"Willy-nilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Review" is given in a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker of July 17th, 1860. On August 2nd Mr. Huxley added: "Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the 'Review' was only a save-all.") I suppose you mean really a REVIEW and not journal for original communications in Natural History. Of the latter there is now superabundance. With respect to a good review, there can be no doubt of its value and utility; nevertheless, if not ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... is even more depressing in its immediate effects than the cold of winter, but the heat carries with it one blessing, in that it drives us, willy-nilly, into the open air, day and night. And on looking at statistics we find precisely what might have been expected on this theory, that the death-rate for pneumonia is lowest in July ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of which I have forgotten, waving and blowing the long silver ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... pays off by means of a sinking-fund the capital which it borrows in the first instance, the proceeding amounts, as the defenders of municipal trading have rightly claimed, to a compulsory and unconscious saving on the part of the citizens. Their consumption has been postponed willy-nilly as the result of the increased rates or the high charges which they have had to pay; and, when the subscribers to the original loan have been paid off, the capital of the community is enhanced to the extent of that loan. Central governments might similarly ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the appearance of a shape which approached from round the corner of one of the towers. It cams nearer stealthily, pausing every now and then. Had I evoked, willy-nilly, some phantom of the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... be captain of this great school; she would lead, and the others would follow, no matter the colour of their eyes, no matter the complexions, no matter the thin, pale faces, or the fat, rosy faces. These things were all one to Hollyhock. She would compel these girls; they would follow her willy-nilly where she wished and where she dared to go. She knew well that she was not clever in book-learning, but she also knew well that she had the great gift of leadership; she would be the leader here. She rejoiced in the fact that all ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... you seem to suppose is A buckler and barrier against trichinosis; Bat trichinae pass without passports. Bacilli And microbes that Yankee might miss willy-nilly, Which nobody can deny. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... important; that of Bilbao, a most unpromising one by nature, has grown out of all recognition since the close of the Carlist war. The railway to the iron mines was already in course of construction when the war broke out; everything was stopped, the workmen carried off willy-nilly to join the marauding bands of the Pretender, the town—which boasts that it has never been taken, although twice almost demolished during the two insane civil wars—was wrecked and well-nigh ruined, its industries destroyed, its commerce at an ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... Willy-nilly he accompanied his captor to the extremely private and secluded rear of Tom Kane's new barn. Here were the remains of a broken wagon, several wheels, and the major portion of a venerable and useless stove. Marie released his arm and Racey sat down on the stove. But it ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... with my dilemma, but assured me that the earliest mode of returning to Trondhjem would be by sticking to his ship. I went ashore, and made further inquiries, only to have the captain's statement confirmed; so, willy-nilly, I had to go on to the North Cape, bitterly conscious of the fact that I ought to have been at my post at Leeds. But a man in a hurry is always the victim of circumstances, and there was nothing for it but to possess my soul in patience. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... make them: they grow; they come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. I did not want to write Erewhon, I wanted to go on painting and found it an abominable nuisance being dragged willy-nilly into writing it. So with all my books—the subjects were never of my own choosing; they pressed themselves upon me with more force than I could resist. If I had not liked the subjects I should have kicked, and nothing would have got me to do them at all. As I did like the subjects and the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... to put out into the open river and seek a new resting-place. Cherrie had spent about twenty-two years collecting in the American tropics. Like most of the field-naturalists I have met, he was an unusually efficient and fearless man; and willy-nilly he had been forced at times to vary his career by taking part in insurrections. Twice he had been behind the bars in consequence, on one occasion spending three months in a prison of a certain South American state, expecting ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... one where your host is always boisterously forcing you to take part in games and dances about which you know nothing. A week-end guest ought to be ignored, allowed to rummage about alone among the books, live stock and cold food in the ice-box whenever he feels like it, and not rushed willy-nilly (something good could be done using the famous Willy-Nilly correspondence as a base, but not here), into whatever the family itself may ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... a dummy, neither seeing nor hearing apparently, neither assenting nor contradicting. How powerful is the influence of clothes! If Asako had been dressed in her Paris coat and skirt, her husband would have crossed the few mats which separated them, and would have carried her off willy-nilly. But in her kimono did she wholly belong to him? Or was she a Japanese again, a Fujinami? She seemed to have been transformed by some enchanter's spell; as Titine had said, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... as she thought to herself with a somewhat wry smile, that it would have made the very slightest difference had she refused point-blank. Since he had decided that she was to travel in his car, travel in it she would, willy-nilly. But as a matter of fact, she was so tired that she was only too thankful to sink back on to the soft, luxurious cushions of ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... whether he is or is not really a gentleman. That makes acquaintanceship a dangerous luxury. If you begin by talking to a man, be it ever so casually, he may desire to thrust his company upon you, willy-nilly, in future; and when you have ladies of your family living in a place, you really CANNOT be too particular what companions you pick up there, were it even in the most informal and momentary fashion. ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... Blur-re, willy-nilly, willy-nilly!' he calls defiantly, as if he did not like having to keep quiet all day, and meant to tell his name ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... existence Peppe had hinted. This unknown stood in his path to Valentina, and to clear that path it suggested itself to Gian Maria that the simplest method was to remove the obstacle. But first he must discover it, and to this he thought, with a grim smile, the fool might—willy-nilly—help him. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... shudder contemplate the raging flood as it passes. For those whose ears are attuned to the rhythm of history, all contributes to the same work, evil no less than good. Those of impulsive temperament, carried away by the flood, move along blood-stained roads, and are none the less moving, willy-nilly, whither fraternal reason beckons. Were we compelled to depend upon men's common sense, upon their goodwill, upon their moral courage, upon their kindliness, there would be ample reason for despairing of the future. But those who ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... harnessed willy-nilly to religious tasks by commissions from the pious. In the church of Saint Sulpice Delacroix extinguishes all the feeble art that surrounds him, but his sense of Catholic art ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... "Willy-nilly, you must take part in a terrible battle; book against book, man against man, party against party; make war you must, and that systematically, or you will be abandoned by your own party. And they are mean ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... The men of France Thrust fiercely with the burnished lance! O, 'twas a sight of grief and dread, So many wounded, bleeding, dead! On back or face together they, One on another falling, lay! The Paynim cannot choose but yield, And, willy-nilly, quit the field The eager French are on their track, With lances pointed at the back. . ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... never be got to remain steady. The illness became chronic. The daughter helped out the finances of the house with her earnings as laundry-woman ... and perhaps by earnings of a different nature. Anyway, they got along. The old fellow, willy-nilly, spent his days invariably riveted to his armchair, groaning with pain at the least movement, swearing, fretting and fuming, despairing of life. And, since his daughter simply refused from the very beginning ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... his deck-chair and, bundling himself up against the cold, settled down to ponder the affair and await developments in a spirit of chastened resignation. That a denouement would duly unfold he was quite satisfied; that he himself must willy-nilly play some part therein he was too ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... dost so fairly do as I tell thee, and dost give me such soft speech, I will also treat thee with all due courtesy. I would have thee know, fair friend, that I am, as it were, a votary at the shrine of Saint Wilfred who, thou mayst know, took, willy-nilly, all their gold from the heathen, and melted it up into candlesticks. Wherefore, upon such as come hereabouts, I levy a certain toll, which I use for a better purpose, I hope, than to make candlesticks withal. Therefore, sweet chuck, I would have thee deliver to me thy purse, that ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... have beautified - we've done it willy-nilly - And all that isn't Belgrave Square is Strand and Piccadilly. (They haven't any slummeries in England.) We have solved the labour question with discrimination polished, So poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished - (They are ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... file had reasons enough for shifting. There were a score of Helens driving wagons—reasons in plenty for the futility of all attempts to enforce an arbitrary rule of march. Human equations, human elements would shake themselves down into place, willy-nilly. The great caravan therefore was scantily less than a rabble for the first three or four days out. The four columns were abandoned the first half day. The loosely knit organization rolled on in a broken-crested wave, ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... a new Flirtation, why not knowing, Nor whence, his heart with madness overflowing; Then out of it—and thence, without a pause, Into another, willy-nilly blowing. ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... he thought; 'I've only just lain down.' All the same he had to gather his bones together, when each one individually held to the bed; willy-nilly he had to get up. So hard was the resolution sometimes, that he even thought with pleasure of the eternal sleep, when his wife would no longer stand over him and urge: 'Get up, wash...you'll be late; they'll take it off ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Sanitarium Habit, for which there is no cure but poverty. And this man could not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... kindly, tolerant, almost parental eye. Poor little organisms growing on the tree of life—they would burn out and fade soon enough. He did not know the ballad of the roses of yesteryear, but if he had it would have appealed to him. He did not care to rifle them, willy-nilly; but should their temperaments or tastes incline them in his direction, they would not suffer vastly in their lives because of him. The fact was, the man was essentially generous where ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... dreadful consequences that would befall any disturbance of the sacred air by so much as the unauthorised report of a gun? How then was I to deal out justice to the defenceless bees that I had hurried hither, willy-nilly, without consideration of their likes and dislikes and their multitudinous descendants? How protect my investment in apiarist plant? How maintain the stock of honey, white, golden and tawny brown, excellent, wholesome delicious food, and still preserve the natural rights, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... safe return. She bade them do homage to Salim, and they consented and sware fealty to him; after which they kept silence awhile, so they might hear what the king should command. Then quoth Salma, "Ho, ye gathering of soldiers and subjects, ye wot that ye forced me willy-nilly to accept the kingship and besought me thereof and I consented to your desires anent my being raised to rule over you; and I did this against my will; for I would have you know that I am a woman and that I disguised myself and donned man's dress, so peradventure my case ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... draw a nail, instead of the half-dozen hit-or-miss slips that are the usual fate of such attempts, the bar falls down in front of the nail as the claw grips it from the back. The nail is held in a vise and must come out willy-nilly. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... came into his mind. That name on the passenger list a week ago, the name slightly different yet curiously alike—could it have been altered slightly on purpose? Ashamed to face him, ashamed to come to him? Bundled off in disgrace from home, willy-nilly, and ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... a shoal of wives upon the heath, And someone saw thy willy-nilly nun Vying a tress ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... real thing; God bless you, Tom," I exclaimed. "But I doubt if I've the right to take advantage of your goodness. I'm not sure that I oughtn't to signal those fellows to take you off with them willy-nilly." ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... he cried. "That's enough. I began to think you were playing fast and loose, and I said to myself, Doctor's got too much shilly-shally, willy-nilly in him to make a good leader of this expedition, but I don't now. I can see farther than I did, and that you've been weighing it all over and looking before you leaped. And that's the right way to succeed. Gentlemen, ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... curled and stretched athwart it. He noticed a dead man beside him, perhaps of his own slaying. It was a shabby fellow, in a jacket that gaped like Sim's. His face was thin and patient, and his eyes, even in death, looked puzzled and reproachful. He would be one of the plain folk who had to ride, willy-nilly, on bigger men's quarrels. Sim found himself wondering if he, also, had a famished wife and child at home. The fury of the night had gone, and Sim began ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... deluged within it, the whole city. The number of thefts and murders increased with astounding rapidity. The police, collected in augmented proportions, lost its head and was swept off its feet. But it must also be said that, having gorged itself with plentiful bribes, it resembled a sated python, willy-nilly drowsy and listless. People were killed for anything and nothing, just so. It happened that men would walk up to a person in broad daylight somewhere on an unfrequented street and ask: "What's your name?" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... only my sister Nightmare; we twain are going to pay our brother Death {43b} a visit, and want a third to accompany us, and lest thou shouldst resist we came upon thee, just as he does, unawares. Consequently come thou must, willy-nilly." "Alas," I cried, "must I die?" "Nay," said Nightmare, "we will spare thee this time." "But an't please you," said I, "your brother Death has never spared anyone yet who came beneath his stroke—he who wrestled with the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... upon the world. And thus far he had been thwarted. All his wealth went for nothing. The whim of this girl he had chosen was more powerful in this matter than was gold—the gold he loved. But Lablache was not the man to sit down and admit of defeat; he meant to marry Joaquina Allandale willy-nilly. Love was impossible to such a man as he. He had conceived an absorbing passion for her, it is true, but love—as it is generally understood—no. He was not a young man—the victim of a passion, fierce ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... nothing in syndicalism which can recall the dogmatism of orthodox Socialism. The latter has summed up its wisdom in certain abstract immovable formulas which it intends willy-nilly to impose on life.... Syndicalism, on the contrary, depends on the continually renewed and spontaneous creations of life itself, on the perpetual renewing of ideas, which cannot become fixed into dogmas as long as they are not detached ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... leaden-hued expanse of the watery horizon. Storm, rain, wind, hail and thunder will certainly follow the appearance of this fantastic rose-coloured glow, and the visitor to Capri may in consequence be compelled to remain willy-nilly upon the island until such time as communication with Naples shall be once more restored, for rough weather on Capri means complete isolation from the mainland and the outside world. A spell of four or five days without a letter or a newspaper may in certain cases be ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... sighed and said that you felt hurt, And prettily you pouted, When anybody called you flirt, A fact I never doubted. And yet such wheedling ways you had, Man yielded willy-nilly; And half your swains were nearly mad, And all of us ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... for myself and Masha, but it appeared that doves and pigeons had taken up their abode there and it would be impossible to cleanse it without destroying a great number of nests. We would have to live willy-nilly in the uncomfortable rooms with Venetian blinds in the big house. The peasants called it a palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano and a child's chair, lying ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... States had become a leading protagonist in a cold war in which the sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored world would soon assume a special importance. Inasmuch as integration of the services had become an almost universal demand of the black (p. 292) community, integration became, willy-nilly, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic exercises to make myself the finest athlete in ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... and why not knowing, Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Anthony of my interview with the young man. He waxed wroth. In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the land would have been chucked willy-nilly into the army. But the country had spinal disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result of sloth and self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved ... I need not quote further. You can imagine a fine old fox-hunting Tory gentleman, with ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... swamp, he argued, he would be there yet; so the boys deserved all the fun that was going. When the twins heard that an exception had been made in favor of Tim, they raised their voices in shrieking protest, and would have gone to the wedding willy-nilly, had not Mrs. Winters interviewed them, promising them unlimited bride's-cake when the affair was over, if they remained out of sight, and ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... but it took only a second after they had caught their breaths to pile, willy-nilly, into the cars, where they huddled until the fright ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... services than ever? Come, man, be reasonable, or, better still, listen to me.' And turning from me, he began to walk up and down the room, his hands behind him. 'the King of France—I want to make it as clear to you as possible—' he said, 'cannot make head against the League without help, and, willy-nilly, must look for it to the Huguenots whom he has so long persecuted. The King of Navarre, their acknowledged leader, has offered that help; and so, to spite my master, and prevent a combination so happy for France, has M. de Turenne, who would fain raise the faction ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... had come so abruptly. A few minutes ago she had been still a prisoner, suffering tortures at having heard that Marius was to return that day, and that, willy-nilly, she must wed him now. And now she was free it seemed: her champion was returned in power, and he stood bidding her decide the fate ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... think that goes;' and he commanded his imps to prepare the gallows on the third Thursday of each month for Bonaparte's expiation; ordered his secretary to send Bonaparte a type-written notice that his presence on each occasion was expected, and gave orders to the police to see that he was there willy-nilly. Naturally Bonaparte resisted, and appealed to the courts. Blackstone sustained his appeal, and Nicholas overruled him. The first Thursday came, and the police went for the Emperor, but he was surrounded by a good half of the men who had fought under him, and ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... really said that he contemplated sending her willy-nilly, to Aunt Almira. Yet the girl felt that daddy believed her health called for a change. And that was not what she needed. She was sure that the air of Poketown would never in this world make her feel any happier or healthier ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... run around Belgium, a sort of willy-nilly blowing about by the North Sea winds, drew us next to Ostende. If there is one place more splendidly chic than Ostende it is Monte Carlo. The palm is still with Monte Carlo, but, for August at ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... of aestheticising literary historians, does not enter into the question at all: the fact remains that the university is not in a position to control the young academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen what happens, willy-nilly—and this is the cutting answer to the immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... and our friend had met quite a number of the "summer people," having been waylaid at times by the rector—in whose good graces he stood so high that he might have sung anything short of a comic song during the offertory—and presented willy-nilly. On this particular Sunday he had lingered a while in the gallery after service over some matter connected with the music, and when he came out of the church most of the people had made their way down the front steps and up the street; but standing near the ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Norris, "the trouble with you is that you never want to do anything; you always want to do something else. I begin to think that there are compensations to a man in having fate hold his nose to the grindstone. He learns persistence, willy-nilly." ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... For he's running over With the music that he flings To his sweet bird-lover;— Willy-nilly, baby laughs, Gay and glad and gleeful; Brimming over high with health, She ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... often secretly coveted the Superintendent's residence in the Park (so that, instead of straggling along a concrete pavement at rare intervals, held captive by the hand that was in Jane's, she might always have the right to race willy-nilly across the grass—chase the tame squirrels to shelter—even climb a tree). But more earnestly did she covet a house beyond the precipice. Were there not trees there? and rocks? Without doubt there were Johnnie ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... not been so thoroughly normal in her instincts, she might have suffered shipwreck before this. Otherwise, they float out at middle age more or less derelict in the human sea, unless they have been captured and converted willy-nilly to some other's purpose. Now Milly was drifting towards that dead sea of purposeless middle age, and instinctively feared ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... out. He knew that victory perched upon his banners. He wouldn't be sent away, willy-nilly, to a place the bare thought of which had made his mother turn pale. And she had wished him to keep the place on the cove, the last poor remnant of Champneys land. To this end had she pinched and slaved. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... None the less, the one course open to him was to submit as little ungraciously as he was able. No moral force would be able to dislodge his guest; and Ramsdell could not well be summoned, to pluck forth the rector's lady and escort her, willy-nilly, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... threatened to wipe out of existence the few English settlements scattered along the coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself, there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... a long sojourn in the desert. They remonstrated and urged them to go back. The Israelites maintained that Pharaoh had dismissed them for good, but the officers would not be put off with their mere assertions. They said, "Willy-nilly, you will have to do as the powers that be command." To such arrogance the Israelites would not submit, and they fell upon the officers, slaying some and wounding others. The maimed survivors went back to Egypt, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... glance into the chart-room gave me the cue to the Samurai's blunder—if blunder it can be called, for no one will ever know. He lay on the floor in a loose heap, rolling willy-nilly with every ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... a few great men—argues in the modern critic either an academical attitude to literature and life, or a one-eyed obtuseness, or merely the usual insensitive taste. The drama in all but two countries has been willy-nilly abandoned by artists as a coarse playground for the great public's romps and frolics, but the novel can be preserved exactly so long as the critics understand that to exercise a delicate art is the one serious duty of the artistic life. It is no more an argument against the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... at last and sadly, oh, so sadly, as Aileen turned away. "Have it yer own way, if ye will. Ye must go, though, willy-nilly. It can't be any other way. I wish to ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sufficient command of his features to hide his chagrin at the failure of his several attempts. He sulked all afternoon. Garth sat with his weapon across his knees; and his steady gaze never wandered far from the steersman. Willy-nilly, Hooliam was compelled to hold the Loseis to her course; and by four o'clock, the wind holding light and steady, they had covered about ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... though. I swear to you, Montagu, that my heart is wrapped up in her. I thought all women alike until I met this one. Now I know better. She could have made a different man of me; sometimes I think she could even yet. I vow to you I would not now injure a hair of her head, but willy-nilly, in the end I ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Countess picked up the ladies with her eyes and they rose, to leave the men over their cigars. So Paul was left, to be drawn, willy-nilly, into a discussion of an international alliance, which did not ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... title of Miss Virginia Harned's massive production at the Hudson Theater. Jane Shore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against the courtesan, when we meet her in everyday life, the fact remains that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... no need of going into an extended recital of our suffering in the small boat during the many days we were driven and drifted, here and there, willy-nilly, across the ocean. The high wind blew from the north-west for twenty-four hours, when it fell calm, and in the night sprang up from the south-west. This was dead in our teeth, but I took in the sea-anchor ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... fashions, and language. Our very plutocrats and monarchs are at ease only when they are vulgar. Even prelates and missionaries are hardly sincere or conscious of an honest function, save as they devote themselves to social work; for willy-nilly the new spirit has hold of our consciences as well. This spirit is amiable as well as disquieting, liberating as well as barbaric; and a philosopher in our day, conscious both of the old life and of the new, might repeat what Goethe said of his successive love affairs—that ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... this Universe, and why not knowing, Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... had no effect,—for Caesar since no enemy longer confronted him made light of them,—they became clamorous. Setting before him all the hardships they had endured and bringing to his notice any promise he had ever made them they uttered many threats besides, and thought to render him willy-nilly their slave. As they gained nothing this way, they demanded with much heat and deafening shouts to be relieved at least from further service, saying they were worn out. This was not because they really wished to be free from it, for most of them were in their prime, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... to a house afire.—At once He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold, Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about And makes for town again. In such a way Each human flees himself—a self in sooth, As happens, he by no means can escape; And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes, Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail. Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then, Leaving all else, he'd study to divine The nature of things, since here is in debate Eternal time and not the single ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... stars. But—and the everlasting, irrefragable fact remains: Her feet are beautiful, her eyes are beautiful, her arms and breasts are paradise, her charm is potent beyond all charm that has ever dazzled men; and, as the pole willy-nilly draws the needle, just so, willy-nilly, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... firmly to the belief that it is the greatest race on the face of the globe, that its religion, Shintoism, is the one true faith, that it behooves it to carry this faith to the benighted of other lands and, if said benighted do not readily accept Shintoism, to force its blessings upon them willy-nilly. They believe that they know what is good for the world; they believe that the resources of the world were put here to be exploited by the people of the world, regardless of color, creed, or geographical limitation. They feel that they have as much right in North ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... until he reached the ridge before he encountered the full violence of the storm, for the wind had shifted within the last hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and sent him running willy-nilly for a hundred yards or more. But there was not a nail in his boots which was not familiar with every acre of that country-side for a mile or two, and he found the path with ease and certainty, and ploughed along it ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the "Review" was ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... thae French indoctrinating pedants, that took to stick free opinions into a man as ye'd stick pins into a pincushion, to fa' out again the first shake. Na—The Cause must find a man, and tak' hauld o' him, willy-nilly, and grow up in him like an inspiration, till he can see nocht but in the light o't. Puir bairn!" he went on, looking with a half-sad, half-comic face at me—"puir bairn—like a young bear, wi' a' your sorrows before ye! This time seven years ye'll ha' no need to come speering ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... time for rallying, but, as far as was possible, the day-boys closed in together to resist the attack of their more numerous foes. Hughes and poor Frere both found themselves forced into battle, willy-nilly. Jack, whose natural instinct was to side with the weaker party, found neutrality impossible, and the part he had chosen very hard. The day-boys were prepared for his vagaries, but the boarders were perplexed and bewildered by his conduct. Was he partisan or traitor? One moment they saw him pressing ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... that, for I read 'bout what he went through awnly last night, for somethin' to kill an hour in the evenin'. An' I won't suffer it. It's contrary to nature, an' if Phoebe ban't here come winter I'll go down an' bring her, willy-nilly." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... had to follow her. She took their hands coaxingly and drew them along with her willy-nilly, accompanying her action with so frank an outburst of mirth that they all of them began laughing on trust. The band vanished and returned after standing breathlessly for a second or two round Bordenave's lordly, outstretched form. And then there was a burst of laughter, and when one of them ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola |
