"Dawdle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure of a ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dreary winter too, and it has pinch'd me. I am alone most of the time; every week, indeed almost every day, write some—reminiscences, essays, sketches, for the magazines; and read, or rather I should say dawdle over books and papers a good deal—spend half the day ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... opinion of times long passed, but certainly we found nothing of the kind; nothing indeed different from all the folk of the South who dawdle at their work and spend most of their leisure energetically dancing ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... dawdle!" he says, fretfully. "Do you forget there are other people in the world besides ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... ineffable satisfaction was too much for General Feraud's stoicism. "Don't dawdle, then, damn you for a cold-blooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out, suddenly, out of an impassive face held erect on a rigidly ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random rubbish solely to prolong ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was over, she was to see the world under Lady Anne's auspices. They were to go abroad soon after Christmas, to be in Rome for Easter, to dawdle about the Continent where they would and for as long as they would. Everything was planned and mapped out. Mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... course, but no more wonderful than a thousand other happenings in '57. All laws of probability and general average were upset that year, when sixty thousand men held down an armed continent. Even stranger things were happening than that two bullock-carts should dawdle through a rebel-seething district in the direction of a plundered, blood-soaked rebel stronghold; stranger even than that on the foremost bullock-cart a lean and louse-infested fakir should be squatting, guarded by British soldiers, who marched on either hand; or that ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... intention was to crawl up the gorge by such goat or mule paths as were available on the margin of the river or on the ledges of the cliffs. Thus I should not be obliged to treat every fresh view as if it were a bird on the wing, but could dawdle as long as I pleased over this or that object without being ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... her mother was greater. There she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. She discovered, indeed, that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her better, no desire of her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... deserves better treatment than this. In Ireland he was an able governor. The man had something to do, and he did it. The lounger of the London clubs could not dawdle through the day in the midst of a fiery people full of faction, bleeding with the wounds of civil war, and indignant at the supremacy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... than now: I am near Ujiji, but the slaves who paddle are tired, and no wonder; they keep up a roaring song all through their work, night and day. I expect to get medicine, food, and milk at Ujiji, but dawdle and do nothing. I have a good appetite, and sleep well; these are the favourable symptoms; but am dreadfully thin, bowels irregular, and I have no medicine. Sputa increases; hope to hold out to Ujiji. Cough worse. Hope to ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... a place to dawdle in, to lie and dream away a whole afternoon, watching the sleepy butterflies and listening to the chorus of birds which seemed to fill every corner of the sky. Indeed, I was already debating in my mind whether to linger ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Latin too, Loud Sanscrit he could utter, But one small thing he couldn't do That comes as pat to me and you As eating bread and butter: He couldn't say "No!" He couldn't say "No!" I'm sorry to say it was really so! He'd diddle, and dawdle, and stutter, but oh! When it came to the point he could never ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... in clipped fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking—like part of it, or like a good ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... I warn you against being engaged while you have a demand for brains. I should like to dawdle here before the fire until ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... let go of the ball he seemed inclined to dawdle over it. It wasn't going to be one of his snappiest—-any onlooker could judge that, at least, so ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... dawdle any more. It's no good going beyond the next hedge, it gets all open. Let's get on to it and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... we're all going to do, some Thursday. We're going to the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you know, and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the fishing fleet come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up to their waists, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... extravagance, by which he was in some measure infected, and he dropped an insinuation, that he could eclipse his rival, even in his own lunatic sphere. This hint was not lost upon his companion, counsellor, and buffoon, the facetious Davy Dawdle, who had some humour, and a great deal of mischief, in his composition. He looked upon his patron as a fool, and his patron knew him to be both knave and fool; yet, the two characters suited each other so well, that they could hardly exist asunder. Davy ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... and the knowledge that his dinner would very likely suffer by this delay, could not quicken Mr. Robert Audley's constitutional dawdle, and by the time he strolled in at the front door of the Sun, the clocks were striking five. He so fully expected to find George Talboys waiting for him in the little sitting-room, that the absence of that gentleman seemed to give the apartment a dreary look, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... was always so terribly sleepy at seven o'clock, and so positive that she could whisk through her dressing in ten minutes, and that it was quite unnecessary to get up so soon: even when the others mercilessly pulled the bed-clothes from her, and pointed to their watches, she would dawdle instead of "whisking," and spend much superfluous time over manicure or dabbing on cucumber cream to improve her complexion. She was so innocent about her little vanities, and conducted them with such child-like complacency, that the girls tolerated ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... compelled to admit that her ill health was to some extent her fault as well as her misfortune. Circumstances, natural indolence, and her sister's extreme indulgence had brought about a condition of life that propagated itself. One languid day was the parent of another, it was so much easier to dawdle than to act. Thus she had lost her opportunity. If he had won health, even Graydon said it would have brought her beauty. She might have secured his admiration, respect, and even love, instead of his pity. What could be more absurd than to imagine that he could give aught ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Hotel in Rome was filling up. People were dining rather late—it was the end of May and the entertainments were lessening, so they could dawdle over their repasts and smoke their cigarettes ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... for Americans! While you dawdle, the life blood is being sucked out of our great nation. It is a man's job to fight; it is a woman's to save.... I think you've made your choice, though you don't realize it. I'm praying to God ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... not a single letter referring to his own affairs had been forwarded to him for over two months. He had thrown his entire time and care into his work in the North. And now that these arrears had to be cleared off, he attacked the business with an obvious impatience. Formerly he had been used to dawdle over his letters, getting through a good portion of the forenoon with them and conversations with Waters about Buckinghamshire news. Now, even with that omniscient factotum by his side, his progress was slow, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... rather angrily, for I hated all the tittle-tattle of that little circle of gossips who dawdle over the tea-cups of Redcliffe Square and its neighbourhood. I had attended a good many of them professionally at various times, and was well acquainted with all their ways and all their exaggerations. The gossiping circle in flat-land ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... Dissenting minister, being mentioned, he said, 'I took to Dr. Gibbons.' And addressing himself to Mr. Charles Dilly, added, 'I shall be glad to see him. Tell him, if he'll call on me, and dawdle over a dish of tea in an afternoon, I ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... always the last," said the boy, eating muffins; "she's a regular dawdle, she is. When you're not here, she lays ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... significantly the sudden impression that the thing to be proved, having the expression of which the properties are to be established, rises out of the manuscript; and when that happens the time has come not to dawdle with the work. Repeated reading causes the picture above-mentioned to come out more clearly and sharply; it is soon seen in what places or directions of the manuscript that expression comes to light— these places ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... a real government; a government not to be whistled down the wind by any jack (or Jeff) who chooses to secede: a government that will not dawdle with hands in pockets while this continent is converted into a maggot-swarm of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... a well-known fact that in the world of to-day time is an essential factor in the race for success. No young man can afford to dawdle for four long years in acquiring a so-called "higher" education. Three-fourths of that time is, if anything, more than sufficient in which to attain all the graces and culture that the progressive ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... last bourne whither all evil-doers wander—Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening, gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco cafes where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... up" though it was, was over. By then everybody was very tired. Aunt Wess' exclaimed that she could not stand another minute, and retired to her room. Page, indefatigable, declaring they never would get settled if they let things dawdle along, set to work unpacking her trunk and putting her clothes away. Her fox terrier, whom the family, for obscure reasons, called the Pig, arrived in the middle of the afternoon in a crate, and shivering with the chill of the house, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... except a little nutshell of people here, knows or cares anything about her any more; and soon even the nutshell will be empty." He paused, and then, as if brushing aside his churchyard mood, he translated into his changed thought another classic quotation: "But we can't dawdle over the 'tears of things'; it's Nature's law. Only, when I think of the rice-banks and the boots and the pistol, I wonder if the Newport ladies, for all their high-balls, could do ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks—to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... officials deal. They are to a large extent their own masters, and work without being driven by the contractor's foreman. They are not encouraged to work more than eight hours a day; but as what they get depends on what they do, they do not dawdle during those hours, and if one man in a group should prove a loafer, his comrades, who have to suffer for his laziness, soon get rid of him. The tendency is for first-class men to join together, and for second-class men to similarly arrange ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was chilled and we guessed a cold snap, but to our surprise the actual temperature was higher than last night, when we could dawdle in the sun. It is most unaccountable why we should suddenly feel the cold in this manner; partly the exhaustion of the march, but partly some damp quality in the air, I think. Little Bowers is wonderful; in spite of my protest he would take sights after we had camped to-night, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Instead I worked it overtime. I did the work of half a dozen men. I became a driver. My captains made faster runs than ever and earned bigger bonuses, as did my supercargoes, who saw to it that my schooners did not loaf and dawdle along the way. And I saw to it that my supercargoes ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... there is one thing which the Cherub loves, it is to dawdle, but now he rose without a sigh and remarked that there was no time to waste. He must ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... likes best of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... deep in thought when the train, which had been taking itself less seriously for the last half hour, stopping at stations of quite minor importance and generally showing a tendency to dawdle, halted again. A board with the legend "Corven" in large letters showed that they ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb to the hill-tops, take liberties with the venerable, snub the respectable, and keep the company of the disreputable,—dismiss ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... fire said to her, 'Oh, sweet Beansie! tidy up my hearth a bit, for I am half choked by my ashes,' the unkind girl replied, 'The more fool you for having ashes! You don't suppose I am going to dawdle about helping people who won't help themselves? Not a ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... us lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the river's sixteen ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... am not doing that," said Father Payne, "but my theory is this. You must know, first of all, what you are aiming at, and you must apply your discipline sensibly to that. There are certain things in us which we know to be sloppy—we lie in bed, we dawdle, we eat too much, we moon over our work. All that is obviously no good, and all sensible people try to pull themselves up. When you have found out what suits you, do it boldly; but the man who admires discipline ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... then so long with him, and his art so short, that he shall dawdle by the way and wander from his path, reducing his giant intellect—garrulous upon matters to him unknown, that the scoffer may rejoice and the Philistine be appeased while he takes up the parable of the mob and proclaims himself their spokesman and fellow-sufferer? ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... to do the work. Having no task-master over them, and being hid from the tobacco-fields by a convenient coppice of pine and cedar, they had set to work in a fury of diligence, had cut and stacked the grass in a race with time, and now found themselves possessed of a precious hour in which to dawdle, and swap opinions and tobacco before the sunset horn should call them ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... things. That is your 'right' for the present; the 'right' for us, your teachers, is to see that you learn as much as you can, without spoiling your dinner, your sleep, or your play; and that what you do learn, you learn well. You all know when you learn with a will, and when you dawdle. There's no doubt of conscience ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... want to hire a detective," Dick replied enigmatically, "but I'd like about one minute's talk with Mr. Colquitt, and I mean to have it. Don't let us dawdle on ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Houw Hoek came out twenty-three years ago, he told me, without a 'heller', and is now the owner of cattle and land and horses to a large amount. But then the Germans work, while the Dutch dawdle and the English drink. 'New wine' is a penny a glass (half a pint), enough to blow your head off, and 'Cape smoke' (brandy, like vitriol) ninepence a bottle—that is the real calamity. If the Cape had the grape disease as badly as Madeira, it would be the ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... Swaledale slaiching, "sneaking," is the same as O.N. slaeikja, "to lick"; a secondary meaning of O.N. slaeikja is "to sneak"; keeal, "kail," could come from O.N. kal or Gael. cal. It is probably from the latter. The word slaister, "to dawdle, to waste one's time," is not clear. The sb. slaisterer, "a slink, an untidy person," is also found. The ai indicates an original diphthong. It is probably the same as Norse sloeysa, sb. "an untidy ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... convinced she would; Richard was a little doubtful as to her power over the wild girls. There could not be any doubt that John Taylor was in earnest, and had been worked upon just at the right moment; but there was danger that the impression would not last. "And his wife in such a horrible whining dawdle!" said Ethel—"there will be no good to be done if it depends ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... rubbernecking this A.M.? I like you, Hobbs. You are the best interpreter of English I've ever seen. I can't help understanding you, no matter how hard I try not to. I want you to get me into the Castle grounds to-day and show me where the duchesses dawdle and the countesses cavort. I'm ashamed to say it, Hobbs, but since yesterday I've quite lost interest in the middle classes and the component parts thereof. I have suddenly acquired a thirst for champagne—in other words, I have a hankering for the nobility. Catch the idea? ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... day was full of a promise like spring. She felt an approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in her. It gave her pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it gave her pleasure to dip into books, to try on her different garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a new lease of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a child, very attractive and beautiful to everybody, with her soft, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... women dawdle through the day, superintending their domestic work, look after their children's and their own toilette, tend the fire, attend to the cooking, and smoke consumedly. The idle sit with the men at the doors of their huts; those industriously disposed ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a young country, offering a wide field to all who sought work, adventure, achievement. Her thoughts ran on exultantly. She was rich, she was free, she was young, she was strong; why dawdle and dream among the fiords of Norway? Why scale Swiss mountains? Let that come later, when she had earned a playtime. In the first vigorous years of her youth, let her go out to the sunny land that was her home and give it ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Percy," called Joel across the table, "and don't dawdle so. We're going to make a double ripper, four yards long, to go down that hill there." He laid down his spoon to point out the window at ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... of the curtain upon a new scene. It was an unusual thing for me to do. Generally, I dawdled over my breakfast and I seldom took the trouble to ring the bell for the table to be cleared away; but on that morning, for some reason hidden in the general mysteriousness of the event, I did not dawdle. And yet I was not in a hurry. I pulled the cord casually, and while the faint tinkling somewhere down in the basement went on, I charged my pipe in the usual way and I looked for the match-box with glances distraught indeed, but exhibiting, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... At a time when our interests required that we should be well represented, and powerfully supported, we had neither an Ambassador nor a fleet in the Mediterranean; and because Lord Ponsonby is Lord Grey's brother-in-law he has been able with impunity to dawdle on months after months at Naples for his pleasure, and leave affairs at Constantinople to be managed or mismanaged by a Charge d'Affaires who ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... me will you be blamed; I like to see you not ashamed To dawdle for awhile; You furnish, by example sage, A moral for our busy age; And so, though others fume and rage, I watch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... humbler sort loves to dawdle along the bank on a bright afternoon, watching the play of the river and drawing a kind of philosophic contentment out of its cool aquatic humours. Presently he reaches that bridge—the jewellers' bridge. He ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome." The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he himself would ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... the doctor, "I will send a steward to help you to dress—you will need a little assistance, with the ship cutting these wild capers—and if you do not dawdle too long over your toilet you will be just in good time for dinner. There goes the first bell," he added, as the strident clamour suddenly pealed out from somewhere on the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... shirks the use of her teeth, and sends food, half chewed, into her stomach, is like a man who, having two servants, the one strong and vigorous, the other feeble and delicate, allows the first to dawdle at his ease, and puts all the hard work on the other. He would be very unjust in so doing, would he not? And as injustice always meets with its reward, his work is sure ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... think, more lazy every day), over very hilly country to Alicante, a seaport town very strongly protected by a castle on a great rock, armed with guns of brass and iron, so that the pirates dare never venture near. And here I fully thought we were to dawdle away another week at the least, this being a very populous and lively city, promising much entertainment. For Moll, when not playing herself, was mad to see others play, and she did really govern, with her subtle wiles and winning smiles, more than her father, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... more years than he could remember since this young American had taken a real holiday except for an occasional fishing trip on the Gunnison or into Wyoming. He had lived a life of activity. Now for the first time he learned how to be lazy. To dawdle indolently on one of the broad porches, while Miss Yuste sat beside him and busied herself over some needlework, was a sensuous delight that filled him with content. He felt that he would like to bask there in the warm sunshine forever. After all, ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... his office and sat down to dawdle over his report. If the reading of the article in the paper had left him unshaken, this silent passing of the Idalia had done for him still more. It had brought the calm and peace of a situation from which all uncertainty had been erased. He knew that ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... themselves large emoluments if they try. But what about the purple citizens? Will they work, or will they lie round in their purple garments and loaf? Work? Why should they work, their pay is there "fresh and fresh"? Why should they turn up on time for their task? Why should they not dawdle at their labor sitting upon the fence in endless colloquy while the harvest rots upon the stalk? If among them is one who cares to work with a fever of industry that even socialism cannot calm, let him do it. We, his fellows, will take our time. Our pay is there ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... this. It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it may snow. Worse than ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with the mind fresh and the body rested is better than four hours of dissipated practice with the mind stale and the body tired. With a fatigued intellect the fingers simply dawdle over the keys and nothing is accomplished. I find in my own daily practice that it is best for me to practice two hours in the morning and then two hours later in the day. When I am finished with two hours of hard study I am exhausted from close concentration. I have also noted that ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Lohndiener would of course have taken him straight to his hotel, and he would have been spared this shameful exposure, which, he knew well enough, Davis would never forget, but would tell all his life with an ever-increasing garniture of fiction. He cursed his weakness in allowing himself to dawdle about those arsenals and that parade-ground, and to be so far misguided by a hardened bachelor as to admire certain yellow-haired German and black-haired Hungarian women on the promenade; when he came to think of going out in that sledge, it was with anathema maranatha. He ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... been very good to me hitherto, and I think He'll bring it t' pass. But don't thee let on as thee cares for her so much. I sometimes think she wearies o' thy looks and thy ways. Show up thy manly heart, and make as though thee had much else to think on, and no leisure for to dawdle after her, and she'll think a deal more on thee. And now mend thy pen for a fresh start. I give and bequeath—did thee put "give and bequeath," ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... little folks, listen; I'll tell you a tale, Though to shock and surprise you I fear it won't fail; Of Master John Dawdle my story must be, Who, I'm sorry to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... went very late to the river to fetch water. The Moon shone brightly in the heavens, and she said to him, "Why do you stand gaping up there? You'd better come and help me carry water. I must work here, and you dawdle about above!" ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... "This was a grand chance for you. Ah, ha! The business riled your stomach a little, but nonsense! that will soon pass off. But we must not dawdle here; someone may come in. Let us ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to ask Edwina's husband something. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... you please tell Mrs Butler to bring out grannie's parcels and post at once. I'm afraid to dawdle, it's ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Hilda's mind. And now, in Janet's bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... thinking and thinking any longer; I must do something to relieve my mind. Can I go to my piano? No; I'm not fit for it. Work? No; I shall get thinking again if I take to my needle. A man, in my place, would find refuge in drink. I'm not a man, and I can't drink. I'll dawdle over my dresses, and put my ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... let you go on Friday, but we shall have to dawdle about the lakes for some time. We can't rush through them as we have been rushing through all these grand old Italian towns. We must have a long ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... you'll hurry. But not if you dawdle. Mother has a lot to do this morning. Remember, I won't help you with a single thing ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... some of the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... economical principles to the large sphere of work already in their hands, and which is remaining in a disastrously undeveloped condition, just because it is in their hands. The low rate of female wages leaves them the monopoly of it, and they dawdle along in the ways of their grandmothers, out of sight behind the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... Governor of the district everything had been arranged for a drive of a couple hundred miles through some of the prettiest parts of the country from Kuopio to Iisalmi. We were to have a carriage with a hood (a rare honour) and two horses, to dawdle as we liked by the way, and just order our vehicle when and as we wanted it, so that we might really peep into the homes of the people, as well as avail ourselves of the Baron's many kind introductions. But late on the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... evenings—he belonged to a literary club, a musical society, and so on—it was scant consolation to be told that he objected to some of her own activities and associations. He did not much care, for example, to have her "run" with the McComases and others of that type or to have her dawdle over glasses, tall, broad, or short, in places of general democratic assemblage; and he told her so. I