"Skylarking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart of the Doldrums at 450 feet! I have no objection to any amount of blue sky in its proper place (it can be found at the 4000 level for practically twelve months out of the year), but I submit, with all deference to the educational needs of Transylvania, that "skylarking" in the centre of a main-travelled road where, at the best of times, electricity literally drips off one's stanchions and screw blades, is unnecessary. When my friends had finished, the road was seared, and blown, and pitted with unequal pressure ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... was the captain of our mess, a jolly good fellow, popular, and always in evidence when there was any skylarking on foot. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... not loudly. That wheeze was old in 79. In front of the drug-store on the corner a score of young bloods, dressed in snappy togas for Varsity men, are skylarking. They are especially brilliant in their flashing interchanges of wit and humor, because the Mastodon Minstrels were here only last week, with a new line of first-part jokes. Along the opposite side of the street passes Nux Vomica, M.D., with a small black case in his hand, gravely intent on ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... captain. 'Aloft there! What are you doing skylarking up in those cross-trees? Come ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... got drownded, sir. Well, that all come o' the lads skylarking. If ever I'm skipper of a ship, no skylarking then. I s'pose there'll be a reglar hooroar in the morning, and Mr Reardon wanting to know ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... dale after the celebrated cloud of Wordsworth; especially if the crowd is like the cloud, and moveth all together if it move at all. A vast mob assembled on Salisbury Plain to listen to Shelley's skylark would probably (after an hour or two) consider it a rather subdued sort of skylarking. It may be argued that it is just as illogical to hope to fix beforehand the elusive effects of the works of man as of the works of nature. It may be called a contradiction in terms to expect the unexpected. It may be counted mere madness to anticipate ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... a rite which begins with three days religious services, including confession of sins on wampum, be otherwise than decent? As for the rest of the feast, the horse-play, skylarking, dancing, guessing contests—the little children's dance on the tenth day, the Dance for Four on the eleventh, the Dance for the Eight Thunders on the thirteenth—the noisy, violent, but innocent romping of the False Faces—all this I had seen in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game at romps; gambol, romp, prank, antic, rig, lark, spree, skylarking, vagary, monkey trick, gambade, fredaine^, escapade, echappee [Fr.], bout, espieglerie [Fr.]; practical joke &c (ridicule) 856. dance; hop, reel, rigadoon^, saraband^, hornpipe, bolero, ballroom dance; [ballroom dances: list], minuet, waltz, polka, fox trot, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... frightfully strange. The sort of things Keith recounts are not the sort of things that a man would make up to cover himself with honour; they are too absurd. But they are the sort of things that a man would do if he were sufficiently filled with the soul of skylarking." ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... There was such bawling and threatening, laughing and crying—for the women were all to quit the ship before sunset—at one moment a Jew was upset, and all his hamper of clothes tossed into the hold; at another, a sailor was seen hunting everywhere for a Jew who had cheated him,—all squabbling or skylarking, and many of them very drunk. It appeared to me that the sailors had rather a difficult point to settle. They had three claimants upon them, the Jew for clothes, the bumboat-men for their mess in harbour, and their wives for their support during their absence; and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... morning the strange camp was astir, and one by one the boys painfully crawled out, to try to get some of the stiffness from their limbs by jumping around and "skylarking." ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... woke up this night by something shouting in my ear, "Steer nor'-nor'-west!"' ses the cap'n very solemnly, '"Steer nor'-nor'-west!"' that's all it says. The first time I thought it was somebody got into my cabin skylarking, and I laid for 'em with a stick but I've heard it three ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... and told across the street to each other the secrets there, were now themselves heavy as if with surfeit of gossip and they drooped and hardly rustled. Not a tipsy waiter lurked in the shadows, not a skylarking couple of darkey lovers whispered on doorsteps. No birds, nor even crickets, serenaded the torpid night. The shuffling feet of Andrew Waples barely made watch-dogs growl in their dreams, and started his own heart with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... upon what all hands regarded as a holiday cruise, it is but small wonder that we experienced and enjoyed its exhilarating influence to an almost intoxicating extent. Jocularity and laughter pervaded the little craft from end to end; and throughout the second dog-watch dancing, singing, and skylarking—all, of course, within the limits of proper discipline—were the order of the evening. As the sun disappeared in the west, the full, round orb of the moon floated majestically up over the purple rim of the horizon ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... pleasure, and distributed coal in quantities to suit throughout the Alaskan lagoon. Now, there is not much fun in coaling, even when a craft as funny as the Pinta is snuggling up under your quarter, looking more like the Pinafore than ever, with her skylarking sailors, midshipmite and all; so Captain Carroll secured a jaunty little steam-launch, and away we went on a picnic in the forest primeval. The launch was laden to the brim; three of our biggest boats were in tow; an abundant collation, in charge of a corps of cabin-boys, gave assurance of success ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... help turning my head. The three fellows who had been skylarking when I came in were now talking together very soberly, and the long-necked chap was going on with his writing still. He seemed to me the most dangerous of the lot. I saw him sideface and his lips were set very tight. I had never looked at mankind ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of skylarking the first few weeks after the school opened. Almost every day one of the Lakerimmers would come back from his classes to find his room "stacked"—a word that exactly expresses its meaning. There is something particularly discouraging in going to your room late in the evening, ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... official residence for one of the senior professors with families. The rule required the students to be in their rooms after supper, but it was almost as much honored in the breach as in the observance, and, though the skylarking which resulted from the former often brought the section officer up, those who had any tact avoided too close an insistence on the regulations, so that the students in the same sections commonly visited ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James |
