"Aimlessly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked for some last message from the victim or victims. The walls showed nothing but spots of blood thrown there by the struggles of the dying, and armies of pests traveling aimlessly over the cold, bare surface. The plain, rough boards told nothing but that the life had passed from many a defenseless soul while hanging over them. But these boards were not nailed down, I turned one ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... strokes to give the necessary headway to the boat; and Knott was again ordered to stand by to haul him in. The great wave ingulfed and swept over him, and again left him aimlessly battling with the killing billows. The bowman was in position, and leaned over so far to reach the sufferer, that the officer ordered the next two men to seize him by the legs, to prevent him ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... they had gone aboard, as the south wind blew over the sea, and they were searching for a passage to go forth from the Tritonian lake, for long they had no device, but all the day were borne on aimlessly. And as a serpent goes writhing along his crooked path when the sun's fiercest rays scorch him; and with a hiss he turns his head to this side and that, and in his fury his eyes glow like sparks of fire, until he creeps to his lair through a cleft in the rock; so Argo ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... Saturday was a wet day, and Durant, instead of riding the mare, was wandering aimlessly about the house. He had finished all the books in his bedroom and was badly in want of more. He knocked up against Frida Tancred in a dark passage, apologized, and confided in her. As usual she ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... quadrangle under an archway into the garden beyond. She felt tired out and languid. It was a warm September day, and the unwonted exertion of answering so many questions had made her head ache. She wandered aimlessly along the paths, pausing for a few moments at the tennis courts, where a little crowd of spectators stood watching an exciting set, then on towards the playing fields, where more girls appeared to be practising hockey. Everybody seemed to be friends and to be occupied with ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... their nostrils inflated, their eyes glistened, and, with tails erect, they tore off straight ahead at a tremendous rate. They couldn't understand why they had been driven aimlessly about all this time; but now they saw the glare, as they thought, of the fire—the glare they had been accustomed to regard as the beacon to guide them to their goal—a goal which had to be reached with ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... thick and hot, rank with vapours and mists and odours that oppressed throat and nostrils. The wind seemed to have died, but the fine dust of ashes still fell and the banks of nauseous smoke floated about aimlessly. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... climb up a rocky path they reached a little cabin built in a clearing, commanding a wide vista of the treacherous Table Top and the mountains beyond. At the door of the cabin sat the zither player, his hands traveling aimlessly over the strings while he listened to the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... wrong in these schemes, these great operations that made so many confiding people suffer. Was everybody grasping and selfish? She got up and walked about the dear room, which recalled to her only the sweetest memories; she wandered aimlessly about the lower part of the house. She was wretchedly unhappy. Was her husband capable of such conduct? Would he cease to love her for what she had done—for what she must do? How lovely this home was! Everything spoke of his care, his tenderness, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the south of Greece into the Ionian Sea. But a storm drove them out of their course, and the darkness was so thick that they could not tell night from day, and the helmsman, Palinurus, knew not whither he was steering. Thus they were tossed about aimlessly for three days and nights, till at last they saw land ahead and, lowering their sails, rowed safely into a quiet harbor. Not a human being was in sight, but herds of cattle grazed on the pastures, and goats sported untended on the rocks. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped to see the sign, "Fox & Otter," stretching entirely across the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through the by-ways of her ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... and communications may be as readily obtained by writing, in trance, and by the other means of receiving messages, from embodied as from disembodied Souls. If each developed within himself the powers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, or ignorantly plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might be safely accumulated and the evolution of the Soul might be accelerated. This one thing is sure: Man is to-day a living Soul, over whom Death has no power, and the key of the prison-house of the ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... wanderings. Emilie then saw the attractive couple get into an elegant tilbury, by which stood a mounted groom in livery. At the moment when, from his high seat, the young man was drawing the reins even, she caught a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly at the crowd; and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction of seeing him turn his head to look at her. The young lady did the same. Was it ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... sauntered, with heavy and reluctant step, up Renfield Street, in the direction of Sauchiehall Street. He did not know what tempted him to choose the opposite direction from his home. We are often so led, apparently aimlessly, towards what may change the very current of our lives. The streets, though quieter as he walked farther West, were by no means deserted, and just on the stroke of eleven the people from the theatres and public-houses ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... He mingled with the crowd without seemingly seeing it, and jostled against groups of people chatting at the corners, without hearing the imprecations occasioned by his awkwardness. Where was he going? He had no idea. He walked aimlessly, more disconsolate and desperate than the gambler who had staked his last hope with his last ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... were waiting for us at the pier, and in a little while we were driving out of Blackwater through congested masses of people who were rambling aimlessly through the principal streets. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... no one would guess—no one could ever guess, from Faith's brown dress and white rufffles, that she had just been flying about in the kitchen—to use Cindy's elegant illustration—"like shelled peas"; not quite so aimlessly, however. And her smiling glance at her teacher spoke of readiness for ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... reporter who supposes that newspaper men wander aimlessly up and down the streets of a city, watching and hoping for automobiles to collide and for men to shoot their enemies, will have his eyes opened soon after entering a news office. He will learn that ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... and forth over the work, his hands clasped behind his back, a short pipe clenched between his teeth. To the edge of the drive he rode the logs, then took to the bank and strolled down to the dam. There he stood for a moment gazing aimlessly at the water making over the apron, after which he returned to the work. No cloud obscured the serene good-nature of his face. Meeting Tom North's troubled ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... hand that he sighed over the difficulties, and declared that he was better off in London, except for the honour of the thing. Perhaps my mother was of the same opinion after a dreary afternoon, when Griff and Martyn had been wandering about aimlessly, and were at length betrayed by the barking of a little terrier, purchased the day before from Tom Petty, besieging the stable cat, who stood with swollen tail, glaring eyes, and thunderous growls, on the top of the tallest pillar of the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the balance of the day. He whistled and sang strange melodies while walking aimlessly about. He read and re-read the many love missives received long ago. Some he tore into fragments; others he carefully replaced ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the mountain lad, as he walked aimlessly up one of the principal streets, "I am no worse off than I was before I met that fellow. I'm further on my way, wherever I fetch up at, and I haven't had to spend ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... lingered in Caxton. It seemed to him there was something that wanted doing there. He sat with the men at the back of Wildman's, and walked aimlessly through the streets and out of the town along the country roads, where men worked all day in the fields behind sweating horses, ploughing the land. The thrill of spring was in the air, and in the evening ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... excesses of his ancestors. He first distinguishes himself as a virtuoso in swearing. The magnificent redundance and originality of his oaths make him famous in the army, which he chooses as the first field of his exploits. Later he roams aimlessly about the world, merely to satisfy a wild need of adventure. On his return to his native town he signalizes himself by his vices as a genuine Kurt. The little town, however, cannot find it in its heart to condemn a man of so distinguished a race, and society, though it is ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... mine, but she has, among other big qualities, the blessed habit of taking no notice. I wish it were contagious. She went about her work as if nothing were hanging over us. I walked about the house doing little things aimlessly. I don't believe Amelie shirked a thing. It seemed to me absurd to care whether the dusting were done or not, whether or not the writing-table was in order, or the ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... dark, when he stepped outside of the building. There was no light visible in any direction, though there would be plenty of it later on. The natives appeared to be moving aimlessly about, and one or two near at hand scrutinized him curiously, but they neither spoke nor made any movement to annoy him. They had not yet forgotten the lesson given by ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... off," as though he thought he must have been drinking again. Bentley brought out one of Case's boots, and the track it fitted could be found all over the flats, about the store, shack and stream, and proved nothing at all, for everybody knew he had been wandering aimlessly about for days and nights past. The window shade or blanket had been disarranged and the window had been raised a few inches, probably for air. Everything else was as Craney remembered seeing it before he turned in, and the inference was clear to every mind that Case had never left ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the game we used to call Magic Music—we oldsters, when we were children? You know how, from your seat at the piano, you watched your listener striving to take the hints you strove to give, and wandering aimlessly away from the fire-irons he should have shouldered—the book he should have read upside down—the little sister he should have kissed or tickled—what not? You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he missed fire, and balked the triumphant ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... that he packed up his violin and left. He did not go back to the cafe, even at the appointed hour. Instead, he wandered aimlessly about. All day he tramped the streets. He listened to street-fakirs, peered into shop-windows, threw himself upon the grass of the public squares and stared up at the blue sky. He had very little personal consciousness; he seemed to have lost ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... necessary acts in a tedious way or in performing acts which are not only tedious to him, but utterly unnecessary (for his own hypothesis is that he gets no pleasure out of life)—visiting, dinner-giving, cards, newspaper-reading, placid domestic evenings, evenings out, bar-lounging, sitting aimlessly around, dandifying himself, week-ending, theatres, classical concerts, literature, suburban train-travelling, staying up late, being in the swim, even golf. In whatever manner he is whittling away his leisure, it is the wrong manner, for the sole reason that it bores ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... while riding in this way that his eyes, reading mechanically the wagon trail he was aimlessly following—for no reason other than that it brought him, though forbidden, a little closer to her—arrested his attention. He checked his horse. Something, the trail told him, had happened. Page had stopped his horses. Page had met two men on horseback coming from the Gap. After ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... staggering along one of the walks of the cemetery; for all his song, no blue-water sailor-man, but a boisterous denizen of the great river, a raftsman or a keel-boatman, who had somehow found himself in the burial ground and now was beating aimlessly about. How this rollicking waif of the grog shop came to wander so far from the convivial haunts of his kind and to choose this spot for a ramble, can only be explained by ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... my flat, told my man what to pack, then went out again and walked aimlessly about the streets. A feeling of restlessness was upon me, which I could not overcome. Many strange things had happened since Christmas, but this, surely, was the strangest thing of all, that Jack Osborne, who had persuaded me to help him in his self-imposed task of tracking down ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... appears to be no doubt whatever that it gets all the marvelous effects it has beyond the mere pleasing of the ear, from its random, but multitudinous summonses of the efferent activity, which at its vague challenges stirs unceasingly in faintly tumultuous irrelevancy. In this way, music arouses aimlessly, but splendidly, the sheer, as yet unfulfilled, potentiality within us." (W. Copies, The Process of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... above; leaving its body in curiously awkward positions for whole minutes together. Then it turned sharply and stared with a sudden signal of intelligence at the dog, and Flame at once rose somewhat stiffly to his feet and began to wander aimlessly and restlessly to and fro about the floor. Smoke followed him, padding quietly at his heels. Between them they made what seemed to be a ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... like walking about rather aimlessly in the town's narrow streets, with the mud-daubed cabins on either hand. This simple life under low, thatched roofs had a charm. When a door was opened he could see a fire of logs on the ample hearth shooting its yellow tongues up the sooty chimney-throat. Soft creole voices murmured and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... were walking down the street and stopping now and then to talk to those they met. Jack followed aimlessly, his hands in his pockets, his new Stetson—that did not look so unusual here in Quincy—pulled well down over his eyebrows and giving his face an unaccustomed look of purposefulness. Those he met carried letters and papers in their hands; those he followed went empty handed, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... honest—I should be robbing you; I'm not sure that I haven't already," she half laughed, through mounting tears, as she put her case. Little Juliet would not work, would not obey. Her poor, little, drifting existence floated aimlessly between the kitchen and the lingerie, and all the groping tendrils ofher curiosity were fastened about the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... her positive intention of going to call the elder Blairs to account, and was about to start off for that purpose, that the child roused herself again, and turned, with something of apprehension in her expression, to look for Tony, who, having discovered that he was working aimlessly, was making ready to kindle his ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... her head once more, and strove to pleat another fold, and could not; while I grew suddenly afraid of her and of myself, and longed to hurl aside the table that divided us; and thrust my hands deep into my pockets, and, finding there my tobacco-pipe, brought it out and fell to turning it aimlessly over and over. I would have spoken, only I knew that my voice would tremble, and so I sat mum-chance, staring at my pipe with unseeing eyes, and with my brain in a ferment. And presently came her voice, cool and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... should not see cavalry charges, guns in the open, and all the old-world panoply of war, but I was not prepared for this barren and shell-torn circle of hills, continually being freshly, and, to an uninformed observer, aimlessly ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the Players' Club and lunched alone in brooding silence. He tried to read and couldn't. He strolled out aimlessly and began to ramble without purpose. Somehow to-day everything on which his eye rested and every sound that struck his ear proclaimed the advent of the new power of which Bivens was the symbol—Bivens with his delicate, careful little hand, his bulging forehead, his dark keen eyes! ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the mind what the pipe line leading into the power plant is to the water in the canyon above. It directs and concentrates for the generation of power. Just as the water might run on and on to little or no purpose, so the energies of a boy or girl may be permitted to drift aimlessly toward no conviction unless the teacher wins him to an attention that ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... a well-ordered command with a clearly defined modus operandi, the two companies were poorly drilled, imperfectly accoutred, only aimlessly and periodically active, and, moreover, were on the point of ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... would climb up on the bed and lay her cool little hand gently on the hot forehead. Then the sick boy's cries would drop into unintelligible murmurs, while his fingers picked aimlessly at ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... it," she repeated, and rising from her chair, as if the view of the portrait annoyed her, she went over to the centre table to glance idly over the current fiction with which Kemper occupied his leisure hours. Her eyes were still wandering aimlessly over the titles of the books, when her attention was diverted by the sound of Wilkins' voice, lowered discreetly to an apologetic whisper; and immediately afterward she heard the softened soprano of a woman, who insisted, apparently, upon leaving the elevator ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... aimlessly," said Lyman, "I stopped in front of a house down the street not far from here, and saw a boy digging in the yard. At the window I saw the pale face of a man. He lay there to catch the last rays of the world, slowly fanning himself. I asked the boy what he was doing and he said that he was digging ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... wandering aimlessly around the house she went into the pastry room. There she looked in delight at all the shining pans and the bowls arranged in graduated sizes on ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... of his climb and was suddenly weightless, floating aimlessly within the little room; the ship was falling, and he was falling with it. His speed of descent built up to appalling figures until his helicopters found air to take ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... were restless and noisy, rushing aimlessly hither and thither, from the corner of the bridge, up the Rue du Palais, fearful lest their prey be conjured away ere ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a good many things to be reckoned with," Craig considered. "For example, here's a houseboat, the Lucie, a palatial affair, cruising about aimlessly, with a beautiful woman on it. She gives a little party, in the absence of her husband, to her brother, his fiancee and her mother, who visit her from his yacht, the Nautilus. They break up, those living on the Lucie going to their rooms and the rest back to the yacht, which is anchored ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... that I stopped running about so aimlessly the panicky feeling left me. I remembered that for a ranger to be lost in the forest was an every-day affair, and the sooner I began that part of my education the better. Then it came to me how foolish I had been to get alarmed, when I knew that the general slope of the forest ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... of Piranesi are indoor compositions, enclosed spaces in which wander aimlessly or deliriously the wraiths of damned men, not a whit less wretched nor awful than Dante's immemorial mob. Piranesi shows us cavernous abodes where appalling engines of torture fill the foreground, while above, at vertiginous heights, we barely discern perilous ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... and carried him to Zelie, who was in a neighbouring room. She had brought with her some of the coloured bricks, and "nests" of Japanese boxes which generally amused him. He was soon sitting on the floor, aimlessly shuffling the bricks, and apparently happy. As his father was returning to the sickroom a note was put into his hand by the Rector. It contained these few words—"Don't make final arrangements with the Ramsays till you have seen me. Think I could propose something you would like better. ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fully believe in Montaigne's sincerity when elsewhere he asserts that we must not travel away from the paths marked down by the Roman Catholic Church, lest we should be driven about helplessly and aimlessly on the unbounded sea of human opinions. He tells us [9] that 'he, too, had neglected the observance of certain ceremonies of the Church, which seemed to him somewhat vain and strange; but that, when he communicated on that subject with learned men, he found that these things had a ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... town of the two republics, except Pietersburg, was in the possession of the British Army; the Boer Governments had been expelled; Natal was free; organized resistance had ceased; the remnants of a baffled and bewildered enemy were prowling aimlessly in small bodies. All the precedents indicated a speedy termination ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... careless," said Alexia, determined to grumble at something, and poking aimlessly at the green branches scattered on the floor. "I don't suppose we'll ever find it in all this ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... the Jubilee with no other purpose than to gaze upon the outside of the building. The crowd was incomparably greater than that of the day before; all the main thoroughfares of the city roared with a tide of feet that swept through the side streets, and swelled aimlessly up the places, and eddied there, and poured out again over the pavements. The carriage-ways were packed with every sort of vehicle, with foot-passengers crowded from the sidewalks, and with the fragments of the military parade in honor of the President, with infantry, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... wandered about aimlessly all the time, looking, as Phil said, as if some one had just pronounced a death sentence upon them. Though they had become acquainted with a great many of the passengers, no one of them had been able to coax a smile ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... tamper with, by introducing the appliances we have been talking about. Now, when a gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a great extent, his own fault; and so it is simple retribution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aimlessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to apply this to the neglected ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... our whole day," said Helen in a grumbling tone, as they all sauntered somewhat aimlessly ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... attentive. Nevertheless I recognized that for the rest of my natural life I should be among but not of my fellows; and I envied very bitterly indeed the laughing coolies on the Mall below. I lunched at the Club, and at four o'clock wandered aimlessly down the Mall in the vague hope of meeting Kitty. Close to the Band-stand the black and white liveries joined me; and I heard Mrs. Wessington's old appeal at my side. I had been expecting this ever since I came out; and was only surprised at her delay. The phantom 'rickshaw and I went ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the Old Home rather aimlessly. He told himself that he positively would not go back and help Ben Sittka get out the prof's car. So he went back and helped Ben get out the prof's car, and drove the same to the prof's. The prof, otherwise professor, otherwise mister, James Martin Jones, B.A., and Mrs. James Martin ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... along the edge of the lagoon like one demented, staring down into those placid waters and searching the white sands with eyes of dreadful expectancy, yet nowhere could I discover sign or trace of my companion. None the less I continued to run aimlessly back and forth, heedless of my going, slipping and stumbling and often falling, but never staying my search until the sweat poured from me. And ever as I ran I kept repeating these words to myself over and over again, viz., "Adam's comrade, Nicholas Frant, was cast safe ashore ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Parisian Bohemia of ruined nobleman, doubtful traders, penniless journalists, inventors of strange products, people arrived from the south without a farthing, all the lost ships needing revictualling, or flocks of birds wandering aimlessly in the night, which were drawn by this great fortune as by the light of a beacon. The Nabob admitted this miscellaneous collection of individuals to his table out of kindness, out of generosity, out of weakness, by reason of his easy-going ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... gallery. The gentlemen rather disdained it at first, but as the game went on and they began to realise that there was really some science in it, and that our men were placing themselves very comfortably in their little squares, while theirs were wandering aimlessly about the centre of the board, they warmed to their task, and were quite vexed when they were badly beaten. They wanted their revanche. W. came in and gave a word of advice every now and then. The others finished their ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... were on a plank in the middle of the Atlantic. Towards the end of the afternoon the pressure in the offices and banks increases; the clerks hurry hither and thither; he has no share whatever in the excitement; he is an intrusion. He lingers about aimlessly, and presently the great tide turns outwards and flows towards the suburbs. Every vehicle which passes him is crowded with happy folk who have earned their living and are going home. He has earned nothing. Let anybody who wants to test the strength of the stalk of carle ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... your plans, or change your arrangements in any way." He had slowed down and let go of the steering handle, so that the great machine crawled aimlessly about from one side of the road to the other. "I know very well that I am not clever or anything of that sort, but still I would do all I can to make you very happy. Don't you think that in time you might come to like me a ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and slender, upon the tablecloth, touched one of the fine silver candlesticks aimlessly: the fingers were seen to tremble. "Oh, he ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... husband wondered if he would feel equal to resuming the journey; but the necessary self-reliance was found wanting still. We walked out slowly and aimlessly, and we chose for our long walks the most solitary lanes. Gilbert felt that the air, impregnated by sea-salt, was gradually invigorating him, and after three weeks of this melancholy existence made up his mind to order a carriage to take us as far as Canterbury. The long drive and change did ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... problems to make themselves understood, and for the whole influence of her character and of the preparatory years to shape and signify themselves into a simple chart and unmistakable command. And until the power was given to "see life steadily and see it whole," she busied herself aimlessly with such details as were evidently her duty, and sometimes following the right road and often wandering from it in willful impatience, she stumbled along more or less unhappily. It seemed as if everybody had forgotten Nan's gift and love for the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... on toward a never nearing goal; now falling, now rising, now pausing to strive to hush Dewitt's cracked voice that wandered aimlessly through all the changes of verse that seemed to his delirium appropriate to the occasion. It seemed to Rhoda that her own brain was reeling as she watched the illimitable space through which they moved. John's voice ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... would present themselves, which, in their turn would have to be relinquished when submitted to the rigorous test of practicability. This constant strain on my mind interposed stumbling blocks to my material prosperity, as I had no heart for my work, and wandered about the diggings aimlessly. I was rallied by my comrades on my morose temper, and recommended to try work as an effectual antidote for the causes that were preying ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... ivory-handled pistol off in the darkness. He found it, and hurried to the little window at a second shot he heard inside. Loomis, beating the rising flame away, had seized the pistol from the shelf, and aimlessly fired into the night at Toussaint. He fired again, running to the door from the scorching heat. Cutler got round the house to save him if he could, and saw the half-breed's weapon flash, and the body pitch ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... go to the dead man's room—a simple, spartan-like chamber which she had not entered since his death. She had a vague sense of wanting to be brought into touch with him through the things which had been his, and for a while she wandered aimlessly about the room, laying a hand now and then on the objects which she knew he must have handled the last time he had occupied the room—his toilet articles, the easy chair in which he always sat for ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... bees desert their hive in the spring when it was infested with worms, or when the honey was exhausted; at such times the swarm seems to wander aimlessly, alighting here and there, and perhaps in the end uniting with some other colony. In case of such union, it would be curious to know if negotiations were first opened between the parties, and if the houseless bees ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... quiet feeling of happiness and rest gradually stealing into her heart and filling it; like as the tide at flood comes in upon the empty shore. Whatever her father might think upon the just mooted question, those two hands had found each other, once and for all. Thoughts went roving, aimlessly, meanwhile, as thoughts will, in such a flood-tide of content. Pitt worked on rapidly. Then a word came ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... in so far as Werper could discover, as to where he was or whence he came. He wandered aimlessly about, searching for food, which he discovered beneath small rocks, or hiding in the shade of the scant brush ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to and fro in a wood bordering on the old town of Tours, in France. He was scarcely twenty years of age, and of a forbidding countenance. Cruelty and cunning were stamped on his features, and as he strode aimlessly among the trees, muttering to himself, and striking often with his sheathed sword at the bushes and twigs in his path, he seemed to be the victim of an evil passion, with nothing to make a man love him ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... addressed a poem of rebuke, I was abandoned, a greater part of the time, to "an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy"; or to its partner, an excessive and not always tasteful mirth. I spent hours upon hours, with little profit, in libraries, flitting aimlessly from book to book. With something between terror and hunger I contemplated the opposite sex. In short, I was discreditable and harmless and unlovely as the young Yahoo can be. It fills me with amazement ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... helmets on, and were laden with cushions and steamer-chairs and fruits as if for an ocean voyage. Others were clutching their Baedeker, and their Amelia Edwards, and their "Kismet," and their note-books, and wore a do-or-die expression of countenance. One or two others floated around aimlessly, with dreamy eyes, as if they were already lost in the past which now pressed so closely at hand. Then the coach from the Gehzireh Palace rolled by in a cloud of dust, and people hurried down the steps of Shepheard's ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... the religious instincts of the human race point to no reality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other instinctive endowments. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet with such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly."[6] And this first conviction was only the preparation for a second. Speaking again of his Candid Examination of Theism, he says: "In that treatise I have since come to see that I was wrong touching what I constituted the basal argument for my negative ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... one of the old barkpeelers' roads which wander aimlessly about, I am attracted by a singularly brilliant and emphatic warble, proceeding from the low bushes, and quickly suggesting the voice of the Maryland Yellow-Throat. Presently the singer hops up on a dry twig, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... bad weather," he said to himself, while waiting for the answer. The increased rocking of the ship showed that the sea was getting rougher. A black pencil, which had been lying in the corner between the wall and the edge of the table, suddenly came to life and began rolling aimlessly about. The officer picked it up and drew a map of the location of Magdalen Bay as far as he could remember it. "Four miles," he murmured, "they ought to be able to identify the ships at that distance with the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... home, and it was now the centre of his wanderings, which never extended further than the immediately neighboring towns. At times he would disappear from East Haven for weeks, maybe months; then suddenly he would appear again, pottering aimlessly, harmlessly, around the streets or byways; wretched, foul, boozed, and sodden with vile rum, which he had procured no one knew how or where. Maybe at such times of reappearance he would be seen hanging around some store or street corner, maundering ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... aimlessly; but now Came full to life; the rain Would soon strike down; ahead I saw ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the room again and wandered aimlessly around. She found a strange interest in being in Paul's home. She felt, too, as though she had a right there; and why should she not have that right, since Paul was her brother? More than once she looked toward the garden gate as if expecting that he would come in. She did not think ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... attention to their visitors, but continued to flutter aimlessly from flower to flower. Chubbins asked one of them a ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... command of her thoughts and desires. When the door shut and she was alone, she stood where she was and at first did not move a finger. She felt dull, unexcited, almost sleepy, and as one who is dropping off to sleep sometimes aimlessly reiterates some thought, apparently unconnected with any other thought, unlinked with any habit of the mind, she found herself, in imagination, with dull eyes, seeing the Arabic characters above the doorway of the Loulia, dully and silently ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... looked toward the cottage. It was darkened. Barry felt that without at least the beckoning of a light to denote the wakefulness of the cook, he could not in propriety go there, even for an inquiry regarding the condition of the woman whom he felt that some day he would marry. Aimlessly he wandered about, staring in the moonlight at the piled-up remains of his mill, then at last he seated himself on a stack of lumber, to rest a moment before the return journey to Ba'tiste's cabin. But suddenly he tensed. A low whistle had come from the edge of the woods, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... sold the furniture and sublet the rooms; she paid her small debts and promised her music teacher that she would continue her work in New York. Then she turned wearily, aimlessly—homeward, with ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... a hand aimlessly. "All this scientific guff. I'm an artist, not a scientist. If Rafe can get me a clear picture of something, I can copy it, but when he tries to explain something scientific, he might as well be thinking in Russian or Old Upper Middle High ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Strasse and traversed the walk at the side of the palace enclosures. The Englishman aimlessly trailed his cane along the green pickets of the fence till they ended in a stone arch which rose high over the driveway. The gates were open, and coming toward the two wanderers as they stood at the curb rolled the royal barouche, on each side of which rode ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... only by those who had a hand in it. Blake was quite safe from all surprises; Trenchard was insistent and it was difficult to deny him; and the sack at the White Cow was no doubt the best in Somerset. He gave himself up to the inevitable and fell into step alongside his companion who babbled aimlessly of trivial matters. Trenchard felt the change from unwilling to ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate never had been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him to pilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt by Bowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in the vicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap wares displayed in the windows of the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... the horse's feet in the snow aroused the victim, and he again sprang wildly upward, snapping as before, and revealing fangs that bespoke danger. Struggling to its feet, the wolf ran aimlessly in a circle, gradually enlarging until it struck a strand of wire in the corral fence, the rebound of which threw the animal flat, when it again curled its head backward and ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... wandered round aimlessly, and often stood still in the snow-covered field by the river, struggling with himself. Reason told him that he ought to go to the manor and settle the matter, but another power held him fast and whispered: 'Don't hurry, wait another day, it will ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... lighted groggery. Moreover, in the beetle phase, it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... to be good," she said aimlessly, as she had said to Pennington a little earlier. "I"—she lost the ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... He wandered aimlessly for a while about the silent village hoping to find a cafe where he could sit for a few minutes to take a last look at himself before plunging again into the grovelling promiscuity of the army. Not a light showed. All the shutters ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... his hat, and went out in quest of Peter Blood. But where look for him? Wandering aimlessly up the irregular, unpaved street, he ventured to enquire of one or two if they had seen Dr. Blood that morning. He affected to be feeling none so well, and indeed his appearance bore out the deception. None could give him information; and since Blood had ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Zoie, at last fully convinced of the strength of Alfred's resolve. "But he shan't," she declared emphatically. "I won't let him. I'll go after him. He has no right——" By this time she was running aimlessly about the room. ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... did not know where to go or what to do. Leaving the town behind him he made for the Lake, and roved aimlessly and disconsolately about, choosing sheltered paths and remote roads where he would be unlikely to run the gauntlet of acquaintances. For he shrank from recognition on this particular day, when all his domestic privacies were being bared to the public ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Lewiston drifted aimlessly about Chicago, from pillar to post, working a little, earning here a dollar, there a dime, but always sinking, sinking, till at last the ooze of the lowest bottom dragged at his feet and the rush of the great ebb went over him and engulfed him and shut him out from the light, and a park bench ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... world from the one of her old ambition. Her fall had brought her renovatingly to earth, and the saving naturalness of the woman recreated her childlike, with shrouded recollections of her strange taste of life behind her; with a tempered fresh blood to enjoy aimlessly, and what would erewhile have been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... confer with his supporters, and Mr. Porter, after wandering aimlessly about for an hour or two, returned home at mid-day with a faint hope that his wife might have seen the error of her ways and provided dinner for him. He found the house empty and the beds unmade. The remains of breakfast stood on the kitchen-table, and a puddle of cold tea decorated the ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... could not have given the faintest account of how he had passed the hours which had intervened since he had walked out of the hotel into the moonlit night—whether he had eaten or drunken or where he had been. He had a vague recollection of wandering aimlessly about the streets, and then of diverging from the town into the country because he had twice encountered the same gendarme and on the second occasion the man had followed him for a few yards suspiciously. Beyond that he remembered nothing. He was only conscious ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... joy. At least a dozen of the most active pirates would have to obey this order. This would remove them from the deck for a precious interval of time. He slouched aimlessly nearer the forecastle, stretching his neck to gaze up at the pirates as they footed the ratlines and squirmed over the clumsy tops. Joe Hawkridge joined him, as if by chance, and they wandered to the lee side of the forecastle. There they were ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... omnibus. She must be walking down!" Ethel breathed short, and wandered aimlessly about; Meta put her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... fact, settling down into the slough of idleness, and would have become an accomplished dunce in time, had not Mr Rastle come to the rescue. That gentleman caught the new boy in an idle mood, wandering aimlessly down the passage ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... done, The working world home faring; The wind came roaring through the streets And set the gas-lights flaring; And hopelessly and aimlessly The scared old leaves were flying; When, mingled with the sighing wind, I heard ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in the distance, and it caused her to start so violently that she dropped one of her few treasured sixpences, which went rolling about aimlessly ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... after that I must have left the house. I only know that the dawn found me miles out of town, walking aimlessly about and talking ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... avoid the rain and partly to see a picture that had educated him in former years. But the light was bad, the picture ill placed, and Time and Judgment were inside him now. Death alone still charmed him, with her lap of poppies, on which all men shall sleep. He took one glance, and turned aimlessly away towards a chair. Then down the nave he saw Miss Schlegel and her brother. They stood in the fairway of passengers, and their faces were extremely grave. He was perfectly certain that they were ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... week the fog and the drizzle continued as though no sun existed, or ever could exist. He wandered aimlessly, like a lost sheep, wondering how long a man could swallow quarts of dirt with his oxygen without getting permanently transformed ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... the thermometer now stood at 120 deg.. At about the same time the tiller-chains were shot away from their exposed position over the after-deck. Losing thus the power of directing her movements, the Tennessee headed aimlessly down the bay, followed always by the unrelenting Chickasaw, under the pounding of whose heavy guns the after-end of the shield was now seen, by those within, to be perceptibly vibrating. The Manhattan and Winnebago were also ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... from a sudden jar to find the driver sound asleep, the horses wandering aimlessly along, a precipice of many hundred feet below us on one side. The road takes sharp turns every hundred yards, rendering it impossible to see far ahead, and traffic even at night is not uncommon. Drivers shout when nearing a corner, particularly on coming downhill, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... judgment proved true—that the centre of the storm was crossing our course ahead; and that if we waited, it would pass us. So, as he expected, we came after a day or two into an almost windless sea, where smooth mountainous waves, the relics of the storm, were weltering aimlessly up and down under a dark ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Acton, shouting into the storm. He heard nothing; not a sound. Then, and his heart almost burst with joy, his eye caught sight of a moving, staggering figure, drifting aimlessly across his path. Senior, half his senses beaten out of him by cold, wet, the wind, and lack of food, looked at the screaming Acton with uncomprehending eyes, and was aimlessly shaking off his grasp ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... dark and tall and slim, and Phebe so round and fair and supple, making a pretty-enough picture for any artist. Olly, little Maggie Dexter, and an assortment of sturdy urchins known throughout Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were dancing and chattering aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a clumsy old boat where Phebe had made a comfortable niche for Miss Delano, who every day at about this hour was afflicted with a remarkable disorder which had grown upon her wholly of late years, and whose symptoms, so far as she was willing ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... remarks. In it the "Stones of Venice" grew bleak and cold for Grant Adams. He rose and walked rather aimlessly toward the water cooler in the rear of the store and gulped down two cups of water. When he came back to the bench the group there was busy with the Captain's news. But the music did not start again. Morty Sands sat staring into the pearl inlaid ring around the hole in ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... as possible, but everybody could see how fearfully they wouldn't fit—everybody, that is, but the parties concerned. Gail's one of those people who are always dashing about aimlessly, doing something because she didn't do it yesterday. And John's the kind of a man—well, you know the kind he is: dependable, authoritative, angel-kind, and deadly clever. He's not a bit like Allan," said Allan's wife, as if Allan were the standard ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... helped to make it nearly impossible for him to keep away from the theatre. In the beginning his attendance had not interfered with his social duties or pleasures; but now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do anything but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to go to the play. When that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but to his rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual haunts, was missed, and began to be talked about at the club. Catching ...
— Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ate a few spoonfuls of the stuff warranted to give him pure blood, huge muscles, and a vast intelligence; then he opened a newspaper and stared vacantly at its contents; then he went to the fire and warmed his feet; then he strolled round the table aimlessly for a little; and then, when half an hour had passed and his mother had not returned, he could bear it no longer and ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... drifting aimlessly on life's tide, yearns for something to cling to, a tie to bind her, a duty to perform. The pit from amid its scum throws it to her; she accepts it and devotes herself to it. This mysterious bandit, transformed into heliotrope or iris, becomes a religion ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Panmure at the corner of Aldington Street, and went my way alone. But I did not go home, I turned westward and walked for a long way, and then struck northward aimlessly. I was too miserable to go ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... as a consequence of last night's broken rest, Henry lay down after dinner. But finding sleep denied him, he rose, pensive and gloomy, and wandered aimlessly down, and out into the courtyard. There an exempt of the guard, of whom he casually asked the time, observing the King's pallor and listlessness, took the liberty of suggesting that his Majesty might benefit if ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted pine a pungent, reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had just a tang of New England ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with his confederate can easily be understood by anyone who has ever tried to sever his relations with an enamoured woman. In fact the outlaw dreaded it so much that he decided to postpone it as long as he could. And so, after sauntering aimlessly about the room, and coming, unexpectedly, across a woman of his acquaintance, he began to converse with her, supposing, all the time, that Nina Micheltorena was too occupied with the worshippers at her shrine to perceive ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... fit was over: by-and-by she sat up, sullenly shunning Sophie's touch, and appearing to shrink even at the sound of her voice. Finally, she rose inertly to her feet, attempting to moisten her dry lips, walked once or twice aimlessly to and fro across the room, and ended by sitting down again upon her stool, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... looked guilty, stammered something about baggage, said he would return in a moment, and rushed aimlessly away, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the arrival of a regular consignment of the weapons which had been promised for a later date. But part of the concern somehow found its way into one ship and the rest of it into another ship, and one of the ships managed to get rid of her propeller in the North Sea, drifted aimlessly for a whole month, was believed to have foundered, and was eventually discovered and towed ignominiously back to one of our northern ports. She was lucky not to meet with a U-boat during her wanderings. The result was that the Russians received either a howitzer and no mounting or a mounting ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops—as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