believe it was about here that she began to find him something of a prig and a doctrinaire; and she was not ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... figures is an entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this preference is an indication ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking at folk. Go ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... Trumpeter in a neighbouring kingdom, is of some note and importance, and all is at my use and service. He is a very honest good creature. I wish that I had room for him here in this house instead of in Chesterfield Street. Bob grows every day more and more attached to him, but I cannot dawdle him as Horry Walpole does Tonton, for Me du Deffand's sake, nor does he seem to expect it. He has the accueil of a respectable old suisse in my hall, where I meet him on coming home in a posture couchante. Adieu; ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... explosively. "Do you play tennis? Do you squire the girls? Do you take a hand at bridge? Do you fish? Row? Swim? Motor? Golf? Booze? Not you! Might as well have stayed in New York. Two weeks now you have perched oh a porch—perched and sat, and nothing more. Dawdle and dream and foozle over your ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... big man. "Give it fair play, give it fair play!" And he came after his own hat quickly but cautiously, with burning eyes. The hat had seemed at first to droop and dawdle as in ostentatious langour on the sunny lawn; but the wind again freshening and rising, it went dancing down the garden with the devilry of a pas de quatre. The eccentric went bounding after it with kangaroo leaps and bursts ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... "You waste and dawdle away twenty or thirty minutes, when you ought to be doing your work. What do you mean?" Mr. Pole stood up and took an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reached the doctor's. In a few minutes the children would all be pouring out of school, and wouldn't they stare when they saw her! She felt almost shy at the thought of facing them, and gladly turned into Mr. Henders' out of their way. She would dawdle about in there, she told herself, until most of them had ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... us in a state of excellent health, and consequently in fairly good spirits; the labour, though of anything but an intellectual character, kept our minds sufficiently employed to prevent our brooding over our ill fortune; we were allowed to take matters pretty easily so long as we did not dawdle too much, and thus entail upon our lounging guard the unwelcome necessity of scrambling to their feet and hunting up our whereabouts; our daily labours brought with them just that amount of fatigue which ensured sound sleep and a happy oblivion of the dirt and ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... hurry up your cakes much further, I've got jest two words to say to ye. Don't cut it too fat, or you'll flummux by the way, an' leave nuthin' but a grease-spot. Don't dawdle round doin' nuthin' but stuffin' yerself to kill. Don't act like a gonus,—don't hanker arter the flesh-pots. Wake up, peel your eyes, an' do suthin' for a dyspeptic world, for sufferin' sinners, for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... his watch—is afraid it must be seven. The elder supposes that some of the party don't want to be late for dinner. The young lady says:—"Well—I got it all out of a book." And her mother says:—"Now, please don't dawdle any more. Go the short way, and see for the carriage." Whereupon the young people make off at speed up the steps to the terrace, and a brown bear on the top of his pole thinks they are hurrying to give him a bun, and is disillusioned. Mr. Pellew accompanies his wife, but as they go quick they ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fool, Matthews," the judge told him. "Jake was smarter than half the rest of Legal Lobby before he went native. Still can tie your tail to a can. Okay, let's start things. I'm too old to dawdle." ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... "that's some of uncle's fidgetiness; but he will be sure to dawdle at the last. Come ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... whistling through it. Flight that has no ending and no direction ... no face of Rachel at its ending. Burning eyes, devouring eyes ... face like a mirror of stars. There's a face in the world and you go after it, heels in air, tongue frozen, breathing always an emptiness that chokes. Easy for sleepers to dawdle with words and say carelessly life is this, life is that. What the hell's the difference what life is? It means nothing to me. People and their posturings mean nothing. But what about now? A contact, a tying up with posturings, and ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Mildmay. But what in the name of goodness, my dear fellow, has produced this wonderful revolution in all your plans in the course of a few hours? I thought you were going to mope away life on the Lake of Geneva, or dawdle it away ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... a country gentleman's wife," Rebecca thought. "I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle about in the nursery and count the apricots on the wall. I could water plants in a green-house and pick off dead leaves from the geraniums. I could ask old women about their rheumatisms and order half-a-crown's ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... course not. I wouldn't be so mean as to fool you about such a thing. But mamma says you mustn't dawdle to-day. So hurry up and get those towels done. Sylvy is going to be awfully busy, so you'll have to help her, but we're going to clean the knives for you, and shell the peas. Bring them down to the little house; we're ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... princess, opening upon him all the tenderness of her large and beaming eyes, "how weary am I of sitting on my cushion, and seeing fop after fop, fool after fool, dawdle down upon their faces before me; and, moreover, I am suffocated with perfumes. Strike your mandolin again louder, beloved of my soul—still louder, that I may be further relieved of this ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and took out his cigarette-case. "Now you mention it, I think I do. But I mustn't dawdle. I have got to ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... asking a hundred questions about him—had he had any colds? did he still dawdle over his oatmeal? what about unfortunate morning incidents? she viewed Aunt Bessie only as a source of information, and was able to ignore her hint, pointed by a coyly shaken finger, "Now that you've had such a fine long trip and spent so much money and all, I hope you're going to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... as he passed up the pathway, with a stride and a swing so different from his ordinary listless dawdle. They heard the sound of his heavy tread on the boards of the cottage verandah. Then there was a silence, and the heavy wits of each of the waiting men strove to grasp sufficient of the spectacle to put his thoughts into words and ask for his comrades' help ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Faithful Ayah didn't dawdle over her food. She returned, sat down on the floor beside little Fay's cot and started ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... started off briskly into the woodland road, striding along with the splendid swing of the healthy Englishwoman who has not been trained to dawdle. Her walking-skirt gave free play to her limbs; she was far past the well-known "line in the road" before she paused to take a full breath and to recapitulate. Her heart beat faster and the sudden glow in her cheek was not from the exercise. Somehow, out there alone in the world, the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I don't I shall fail the editor and be left without money. I let myself go at the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... never a pupil here," the secretary corrected him, but she thawed visibly. "Of course, I was a mere child when I finished business school, but I have been here fifteen years—fifteen years of watching rich society girls dawdle away four or five years, just because they've got to be somewhere before they make their debut.... But I mustn't talk like that, or I'll give you a wrong impression, Mr. Randolph. Of its kind, it is really a very fine school—very exclusive; riding masters, dancing masters, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... dawdle with your worthless companions if you desire," shouted Pa Rearick to a man in an adjoining county. "The lesson may be a good one for you. I wash my hands of the whole matter. But understand. Don't write to ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... insist that your men shan't violate the early-closing ordinance, you must observe one yourself. A man who works only half a day Saturday can usually do a day and half's work Monday. I'd rather have my men hump themselves for nine hours than dawdle ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... this was not the case, and that it was much better fun to walk with her than with Miss Perry, who used to dawdle so that ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... careful. There were six scruts still to be negotiated. He knew that what he was doing was a thing grandiose, unique, epical; a history-making thing; a thing that would outlive marble and the gilded monuments of princes. Yet he kept his head. He did not hurry, nor did he dawdle. Scrut by scrut, he ground slowly but he ground exceeding small. And while he did so he talked wisely and well. He passed from the power-station to a first edition of Leconte de Lisle's "Parnasse Contemporain" that he had picked up for sixpence ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... as they left the shop together, "if we're to get up to Rosherwich Gardens to-night, we mustn't dawdle." ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... supper, and that he must let her go; and there was a sweet tinge of motherly authority in her words—unconsciously to her, arbitrary and unconsciously to him, submissive—and she left him to smoke upon the broad porch, and dawdle in the chair he remembered so well, and talk ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... to thinking so intently about the matter that he began to dawdle. And if there was one thing that the Muley Cow didn't like it was to have to stand still while a slow milker puttered at his work. So she suddenly gave her tail a switch and brought the end of it across Johnnie ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... taken no oath to dawdle around Europe indefinitely. I propose to return to New York ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... murmurs Philip, whose long strides are not easy to keep pace with. They walk more slowly when out of sight. Oh, the delightful dawdle back through the vague shadows of evening in sweetly scented lanes! How merrily she prattles with charming ingenuousness, while he watches her expressive features, a new strange ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the village was very still. A train thundered by, and Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,—creaked and splashed. A cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up the road came the faint ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... "Don't dawdle then, damn you for a coldblooded staff-coxcomb!" he roared out suddenly out of an impassive face held ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker |
