"Willy-nilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and why not knowing, Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I know not whither, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... documents that during a drought in 1790 the peasants of Scheroutz and Werboutz collected all the women and compelled them to bathe, in order that rain might fall. An Armenian rain-charm is to throw the wife of a priest into the water and drench her. The Arabs of North Africa fling a holy man, willy-nilly, into a spring as a remedy for drought. In Minahassa, a province of North Celebes, the priest bathes as a rain-charm. In Central Celebes when there has been no rain for a long time and the rice-stalks begin to shrivel up, many of the villagers, especially the young folk, go to a neighbouring ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and the braces hung untouched upon their pins for a week on end. No, in the second dog-watch here, one took a solemn constitutional preparatory to dressing for dinner; and in the first night-watch one smoked and listened willy-nilly to polite small talk, and (from the ship's orchestra) the latest and most criminal products of New York's musical genius. I never heard or saw the process of relieving wheel or look-out aboard the Oronta, and long before the beginning of the middle watch ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... of one's wife; but I know that, however much of a sycophant I may have been in my younger days, my wife has outdone me since then. Presently we were both in the swim, swept off our feet by the current and carried down the river of success, willy-nilly, toward its mouth—to a safe haven, I wonder, or the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... "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 contests; struggles which leave you disenchanted, and wearied, and depraved, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... distinctly separated,—the Classes and the Masses. The comfortable wedge of Trade, which,—calling itself the Middle-class,—had up to the present kept things firm, now split asunder likewise,—the wealthy plutocrats clinging willy-nilly to the Classes, to whom they did not legitimately belong; and the men of moderate income throwing in their lot with the Masses, whose wrongs they sympathetically felt somewhat resembled their own. For taxation had ground them down to that particularly fine ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... said Ger ungratefully. 'Auntie, tell him he's not to,' for Pat was preparing to pick him up willy-nilly, and a roar would no doubt ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... 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?" "Fedorov." "Aha, Federov? Then take this!" and they ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... up her mind that it must be, and that was the beginning of the end. The charming match-maker had not indulged her passion for making others happy, willy-nilly, for some time—not, in fact, since she had arranged the match between Marie Willoughby and Jack Hearst, which, as the world knows, resulted first in a marriage, and then, as the good lady had not foreseen, ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... at that moment, to enforce his remark, he had placed his hand on Planchette, and at that moment his hand had been seized, as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, across the paper, writing as the hand of an ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... down, grazing away, would not budge until it had finished its tuft of grass, and then seeing another in a different direction marched off toward it, while the Rat, to avoid being dragged, had to trot humbly behind, willy-nilly. He was too proud to confess the truth, of course, and, nodding his head knowingly to the cowherds, said: "Ta-ta, good people! I am going home this way. It may be a little longer, but ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... settled as, willy-nilly, we'd got to back-seat it to Meadville together, Gran'ma Mullins begin about what a very superior man Rufus was 'n' what a very superior boy he used to be. Mrs. Macy did n't say nothin', 'cause ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... thy gibes! Here is a moil, here is an ambushment! Here am I, going fair and softly on mine own way, and of a sudden the trap is sprung, and Honor starts up and cries, 'There's but one way out of it, take it, willy-nilly!' If the maid is of her father's mind I ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... 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
... 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, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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 each day to be taken out and ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... 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 going to abolish it in England.) The Chamberlain our ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... 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
... willy-nilly, poetry must be the obedient daughter of music. Why do Italian operas please everywhere, even in Paris, as I have been a witness, despite the wretchedness of their librettos? Because in them music rules and compels us to forget everything ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... his own manner and degree—amusement, useful experience, friends, and his own soul. So I read and accept Tagore when he says, 'Man's history is the history of man's journey to the unknown in quest of his immortal self—his soul.' Willy-nilly, even higglety-pigglety and helter-skelter, these are what ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... tackled the head of the firm himself. Find some sort of introduction. Flatter him. Offer to work for nothing—and, trust me, he'll have you. Now, my advice is to go straight to old Haight and make up your mind to get into his office willy-nilly. It'll be worth three thousand a year to you to graduate from there. It'll give you the tone you need in the profession. There are two qualities that make for the highest success in the law—honesty and dishonesty. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... there are the interests of this life and provision for the next. And if he be young, there is nature's own joy in living, which with a patient scornful smile sets aside his protest that he is vowed to misery, and makes him, willy-nilly, laugh and sing. So that, if he do not drown himself in a week and thereby balk the inquiry, it is odds that he will compose himself in a month, and by the end of a year will carry no more marks of his misfortune than (if he be ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... others, 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
... 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 ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... pact—but silly. His neighbouring, willy-nilly, Must smirch the Bee, the Lily, Or stain the snow-white flag. Wielder of mere stage-dagger, Loud lord of empty swagger, In peril's hour a lagger. A Paladin ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... off at once into one of his usual tirades as to 'slavery' and 'liberty.' 'You're made to work, or fight! willy-nilly. That man's turned out of his farm—willy-nilly. I'm made to turn him out—willy-nilly. The common law of England's trampled under ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
