"Dalliance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... beneath Was straightened for the grave; and as the folds Sunk to the still proportions, they betrayed The matchless symmetry of Absalom. His hair was yet unshorn, and silken curls Were floating round the tassels as they swayed To the admitted air, as glossy now As when, in hours of gentle dalliance, bathing The snowy fingers of Judea's daughters. His helm was at his feet; his banner, soiled With trailing through Jerusalem, was laid, Reversed, beside him; and the jeweled hilt, Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade, Rested, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... not pensive; we are your friends: Men are ordain'd to live in misery; Therefore, come; dalliance dangereth our lives. K. Edw. Friends, whither must unhappy Edward go? Will hateful Mortimer appoint no rest? Must I be vexed like the nightly bird, Whose sight is loathsome to all winged fowls? When will the fury of his mind assuage? When will his heart be satisfied ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... must not only leave Short and his companions in the Lust Haus, but the widow and the lieutenant in their soft dalliance, and now occupy ourselves with the two principal personages of this our drama, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whispered low, Illileo—so low the leaves were mute, And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit; And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute: And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold the fruit. Illileo, I listened. I believed you. In my bliss, What were all the worlds above me since I found you thus in this?— ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... Philyra, where Cronos, son of Uranus, what time in Olympus he reigned over the Titans, and Zeus was yet being nurtured in a Cretan cave by the Curetes of Ida, lay beside Philyra, when he had deceived Rhea; and the goddess found them in the midst of their dalliance; and Cronos leapt up from the couch with a rush in the form of a steed with flowing mane, but Ocean's daughter, Philyra, in shame left the spot and those haunts, and came to the long Pelasgian ridges, where by her union ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... thankless children. But though she would do it to any extent in order to guard her boy she need not, she said to herself, be pleasant besides,—she need not, so to speak, be the primroses on his path of dalliance. Accordingly she behaved as little like a primrose as possible, sitting in stony silence while he skirmished in the passage with Mrs. Pearce, and the instant he came in again asked him where ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... previous greeting, no inquiry or explanation, no dalliance with emotion. His first words were a command, her inevitable response was to obey. Now, as always, she threw the whole responsibility upon him. And Emmet felt equal to the burden. He was like a god, knowing ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the fathers had left to the country. He thought for a second and made me a wise answer. He said, "I think it was their character." That is indeed the heritage they left us; they left us their character. Wealth will not preserve that which they left us; not wealth, not power, not "dalliance nor wit" will preserve it; nothing but that which is of the spirit will preserve it, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the wealth of Troy with the Achaians? But no! I might come to him unarmed, but he is merciless, and would slay me on the spot, as if I were a woman. But why do I hesitate? This is no time to hold dalliance with him, from oak or rock, like youths and maidens. Better to fight at once, and see to whom Olympian Zeus ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... Court we see people out for a holiday. There are house-boats with elaborate and artistic fittings and furnishings, and other craft of every sort that luxury can suggest. One could imagine that none but fairies could stage such a scene. The blending of colors, the easy dalliance, the rippling laughter, the graceful feasting, and the eddying wavelets all conspire to produce a scene that serves to emphasize the beauty of the shores. Underneath this enchanting scene of variegated beauty we discover the fundamental fact that man is a gregarious animal, that he not only ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... doctrines in which the masculinity of woman is preposterously asserted as a true warrant for equality with man in all his political and industrial relations; when Susan B. Anthony flashes defiance from lips and eyes which refuse the blandishment and soft dalliance that in the past have been so potent with "the sex"; when, in fine, the women of Wyoming are called from their domestic firesides to serve as jurors in a court of justice, a question of the day, and one, too, of the strangest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... start next morning, the reason of the dalliance being that we are but a few farsakhs from Herat. The country develops into undulating, grassy upland prairie, the greensward being thickly spangled with yellow flowers. A two flours' ride brings us to a camp of probably not less than one hundred tents. Large herds of camels are peacefully browsing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... The experiment has been tried times without number, from the beginning in Eden down to our own day, by communities and by individuals, but invariably with the same result. The way of transgressors is hard, however it may seem to them who are entering upon it a path of primrose dalliance. And surely "whosoever is deceived thereby is ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... admit her, though I would fain be spared the trouble. I doubt not it is some soft votary of Flora; and I am not in the vein for such dalliance now." ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... is despotism.... I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people—a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere.... Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... speeches, of soft looks, of pressed hands, lies at your door! What an incentive to flirtation is the wily imp who turns ever and anon from his careless gambols to throw his laughter-loving eyes upon you, calling up the mantling blush to both your cheeks! He seems to chronicle the hours of your dalliance, making your secrets known unto each other. We have gone through our share of flirtation in this life: match-making mothers, prying aunts, choleric uncles, benevolent and open-hearted fathers, we understand to the life, and care no more for such man-traps than a Melton man, well mounted on his strong-boned ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... gradually recovered, and resumed his usual habits. Accordingly, we find him engaged in "luxurious dalliance and prophaneness" with the Duchess of Mazarine, and visiting the Duchess of Portsmouth betimes in her chamber, where that bold and voluptuous woman, fresh risen from bed, sat in loose garments ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies: Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man: They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the tongue, at other times so talkative, silently and busily rolls about and makes much of the morsels it receives, presses them affectionately and benevolently against the palate, to double its pleasure by sharing it; and when this tender dalliance has been sufficiently indulged in, at length pushes them back almost unwillingly to its friend that swallows them down, and that indeed has the real enjoyment of them, the highest of all, though but for a moment, and then with heroic self-sacrifice ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... be true: doe not giue dalliance Too much the raigne: the strongest oathes, are straw To th' fire ith' blood: be more abstenious, Or ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Lady Queenie, after hesitation, raised her hand with the disciplinarians. By one vote the libertarians were defeated, and the dalliance of the hospital staff in leisure ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... This dalliance with the "constitutionals" might have been more than an astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it. In framing a national Church the First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling, still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that a man if he be a man, has certain responsibilities. He saw clearly, now that he considered life seriously, that a man might err in dalliance and idleness just as he had erred; and he saw too that a man might, like Sledge Hume, go to the other extreme. A man might grow soft muscled literally and figuratively in slothful carelessness, or he might grow hard until he became a machine. He ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... on "the Horse in Motion" has for its subject this instantaneous catching a likeness as applied to animals. But how could any process, however swift, or ingenious, or admirable, do full justice to the grace and spirit, the all-alive attitudes and varieties of posture, the dalliance and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... south of the harbor, an inn which was the delight of all those mariners whose palates were still unimpaired by the brine of the seven seas, and whose purses spoke well of the hazards of chance. Erected at the time when Henri II and Diane de Poitiers turned the sober city into one of licentious dalliance, it had cheered the wayfarer during four generations. It was three stories high, constructed of stone, gabled and balconied, with a roof which resembled an assortment of fanciful noses. Here and ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the Book; and what shall He say of you? I've watched for this, I've seen it coming. You keep long accounts, but there's One keeps longer—and in His head, as we read. To breaking mother's heart so much, to scandal of matrimony so much—and to perjury and dirty devices, wicked dalliance, so much. When she came here— this fine young lady, so fresh and sweet—I wailed. I shook my fist at you, Mr. Ingram; 'I know what this means,' I said, 'a false tongue and a young heart.' And I waited, I tell you—for I could do nothing else. She could ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... it were better, for this dalliance In the ev'ning, in a sequester'd grove, Is most unseemly, if not dangerous. Woman, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people,—a sad evidence that feeling prosperity, we forget right,—that liberty as a principle we ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... splendid achievements of the white man. In his own thought he rose superior to them! He scorned them, even as a lofty spirit absorbed in its stern task rejects the soft beds, the luxurious food, the pleasure-worshiping dalliance of a rich neighbor. It was clear to him that virtue and happiness are independent of these things, if not ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... was scant time for such dalliance, I bent my knee and rested my forehead upon her hand. As I rose, the minister's hand touched my shoulder and the voice spoke in my ear. "There is another way," he said. "There is God's death, and not man's. Look and see what ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... she met one whose superficial points were superficially attractive, his contribution to her attitude to men was to make her blink (inwardly) the more, albeit on a different note. That one so exceptionally dowered should find pleasure in, for instance, dalliance of sex! Contemptible! Oh, sickening and contemptible! One Harry Occleve, of Laetitia's circle, so obviously "the good match," was outstandingly such a case. It was thought upon him, scornful and disgusted thought, that made her, walking back from one of the Saturday-evening parties—he was ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the author glowed with such joyous excitement that the producer felt the actual radiations; then little by little he felt her begin to cool, and a chill ran up and down his own spine as Hawtry and Height held the stage alone in the first dash of Howard-"pepped" dalliance near the last of the first act. He held his breath, frozen within him, until the curtain went down, and then he refused to turn to the author at his side. He was in a panic and undecided what to do until Mr. Rooney relieved him ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... waste my spring of youth In idle dalliance; I would plant rich seeds, To blossom in my manhood and bear fruit ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... things I wanted to know, a thousand questions I had to ask him. But I was checked. I could not abandon Gladys Todd; nor had I the courage to present myself to him after so many years in the light of a youth given to sentimental dalliance. He would remember the boy who had come to him, cold and wet, from the depths of a mountain stream, the boy who had run miles in the early morning to warn him of the approach of the terrible Lukens, the boy whom he had called his only friend. He would see me dignified ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... forest-gods together, Do worship Pan in the long twilight clear. And Artemis this one night spares the deer, And every cave and dell, and every grove Is glad with singing soft and happy cheer, With laughter, and with dalliance, and with love. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... the moment he was as urgent as ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Louetta swooping down the length of the room with her husband. "Careful! You're getting foolish!" he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled, "Gee, it's hot!" Without reason, he thought of Paul in that shadowy place where men never dance. "I'm crazy to-night; better go home," he worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Louetta's ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... had written saying: "Some push me to continue my History. Millar offers any price. All the Marlborough papers are offered me, and I believe nobody would venture to refuse me, but cui bono? Why should I forego dalliance and sauntering and society, and expose myself again to the clamours of a stupid factious public? I am not yet tired of doing nothing, and am become too wise either to want censure or praise. By and by I shall be too old to undergo ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... after closing the door carefully, "thou must not let the King keep thee longer in dalliance and idleness: thine earldom needs thee without delay. Thou knowest that these East Angles, as we Saxons still call them, are in truth mostly Danes and Norsemen; people jealous and fierce, and free, and more akin to the Normans than to the Saxons. My ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and watched him. How much of a boy he was himself, anyhow! And yet how little he understood the complicated problems of a boy like Graham, irresponsible but responsive, rich without labor, with time for the sort of dalliance Clay himself at the same age had had neither leisure nor ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reason of Susannah's dalliance with time in those first weeks of her moral freedom was the mental weakness that succeeds shock. Every day she thought that she would soon write that begging letter, until