"Dally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evidence of the intended 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 ministers as these that the dexterity of honest ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the stranger's trencher with what remained of the bacon and eggs, and saw him swallow a mouthful or two with apparent relish; but presently after began to dally with his knife and fork, like one whose appetite was satiated; and then took a long draught of the black jack, and handed his platter to the large mastiff dog, who, attracted by the smell of the dinner, had sat down ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it dally at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well,—parent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... as to whether he should shoot Houseman or not, ending with a prayer to heaven to save him from more blood-guiltiness! Such are the childish excesses to which a playwright will presently descend when once he begins to dally with facile convention. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... picture postcards, which afforded a good excuse for deliberation. The great object was to dally in the post office as long as possible, in the hope of meeting the real Mr Elgood; and to this end she turned over several packets of views, making the while many inquiries; and the spotted man was delighted to expatiate on ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 |
