"Idle words" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an old friend and a bully chap," he said. "It will be a great pleasure to serve a friend of his." He paused, congratulating himself that these were words, idle words. "When did ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... man,—to open before him a gulf of anguish; but I slipped down it. Then I dogged them; they never spoke alone; I intercepted the eye's language; I withered their wintry smiles to frowns; I stifled their sighs; I checked their breath, their motion. Idle words passed our lips; we three lived in a real world of silence, agonized mutes. She went. Summer by summer my father brought her to us. Always memory was kindled afresh, always sorrow kept smouldering. Once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... reverently. There was not much talking at meal time. Aunt Lois was ever afraid of idle words and vain babbling. Uncle James had a good, hearty appetite, as became his size and strength, and generally occupied himself in ministering to it. Children in Quaker households—indeed, in nearly all others—had the wise old adage dinned into their ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... thereafter thou courtest their daughter." Rejoined he, "And who should have her but I? She is the daughter of my father's brother and I have the best of rights to her." Retorted his mother, "These are idle words. Be silent, lest haply thy talk come to King Sasan's ears and it prove the cause of thy losing her and the reason of thy ruin and increase of thine affliction. They have not sent us any supper to-night and we shall die an hungered; and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... loving to the last. I saw how good, how sweet she was, and something of the old love, the boy love, came back to me, as I held her in my arms, where she wished to be. I would have saved her if I could; and when I called her 'my darling Lucy,' they were not idle words. I kissed her many times for myself, and once, Maddy, for you. She told me to. She whispered: 'Kiss me, Guy, for Maddy Clyde. Tell her I'd rather she should take my place than anybody else—rather my Guy should call her wife—for ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... the hem of her kirtle, and a starling pitched in the apple-tree hard by and whistled and chuckled, turning about and about, heeding them nought. Then at last she lifted up her face from looking on the grass and said: 'These are idle words and avail nothing: one thing only I know, that we are sundered. And now it repenteth me that I have shown thee my tears and my grief and my sickness of the earth and those that dwell thereon. I am ashamed of it, as if thou hadst smitten ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... all things sober, without levity or laughter; and without vain and idle words, works, or thoughts; much ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... something in the pleading eye Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns The law that bids it suffer? Has it not A claim for some remembrance in the book That fills its pages with the idle words Spoken of man? Or is it only clay, Bleeding and aching in the potter's hand, Yet all his own to treat it as he will, And when he will to cast it at his feet, Shattered, dishonored, lost for evermore? My ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various |