the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... on the other side of the room meant no more than the chirping of a grasshopper upon a mullein-stalk. I did not delude myself with the notion of providential use of the tongue that tripped at the consonants and lingered in liquid dalliance with favorite vowels. Yet, after ten motionless minutes of severe thinking, the letter was deliberately torn into strips and these into dice, and all of these went into the waste-paper basket at my elbow. I had concluded to "abide a wee." If the sun went down that once upon ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... question to the uses of this eternal hunt? During that time had he ever talked to a girl or woman with an unembarrassed sincerity? He stripped his pretences bare; the answer was no. His very refinements had been no more than indicative fig-leaves. His conservatism and morality had been a mere dalliance with interests that too brutal a simplicity might have exhausted prematurely. And indeed hadn't the whole period of literature that had produced him been, in its straining purity and refinement, as it were one glowing, one illuminated fig-leaf, a vast ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the ground, no sooner perceived, on looking up, the position of Adams, who was stretched on his back, and snored louder than the usual braying of the animal with long ears, than he turned towards Fanny, and, taking her by the hand, began a dalliance, which, though consistent with the purest innocence and decency, neither he would have attempted nor she permitted before any witness. Whilst they amused themselves in this harmless and delightful manner they heard a pack of hounds approaching in full ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... amours, and the chorus of habitual debauchery. He is at pains to let the world know that he is still fonder of roving, than of loving; and that all the Caras and the Fannys, with whom he holds dalliance in these pages, have had each a long series of preceding lovers, as highly favoured as their present poetical paramour: that they meet without any purpose of constancy, and do not think it necessary to grace their connexion ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My principles positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self-knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... like to whisp'ring love, Or dalliance in the bowers of spring? Why then delay my bliss t'improve? Haste, haste, my love, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... was too far gone in anxiety and bone-weariness to care to linger just then in any primrose path of dalliance. He even wished heartily, if inaudibly, that the girl would be quiet ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... vote in the council, helped work George here for his vote in the council by lending money to him for his business; and so on down the line. The Doc calls that politics, and regards it as one of his smaller vices; but me?" scoffed the young man, "when I go gamboling down the primrose path of dalliance with a lady on each arm—or maybe more, I am haled before the calif and sentenced to his large and virtuous displeasure. Man,"—here young Mr. Van Dorn drummed his fingers on the showcase and considered the universe calmly through the store window—"man ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... ladies, her bosom, as it rose and fell in her French laces, being eloquent of that. She is a singularly fine animal to whom Providence has, by an unusual generosity, given a soul, though mostly, maybe, it hides in the silken dalliance which is the ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... mind, I'll roam Amid the cloister's silent gloom; Or, where ranged oaks their shades diffuse, Hold dalliance with my darling Muse, Recalling oft some heaven-born strain That warbled in Augustan reign; Or turn, well pleased, the Grecian page, If sweet Theocritus engage, Or blithe Anacreon, mirthful wight, Carol his easy love-lay light. . . And joys like these, if Peace inspire Peace, with ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... my years are young! And fitter is my study and my books Than wanton dalliance with a paramour. Yet call the ambassadors; and, as you please, So let them have their answers every one: I shall be well content with any choice Tends to God's ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... bread-and-butter to the privileged in the office, opened the front door with bridling exclamations of astonishment. She had her best frock on; her hair was in curling-pins; she smelt delicately of beer; the excitement of the Sunday League excursion and of the evening's dalliance had not quite cooled in this respectable and experienced young creature of central London. She was very feminine and provocative and unparlourmaidish, standing there in the hall, and George passed ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... unpossessedness of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present object,—an unsullied, unscarified mirror! And how strictly true to nature it is that Banquo, and not Macbeth himself, directs our notice to the effect produced on Macbeth's mind, rendered temptible by previous dalliance of the fancy ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... he laughed, remembering now that Monmouth's affairs were too absorbing just at present to leave him room for dalliance. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... figures with gray backs and snowy bosoms—were seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till at its extremity they took wing over the ocean and were gone. After forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits, it is ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... known. And she prefers to immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the undiscussable side of forty—when she might be engaging me in amorous dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And Fate—oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist under the nose of an ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tombstone of Charley Steele; dead and buried, out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out of memory, save as a warning to others—an old example raked out of the dust-bin of time by the scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trod the paths of dalliance. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his object and averse to further dalliance, he gave Cimon and his companions the stiffest of nods and deliberately turned on his heel. Speech was too precious coin for him to be wasted on mere adieus. Only over his shoulder he cast at ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... taking one's own life-way amidst everything, and taking one's own life-way alone. Love too. But there also, taking one's way alone, happily alone in all the wonders of communion, swept up on the winds, but never swept away from one's very self. Two eagles in mid-air, maybe, like Whitman's Dalliance of Eagles. Two eagles in mid-air, grappling, whirling, coming to their intensification of love-oneness there in mid-air. In mid-air the love consummation. But all the time each lifted on its own wings: each bearing itself up ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... who one day conquers us all. For many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,—only wild words (at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),—tender words, too, of dalliance, and eager, loving glances,—murmurs of boyish things, of sunny, school-day noonings,—hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... These delays gave the English time to assemble. King James, as above related, captured Lady Heron at Ford. She was beautiful and deceitful, and soon enthralled the gay king in her spells, while all the time she was in communication with the English. Thus James wasted his time in dalliance, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... employed, as well as the ends sought, were artistic and full of suggestions as to possible methods of development. But whereas the opera in the seventeenth century suffered from contact with the public, the lyric drama of the sixteenth was led into paths of dalliance by the dominant taste of splendor-loving courts. The character of this taste encouraged the development of the musical apparatus of the lyric drama toward opulent complexity, and the medium for this was found in the rapidly growing madrigal, which soon ruled the realm of secular music. In it ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... dread I 2 With power of many a hand And many hastening feet shall spring The Fury of the adamantine tread, Visiting Argive land Swift recompense to bring For eager dalliance of a blood-stained pair Unhallowed, foul, forbidden. No omen fair,— Their impious course hath fixed this in my soul,— Nought but black portents full of blame shall roll Before their eyes that ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Master Morgan," he gasped, "I have been feeling ill and full of strange qualms and sinkings these many days past. 'Twas an active spirit rebelling against imprisonment in an idle body. I must to sea again—this dalliance in towns and in the company of sleek shopkeepers and peacock-garbed gallants is slow death to a fellow of mettle. I must get me down to Plymouth again, and join any bold captain that hath a mind to turn his ship ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... "Their policy is dalliance with the South; and they care no more for the right of petition than is absolutely necessary to satisfy the feeling of their constituents. They are jealous of Cushing, who, they think, is playing a double game. They are envious of my position as the supporter of the right of petition; ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... with his dalliance with his feathered favourite, now giving, now withholding, the morsel with which he was about to feed the bird, and so exciting its appetite and gratifying it by turns. "What! more yet?—thou foul kite, thou wouldst never have done—give thee part thou wilt have all—Ay, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... throne, was entering upon an era of rapid expansion at home and abroad, while the Dutch, by the truce of 1609, virtually obtained the freedom for which they had struggled so long. In England Queen Elizabeth had died in 1603, and her Stuart successor exchanged her policy of dalliance, of balance between France and Spain, for one of peace and conciliation. The aristocratic free-booters who had enriched themselves by harassing the Spanish Indies were succeeded by a less romantic but more business-like generation, which devoted itself ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... Oh, Monarch, listen.— How many a day and moon thou hast reclined Within these palace walls in silken dalliance, 580 And never shown thee to thy people's longing; Leaving thy subjects' eyes ungratified, The satraps uncontrolled, the Gods unworshipped, And all things in the anarchy of sloth, Till all, save evil, slumbered through the realm! And wilt thou not now tarry for a day,— A day which may redeem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... chooses to convey his meaning, as usual, through the rich refracting medium of dramatic characters and situations quite unlike his own. So his "apology for poetry" becomes an item in Don Juan's case for the "poetry" of dalliance with light-o'-loves. Fifine herself acquires new importance; the emancipated gipsy turns into the pert seductive coquette, while over against her rises the pathetic shadow of the "wife in trouble," ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... these found rest in the convents—provided they had the money to pay. Those without money or influential friends simply labored as servants and scullions. Rich women contracted the "Convent Habit"; this was about the same thing as our present dalliance known as the "Sanitarium Bacillus"—which only those with a goodly bank-balance can afford to indulge. The poor, then as now, had a sufficient panacea for trouble: they kept their nerves beneath their clothes by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... on the steamship St. Louis, after an uneventful passage I arrived in New York, and from thence to Washington, D. C. After my leave of absence had expired, I decided not to return to Madagascar. For after nearly four years' dalliance with the Malagash fever in the spring and dodging the bubonic plague in the fall, I concluded that Madagascar was a ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... laziness, which has to be overcome before we can think with any degree of concentration. Interest says, "Follow this line, which is easy and attractive, or which requires but little effort—follow the line of least resistance." Will says, "Quit that line of dalliance and ease, and take this harder way which I direct—cease the line of least resistance and take the one of greatest resistance." When day dreams and "castles in Spain" attempt to lure you from your lessons, refuse to follow; shut out these vagabond thoughts and stick to your ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... only Spectators, and to bear no Sway in the Politicks of the World, yet underhand, the Fate of Kingdoms often hung at their Girdles, and the wisest of Princes often hazarded the Repose of his People for an Hours Dalliance with some Coquet and diverting Creature of the fair Sex. I cannot tell well how it happen'd, but I suppose by not resisting the first impressions of this kind, I found my self far gone in an Intrigue, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... the little school, they had not added to its flock, and it was with some curiosity that the young schoolmaster greeted them and awaited the purport of their visit. This was protracted in delivery through a certain polite dalliance with the real subject characteristic of the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Now this son he had by his wife Khatoun, and he was foul of favour and had reached the age of twenty, without learning to ride, albeit his father was a valiant cavalier and a doughty champion and delighted in battle and adventure. One night, he had a dream of dalliance in sleep and told his mother, who rejoiced and told his father, saying, 'Fain would I find him a wife, for he is now apt for marriage.' Quoth Khalid, 'He is so foul of favour and withal so evil of odour, so sordid and churlish, that ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Their images—long-legged little figures, with gray backs and snowy bosoms—were seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced, they flew a score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf wave; and thus they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till, at its extremity, they took wing over the ocean, and were gone. After forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh, to find no memorial ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... essence,—the novel gratification of the petty vanities and petty questionings which beset undecided men,—what wonder that persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the towns? Historical personages—a nerveless mimicry of the conventional stage-representation of them—stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed friends, Indians a discretion, local celebrities, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... with gray backs and snow-white breasts; their images may be seen in the wet sand almost or full as distinctly as the reality. Their legs are long. As you draw near, they take a flight of a score of yards or more, and then recommence their dalliance with the surf-wave. You may behold their multitudinous little tracks all along your way. Before you reach the end of the beach, you become quite attached to these little sea-birds, and take much interest in their occupations. After passing in one direction, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... point of view of a profound and erudite student, with a deep belief in the efficacy of useless knowledge. Neither am I a humorist, for I have loved beauty better than laughter; nor a sentimentalist, for I have abhorred a weak dalliance with personal emotions. It is hard, then, to say what I am; but it is my hope that this may emerge. My desire is but to converse with my readers, to speak as in a comfortable tete-a-tete, of experience, and hope, and patience. I have no wish to disguise the hard ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stablished hall, between the vaulted room and the goodly fence of the court, and there slay them with your long blades, till they shall have all given up the ghost and forgotten the love that of old they had at the bidding of the wooers, in secret dalliance.' ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... of the country it was fairly potent stuff, and rather sweet than otherwise, probably an Australian port. I sipped it with the air of one who generally devoted a good portion of his evenings to such dalliance, and ate several of the thin biscuits which lay in a plate on the table. Meanwhile, I observed closely the other sippers. They were all in couples, and the snatches of their conversation which I heard struck ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... have carried him nobly through such an ordeal. He was a man who would have acted up to the spirit of the Gospel command 'to pluck out the offending eye, or to cut off the right hand;' there would have been no parleying, no weak dalliance with temptation. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... forefathers, the Stevensons, was not, like his, tuneful: though his father was imaginative, diverting himself with daydreams; and his uncle, Alan Stevenson, the builder of Skerryvore, yielded to the fascinations of the religious Muse. A volume of verse was the pledge of this dalliance. His mother, who gave him her gay indifference to discomfort and readiness for travel, also read to him, in his childhood, much good literature; for not till he was eight years of age was he an unreluctant reader—which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It might embitter it all, but it could never prevent him from the outward act. He threw his tie over a chair and took off his coat with unnecessary emphasis in the movement. Ten minutes later he was treading the primrose path of dalliance with an arm around ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... to hate perseveringly. But he loved with no more constancy than he hated. He had no patriotism, and no appreciation of moral excellence. He would rather see half of the merchants of London ruined, and half of the Dissenters immured in gloomy prisons, than lose two hours of inglorious dalliance with one of his numerous concubines. A more contemptible prince never sat on the English throne, or one whose whole reign was disgraced by a more constant succession of political blunders and social crimes. And yet he never fully lost his popularity, nor was his reign felt to be as burdensome ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... self-possession, a deliberate balance of mind, and a repose of the emotional nature, which he had never before observed, except in much older women. She had had, as he could well imagine, no romping girlhood, no season of careless, light-hearted dalliance with opening life, no violent alternation even of the usual griefs and joys of youth. The social calm in which she had expanded had developed her nature as gently and securely as a sea-flower is unfolded below the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... form two figures, or two situations more incompatible with the existence of former familiarity, than the judge and the culprit—and yet, these very persons had passed together the most blissful moments that either ever tasted! Those hours of tender dalliance were now present to her mind. His thoughts were more nobly employed in his high office; nor could the haggard face, hollow eye, desponding countenance, and meagre person of the poor prisoner, once ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... Chrisoganus, come Mavortius and a group of his friends representing the nobility whom the academicians endeavour to win to their attendance and support. Mavortius and his followers refuse to cultivate Chrisoganus and the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live for ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... that he was not neglecting his duties. To be philandering with a commercial traveller who has finished a good day's work seemed less shocking than dalliance with a neglecter of business; it seemed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... enemy. He proceeded on his journey, and arriving by night at the camp of Feridun, hoped to find him off his guard and put him to death. He ascended a high place, himself unobserved, from which he saw Feridun sitting engaged in soft dalliance with the lovely Shahrnaz. The fire of jealousy and revenge now consumed him more fiercely, and he was attempting to effect his purpose, when Feridun was roused by the noise, and starting up struck a furious blow with his cow-headed ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the particulars of my adventures, with the exception of my dalliance with the nymphs of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... upon the Boer War, but here we are given too much flirtation and too little fighting. His liberality in the matter of heroines compensates me not at all for his niggard accounts of the war. That he himself should apparently take more interest in dalliance than in strife seems to indicate sheer perversity, for, when once he has ceased to toy with tennis-teas and trivialities, it is possible to respect the opinions of those admiring critics even if it is impossible to agree with them. The little fighting and the few whiffs of the veldt that we are ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... the women, and by degrees, according to the licentiousness of their thought, we would enjoy our pleasure. Soon the women found that they had no more occasion to go out for their dalliance; and even the sober-minded girls among them became involved. They did not dare to say anything, for fear of the scandal; and also I had a drug which I applied during the night to their faces, stupefying them so that they allowed me to do as ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... by the window, and stared out into the gloomy, lamplit street. And it crossed her mind to remember the bitter price so many women had paid for that dalliance and compromise, so many now probably gazing out with dull eyes into gloomy ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Life and dark her Doom!) Mighty Army of the Dead, Dance, like Death-fires, round her Tomb! Then with prophetic song relate Each some scepter'd Murderer's fate! When shall scepter'd SLAUGHTER cease? Awhile He crouch'd, O Victor France! Beneath the light'ning of thy Lance, With treacherous dalliance wooing PEACE. But soon up-springing from his dastard trance The boastful, bloody Son of Pride betray'd His hatred of the blest and blessing Maid. One cloud, O Freedom! cross'd thy orb of Light And sure, he deem'd, that Orb was quench'd in night: For still does MADNESS ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... for useless dalliance," said the great lady; "let us to work. By no other means can we root out for ever ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... technically called "one to kill." I saw instinctively that I was the one, and I held my racket ready with both hands. Our opponent, who had been wanting his tea for the last two games, was in no mood of dalliance; he fairly let himself go over this shot. In a moment I was down on my knees behind the net ... and the next moment I saw through the meshes a very strange thing. The other man, with his racket on the ground, was holding ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... we reasoned together the courage of Venus assailed, as well our desires as our members, and so she unrayed herself and came to bed, and we passed the night in pastime and dalliance, till as by drowsie and unlusty sleep I was ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... remarked her taste for human flesh, and her dexterity in snapping off heads, and did not know but her love for him might extend to a wish to try the flavour of his meat, and that she might, in a moment of soft dalliance, practise on him her skill in unjointing necks. Women have been known to inflict a greater evil than either on the man they have pretended to love. At least, so the Eleventh Man said, and, as I have before told my ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... nature to encourage a chivalrous desire to protect a woman who had betrayed, however innocently, a sentiment for another man. When the Reverend Mr. Mullen inadvertently introduced an emotional triangle, he had changed the situation from one of mere sentimental dalliance into direct pursuit. By some law of reflex action, known only to the male mind at such instants, the first sign that she was not to be won threw him into the mental attitude of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... cotton fabrics, or even from those of many fashionable women, whose only aesthetic accomplishment is to play languidly and mechanically on an instrument, and whose only intellectual achievement is to have devoured a dozen silly novels in the course of a summer spent in alternate sleep and dalliance! Nor does familiarity always give a zest to the pleasure which arises from the creations of art or the glories of nature. The Roman beggar passes the Coliseum or St. Peter's without notice or enjoyment, as a peasant sees ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... and each marrying set about to build a nest, free and unmolested in those trees that Choo Hoo had promised them. Choo Hoo himself retired with his lovely bride to the ancestral ash, and passed the summer in happy dalliance. With the autumn the campaign recommenced, and with exactly the same result. After a second autumn and winter of fighting, Choo Hoo had pushed his frontier another fifteen miles farther into Kapchack's kingdom. Another summer of love followed, and so it went on year after year, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... like my own, was conducted in an intermittent and fragmentary manner. But little time was left us for dalliance or soft speeches, and we paid our homage in practical fashion, with axe and saw and bridle, for there was truth in what Harry said: "The best compliment a man can pay a woman is to work for her comfort. Still, I don't know that more leisure for other things wouldn't be pleasant, too. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... thee to account. What! am I so old, and yet not know the cost of dalliance? Nothing dearer. And he who eared my field during my absence, being now, in thy abasement, so chary of his presence, spent little of his gold, I'll ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... or love.] Endearment — N. endearment, caress; blandishment, blandiment^; panchement, fondling, billing and cooing, dalliance, necking, petting, sporting, sparking, hanky-panky; caressing. embrace, salute, kiss, buss, smack, osculation, deosculation^; amorous glances. courtship, wooing, suit, addresses, the soft impeachment; lovemaking; serenading; caterwauling. flirting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... letter said] "I have thought this thing to a finish. I want you to turn the Tigmores over to my cousin, Bruce Steering. Let him start at once on the jack trail, that primrose path of dalliance. As for me, my dear sir, by the time this reaches you, I shall be on the long trail. You needn't blow any trumpets about it, for B. G. will have no funeral. The name that I gave you as the name that I live here under is good enough ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... precedes them and women, excited by Krishna's name, throng the rooftops, balconies and windows. 'Some ran off in the middle of their dinner: others while bathing and others while engaged in plaiting their hair. They forgot all dalliance with their husbands and went to look at Krishna.' As Krishna proceeds, he meets some of Kansa's washermen carrying with them bundles of clothes. He asks them to give him some and when they refuse, he attacks one of them and strikes off his head. The others drop their bundles and run for their ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... not so that the first heroic reformers protested. They departed out of Babylon once for good and all; they came not back for an occasional contact with her altars—a dallying, and then a protesting against dalliance; they stood not shuffling in the porch, with a Popish foot within, and its lame Lutheran fellow without, halting betwixt. These were the true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... coquetry after that experience in Honora's room; nor did the noble solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade her to ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Kit reach the house in breathless haste. It is far later than they imagined when lingering in happy dalliance in the flower-crowned field below, and yet not really late for a sultry summer evening. But the Misses Blake are fearful of colds, and expect all the household to be in at stated hours; and the Misses Beresford are fearful of scoldings, carrying, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... is the night of dalliance in the Temple, and not unfrequently on Sunday morning, leaving a lady love, L'Estrange would go to church—top hat, umbrella, and prayer-book—and having a sense of humour, he was amused by ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Sir Sting fled, and went boasting Amongst his fellows—Doris toasting; And as his burgundy he sips, He showed the sugar on his lips. Away the greedy host then gathered, Where they thought dalliance fair was feathered. They fluttered round her, sipped her tea, And lived in quarters fair and free; Nor were they banished, till she found That wasps had ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... resist." She finished; and the subtle Fiend his lore Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth:— "Dear daughter—since thou claim'st me for thy sire, And my fair son here show'st me, the dear pledge Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and joys Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change Befallen us unforeseen, unthought-of—know, I come no enemy, but to set free From out this dark and dismal house of pain Both him and thee, and all the heavenly host ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... sought speech from her: "Whence art thou sprung, O maiden?" says Eochaid, "and whence is it that thou hast come?" "It is easy to answer thee," said the maiden: "Etain is my name, the daughter of the king of Echrad; 'out of the fairy mound' am I" "Shall an hour of dalliance with thee be granted to me?" said Eochaid. "'Tis for that I have come hither under thy safeguard," said she. "And indeed twenty years have I lived in this place, ever since I was born in the mound ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... must not. I love thee, that may I now say unashamed; for my love is no mere dalliance, like a weak woman's; were I a man— by all the Mighty Ones, I could still love thee, even as now I do! Up then, Sigurd! Happiness is worth a daring deed; we are both free if we but will it, and then the game ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... were on his Celtic soul that longed for dalliance with the Orient; but he well knew that tone of voice, and sadly resigned himself ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... rest nor dalliance on our way. Unrest lit meteors in the heaven of my mistress's eyes, and I lost, at length, the delusion that I should ever satisfy all her imperious exactions. Then I hoped to make but some one thought or deed quite worthy of her favor, even to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... to herself until she recovers from the shock—if it be one—of this intelligence. The surest means of keeping alive a dying coal is to stir and blow upon it. And even we"—lifting the heavy locks of her husband's hair in playful dalliance—"even we are mortal. We have had our peccadilloes and our repentances, and have now our little concealments of affairs that would interest nobody but ourselves. Do you hear what I am saying, Herbert! Leave off your high tragedy airs and attend to reason, as expressed in your sister's ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... shouldst thou not rather have listened to me, and followed my injunctions, than have obeyed the idle and foolish pratings of that crafty old knave, who taught thee to choose a sour life instead of a sweet, and abandon the charms of dalliance, to tread the hard and rough road, which the Son of Mary ordereth men to go? Dost thou not fear the displeasure of the most puissant gods, lest they strike thee with lightning, or quell thee with thunderbolt, or overwhelm thee in the yawning earth, because thou hast rejected ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... now become almost driving passions to the exclusion of all else;—and he was certainly not in the least disposed to take Sir Joseph at his word, and to embark upon that undertaking which he knew would put an abrupt end to all the careless dalliance in which his clothes, his fastidious speech, and his parade of artistic discrimination played so effective ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and, rather than it should not, Note what we fathers do! look how we live! What mistresses we keep! at what expense, In our sons' eyes! where they may handle our gifts, Hear our lascivious courtships, see our dalliance, Taste of the same provoking meats with us, To ruin of our states! Nay, when our own Portion is fled, to prey on the remainder, We call them into fellowship of vice; Bait 'em with the young chamber-maid, ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... been content to wander for hours, perhaps—he begging for assurances that she with an only half-feigned, pretty reluctance gave—but that their agreeable dalliance was cut short by ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... behind cloudy curtains of alarm. Old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago fume in the smoke of his pipe. His girded spirit sees agrarian unrest in the daffodil and industrial riot in a tin of preserved prunes. He sees the world moving on the brink of horror and despair. Sweet dalliance with a baked bloater on a restaurant platter moves him to grief over the hard lot of the Newfoundland fishing fleet. Six cups of tea warm him to anguish over the peonage of Sir Thomas Lipton's coolies in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... deliberately to such a task more culpable than even the nursery jade who administers gin and opium to her charge, in order that she may steal to the back-door undisturbed, and there indulge in surreptitious dalliance with the dustman? Far better had they stuck to their old trade of twisting travesties from Shakespeare for the amusement of elderly idiots, than attempted to people Fairyland with the palpable denizens of St Giles. The Seven Champions of Christendom, indeed! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... more temperate, and the sky more serene than ever I did before; even the feathered songsters seem to tune their tender throats with more harmony and pleasure; the murmuring rills invite to love-inspiring dalliance, while the blossoms of the vine regale me from afar with the choicest perfumes ... let us animate all Nature, which is absolutely dead without the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... he affirmed with a weary nod; the lateness of the hour rendered him quite indisposed for convivial dalliance. Even the sight of O'Hagan, seduction incarnated, in the vestibule, a bottle under either arm, clutching a box of cigars jealously with both hands, failed to move ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... imperial and alone, flaunting its palidementum in a cascade of lilac amid the matrix of the mosses. Its sleek, muscular vine-arms writhe round the clasped bodies of live oaks as if two lovers slept beneath a cloak, and the cloisonne pavilion of their dalliance drips ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... hocus-pocus, and the judicious are not deceived by it for an instant. What these virtuous bel dames actually desire in their hearts is not that the male be reduced to chemical purity, but that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves. The most elementary acquaintance with Freudian psychology exposes their secret animus. Unable to ensnare males under the present system, or at all events, unable to ensnare males sufficiently appetizing to arouse the envy of other women, they leap ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... these friendly fields desert, Where thou with grass, and rivers, and the breeze, And the bright face of day, thy dalliance hadst; Where to thine ear first sang the enraptured birds; Where love and thou that lasting bargain made. The ship rides trimmed, and from the eternal shore Thou hearest airy voices; but not yet Depart, my ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... correctly Brindaban (Vrindavana). The name originally belongs to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathura (Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopis); also associated with the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... widespread familiarity with these problems, which has been engendered simply for pecuniary profit by magazine literature in the form of essays, fiction and even verse, is by no means an undiluted blessing—particularly if the accentuation of the author is on the roses lining the path of dalliance quite as much as on the destruction to which it leads. The very warning against evil may turn out to be in effect only a hint that it is readily accessible. One does not leave the candy box open beside ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... skiff of a summer evening, the churchwarden was charged to interview her husband, to point out to him privately the scandal that was being caused, and to show him how his duty lay in keeping his belongings in better order. Was a man trying to carry fire in his bosom by dalliance at the bar of the Blandamer Arms, then a hint was given to his spouse that she should use such influence as would ensure evenings being spent at home. Did a young man waste the Sabbath afternoon in walking with his dog on Cullerne Flat, he would receive "The Tishbite's ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... into things material. Of his love and the bath he would have fancies, and he wanted what touched her to be from him. She was surprised by a cumbrous package which, opened, revealed great things for a woman's dalliance with water—the soft Turkish towel, vast enough to envelop her, the perfumed soaps, and even the bath-mittens. And she was a little frightened, maybe, at the personality of it all, but she recognized the nature of his ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... in fields of Thrasymene, Where Mars did mate[1] the Carthaginians; Nor sporting in the dalliance of love, In courts of kings where state is overturn'd; Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, Intends our Muse to vaunt[2] her[3] heavenly verse: Only this, gentlemen,—we must perform The form of Faustus' fortunes, good ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... of leaves lay some five yards from the tree where Forteune declared that Mistress and Master Gorilla had passed the night, Paterfamilias keeping watch below. A little beyond we were shown a spot where two males had been fighting a duel, or where a couple had been indulging in dalliance sweet; the prints were 8 inches long and 6 across the huge round toes; whilst the hinder hand appeared almost bifurcate, the thumb forming nearly a half. This is explained in the "Gorilla Book" (chap, xx.): "Only the ball of the foot, and that thumb which answers to ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... must be filled by the work of women. She says in another sentence worth remembering, "The man behind the counter should of course be moved to a muscular employment; but we must not interpret his dalliance with tapes and ribbons as a proof ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... weak man's policy. It is right sometimes to be of a crafty mind, submitting to those little subterfuges which find a place in the heart's undercurrents, and obeying what those thoughts suggest in way of pleasures to be got from dalliance: this is no wrong in woman's eye! even if now the heart has no desire, yet it is fair to follow such devices; agreement is the joy of woman's heart, acquiescence is the substance (the full) of true adornment; but if a man reject these overtures, he's like a ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... one thing in principle is, as far as meaning goes, subject to different constructions; as is exemplified by those in the world whose heart is set upon lewdness. Some delight solely in faces and figures; others find insatiable pleasure in singing and dancing; some in dalliance and raillery; others in the incessant indulgence of their lusts; and these regret that all the beautiful maidens under the heavens cannot minister to their short-lived pleasure. These several kinds of persons are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot, spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... hindrances to clear judgment, he felt that she was troubled in spirit. His acquaintance with women was of the slightest, since a youth who is taught his business on the Conway, and means to attach himself to one of the great Trans-Atlantic shipping lines, has no time to spare for dalliance in boudoirs. But it gave him a thrill when he heard that this charming girl knew his name, and it seemed to him, for an instant, that she was looking into his very soul, analyzing him, searching for some sign that he was not as others, which meant that there were some whom she had bitter cause ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... no succour from the beloved object. Then we fall into misery; and hostile passions, lying in wait for the heart, tear it in a thousand pieces. But anon a ray of hope—the very least it may be—raises us as high as ever. Sometimes this comes from mere dalliance, but sometimes also from an honest pity. How happy such ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... willing that you should be called my {son}, just as long as you do what becomes you; but if you do not do so, I shall find out how it becomes me to act toward you. This arises from nothing, in fact, but too much idleness. At your time of life, I did not devote my time to dalliance, but, in consequence of my poverty, departed hence for Asia, and there acquired in arms both riches and military glory." At length the matter came to this,— the youth, from hearing the same things so often, and with such severity, was overcome. He supposed ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... and take it for a vision after the eyes have regained direction of the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a Melusine who will soon have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makes the very diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattled his throat, planted firmness on his brows and mouth, and attacked the dream-giving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood might be lively at the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crossed the river at Alloa, and so passed by the water-side way to Edinburgh, where, on entering the West-port, they separated. The bailie, who was a fearful man and in constant dread and terror of being burned as a heretic for having broke in upon the dalliance of his incontinent wife and the carnal-minded primate of St Andrews, went to a cousin of his own, a dealer in serge and temming in the Lawnmarket, with whom he concealed himself for some weeks, but my grandfather proceeded ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... these,—"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... grudgingly. She was so perfectly ingenuous. In his critical eyes was a look of dalliance with a new problem. They were eyes that must often have studied human problems and ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... began among them its deadly work in France; and even yet may be found, tucked away here and there in the favoured cellars of Provence and Languedoc, a few dust-covered bottles of their rich vintage: which has for its distinguishing taste a sublimated spiciness due to the alternate dalliance of the bees with the grape-blossoms and with the blossoms of the wild thyme. It is a wine of poets, this bee-kissed Chateauneuf, and its noblest association is not with the Popes who gave their name to it but ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Vivinsati, taking up a shield (and sword) jumped down from that car whose steeds had been slain, and rushed against Bhimasena like an infuriated elephant rushing against an infuriated compeer. The heroic Salya, laughing the while, pierced, as if in dalliance, his own dear nephew, Nakula, with many shafts for angering him. The valiant Nakula, however, cutting off his uncle's steeds and umbrella and standard and charioteer and bow in that battle, blew his conch. Dhrishtaketu, engaged with Kripa, cut off ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reached the abode of the wizard they found him waiting with new arms for the young hero. The sage reproached him gently for his dalliance, and then, seeing the blush of shame upon his countenance, showed him the shield, which bore the illustrious deeds of his ancestors of the house of Este. Great as were their past glories, still greater would be those of the family which he should found, greatest of ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburn'd Canopus. O my life In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit, The flattery ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of England are on fire And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies; Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought Hangs solely in the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce |
