy, brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but clothes and garnitures, despised roast beef, and called his old friends ruffians and rustics; or at the rake who "has not been come from France above three months and here he has debauch'd four women and fought five duels." The playwrights ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... advance in age, And learning spreads her useful page; In vain! for giddy pleasure calls, And shews the marbles, tops, and balls. What's learning to the charms of play? The indulgent tutor must give way. A heedless wilful dunce, and wild, The parents' fondness spoil'd the child; The ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... bare suggestion fetched a gasp from both men. Plug Ivory's assumption of dignity crumbled immediately. The years rolled back. He felt one of those old-time fits of rage come bristling up the back of his head, the fury of old when he had tried to wither that giddy creature in his spasms of jealousy. But now, as in the past, her calm assurance put him out of countenance and his wild anathemas died ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... there The emblemes of her honour lost; all joy That leads a Virgin to receive her lover, Keep from this place, all fellow-maids that bless her, And blushing do unloose her Zone, keep from her: No merry noise nor lusty songs be heard here, Nor full cups crown'd with wine make the rooms giddy, This is no masque of mirth, but murdered honour. Sing mournfully that sad Epithalamion I gave thee now: and ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... but pretty west country carol for Christmas eve, which is to be found in Davies Giddy, or Gilbert's Ancient Christmas Carols, etc., and which, he says, was chanted in private houses on Christmas eve throughout the west of England up to the latter part ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... Although giddy, and almost suffocated, he had yet sufficient presence of mind to hold his breath; and as his right hand held his knife, he rapidly ripped up the sack, extricated his arm, and then, by a desperate effort, severed the cord that bound ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotillions. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Elvira, for as yet he had not been proclaimed king. This ceremony was immediately performed, for the fame of his recent exploit had preceded him and intoxicated the minds of the giddy populace. He entered Granada in a sort of triumph. The eleven captive knights of Calatrava walked in front: next were paraded the ninety captured steeds, bearing the armor and weapons of their late owners, and led by as many mounted Moors: then came seventy Moorish horsemen, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... rude the sound; She feels no biting pang the while she sings, Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... flew our days on this particular Christmas visit. I felt myself in a new world. A world of brighter flowers, and brighter sunshine; for, although I was eighteen, never until then had I been any thing but a wild, thoughtless, giddy child. And then?—the truth is a new star had burst upon my horoscope, bright and beautiful, that so bewildered my eyes to look upon, I was forced to awake my heart from its long sleep, to supply the place of eyes. Steadfast it gazed into that bright ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... intent on the performance. A few others stood round admiring the sport; a little apart was a tall grave man, talking loudly to himself, with flowers stuck all over him, who was spinning round and round in an ecstasy of delight. Becoming giddy, he took a few rapid steps to the left, but fell to the ground, where he lay laughing softly, and moving his hands in the air. Presently one of the officials said a word to the leader of the dance; the ring broke up, and the performers scattered, gathering up little bundles ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thou beest thoroughly set down in this doctrine, even in the faith of this doctrine which I have held forth unto thee, thou wilt not be taken with any other doctrine whatsoever. What is the reason I pray you, that there are so many giddy-headed professors in these days, that do stagger to and fro like a company of drunkards, but this, They were never sealed in the doctrine of the Father, and the Son? They were never enabled to believe that that child ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seize my walking-stick and panama hat, and escape from the enchanted chamber into the street. The hot air does not dispel the giddy feeling which had come over me, and not until I have reached my well-ventilated abode, changed my damp linen, and sponged my fevered body with 'aguardiente' and water, do I feel myself again. I am better still after having taken a refreshing siesta in my swinging hammock, in which condition ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... be not giddy, nor let your heads run on such follies. There is no such name and no such thing ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington |
