"Diddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say so! I guess you can call 'em 'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a clue when you know a guy's guilty? That's what I've been whistling ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... self-willed and regardless of his wife's injunctions. The consequences were that having received from my father fifty pounds, my mother first locked that up, and then "unlocked her jaw." Disputes were now hourly occurring; and it was "now you're vexed," and "hey diddle diddle," from ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... and the exquisitely ridiculous appearance of poor Titmouse. Mr. Quirk, dressed in black, with knee breeches and silk stockings, immediately bustled up to him, shook him cordially by the hand, and led him up to the assembled guests. "My daughter—Miss Quirk; Mrs. Alderman Addlehead; Mrs. Deputy Diddle-daddle; Mrs. Alias, my sister;—Mr. Alderman Addlehead; Mr. Deputy Diddle-daddle; Mr. Bluster; Mr. Slang; Mr. Hug; Mr. Flaw; Mr. Viper; Mr. Ghastly; Mr. Gammon you know." Miss Quirk was about four or five and twenty—a fat young lady, with flaxen hair ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... your men, diddle, diddle! Set them to work; Some to the plough, diddle, diddle! Some to ...
— The Baby's Opera • Walter Crane
... baffled the authorities. He invited his friends to attend the theatre, at noon, and "drink a dish of chocolate with him." He promised that he would "endeavour to make the morning as diverting as possible;" and notified that "Sir Dilbury Diddle would be there, and Lady Betty Frisk had absolutely promised." Tickets, without which no person would be admitted, were to be obtained at George's Coffee House, Temple Bar. Some simple visitors, no doubt, expected that chocolate would be really ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... at ease, Walter abruptly inquired of his brother across the table if he could lend him a copy of the "Nursery Rhymes." No reply being given, Walter continued, "Oh, do give us a song, Amos,—'Ride a Cock Horse,' or 'Baby Bunting,' or 'Hi, Diddle, Diddle.' I'm sure you must have been practising these lately to sing to those ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... being informed against as having been a friend of Sejanus, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was away at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Sejanus was gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries. You supped with your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into saying something over the wine-cups;—then rose betimes in the morning to accuse him of saying it: only too often to find that he, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and accused ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... "Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed to see such sport, And the dish ran ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... lines made (economically often) by the great companies themselves are not primarily designed for the accommodation of the public, but for the private purposes of the great company; sometimes they are made merely to diddle another great company. ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... teeth in the semi-obscurity notified Yerby that a smile of spurious politeness was bent upon him, and he made haste to grin very widely in response—"an' that thar fiddle 'minds me o' how unexpected 'twar whenst I met up with Lee-yander hyar—'pears ter me, Bob, ez ye air goin' ter diddle the life out'n his fiddle—an' Hilary jes begged an' beseeched me ter take the boy with me ter help 'round the mill, ez he war a-runnin' away. Ye want me ter 'commodate this stranger too, ez mebbe air runnin' from them ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... HI-DIDDLE-DIDDLE Mother duck's in the middle, Her baby-ducks swimming around; With bills like a ladle, And feet like a paddle, No danger that they will ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... thing into our mouths," said Fulkerson. "The wedding will be this day week. No cards! Teedle-lumpty-diddle! Teedle- lumpty-dee! What do you suppose he means by it, March ?" he asked, bringing himself soberly up, of a sudden. "What is his little game? Or is he crazy? It don't seem like the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... frog, made one more jump, hoping to reach the kite, and pull it down, but he might as well have tried to jump over the moon, which only a hey-diddle-diddle-cat-and-the-fiddle-cow can do. Well, it looked as if Jimmie was gone for ever, when, all at once, there was a rushing of wings, and who should appear, but a kind fish hawk, that once gave Johnnie and Billie Bushytail ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... his brief slumber, Lamb sat for some time in profound silence, and then, with the most startling rapidity, sang out—"Diddle, diddle, dumpkins;" not looking at me, but as if soliloquizing. For five minutes he relapsed into the same deep silence; from which again he started up into the same abrupt utterance of—"Diddle, diddle, dumpkins." I could not help laughing aloud at the extreme energy of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... eh? Never owned none except that little electric do-diddle-um of the Guzzuh what makes the spark to keep the machinery goin'. That's called ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... scagliola^, ormolu, German silver, albata^, paktong^, white metal, Britannia metal, paint; veneer; jerry building; man of straw. illusion &c (error) 495; ignis fatuus &c 423 [Lat.]; mirage &c 443. V. deceive, take in; defraud, cheat, jockey, do, cozen, diddle, nab, chouse, play one false, bilk, cully^, jilt, bite, pluck, swindle, victimize; abuse; mystify; blind one's eyes; blindfold, hoodwink; throw dust into the eyes; dupe, gull, hoax, fool, befool^, bamboozle, flimflam, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hale be your fiddle, Lang may your elbuck jink diddle, To cheer you thro' the weary widdle O' war'ly cares; Till barins' barins kindly cuddle Your ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... when the band Wer a-come vor to gi'e us a hop, An' he pull'd Grammer out by the hand All down drough the dance vrom the top; An' Grammer did hobble an' squall, Wi' Gammon a-leaeden the ball; While Gammon did sheaeke up his knee An' his voot, an' zing "Diddle-ee-dee!" An' we laugh'd ourzelves all out o' breath At the me'th o' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... dear lad, there is no use fiddling while Rome is burning. I have nothing to sing about those glorious fellows, except 'God save the Queen and them.' I tell you the whole thing stuns me, so I cannot sit down to make fiddle rhyme with diddle about it—or blundered with hundred like Alfred Tennyson. He is no Tyrtaeus, though he has a glimpse of what Tyrtaeus ought to be. But I have not even that; and am going rabbit shooting to-morrow instead. But every ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... King Cole was a jolly old soul, And a jolly old soul was he; He called for his ale, and he called for his beer, And he called for his fiddle-diddle-dee. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... fingers. The moment ever your children, boys, are able to give a squall, clap their forefinger and thumb in their mouth, and leave the rest to nature. Let them talk of their spinnet and sinnet, their fiddle and their diddle, their dancing and their prancing, but there is no genteel accomplishment able to be compared to a rousing whistle on the fingers. See what it did for us to-night. My soul to glory, but only for it, Mr. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... devil, but you lie. Truth is truth and changes not. Can you read the hand? can you cheat the Gentile? do you know the law of the Poknees, and can you diddle them as has money? Says you, 'I can!' And in that you lie, like your mother before you. Bless your wisdom"—Mother Cockleshell made an ironical curtsey. "Age must bow ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... tramps, as they think. We are professional shearers; and the Australian shearers are about the most independent and intelligent class of men in the world. We've got more genius in one of our little fingers than there is in the whole of that wagonette-load of diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle and giggles. Their intellects are on a level with the rotten dramas they travel with, and their lives about as false. They are slaves to the public, and their home is the pub-parlour, with sickly, senseless Johnnies to shout suppers and drink ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... readiness to begin our business. The friends of John Meavy were reluctant to have him leave St. Louis. They did not know what enterprise he was about to join in; but they heard that I had some share in it, and they did not scruple to hint that I might be an adventurer, who would 'diddle' him out of his money. However, John only smiled, and told me all they said, in his frank way, as if it were some good joke. So, finally, we took leave of St. Louis, and came to New York, to organize the great house of Meavy & Prevost: John bearing his share in the concern, forty odd thousand dollars, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... slat and a scalp tonsured bare as a billiard-ball by Indian hunting-knife. Spite of many a thwack from the flat of M. de Radisson's sword, Godefroy would carry the silver mace to the chant of a "diddle-dee-dee," which he was always humming in a sand-papered voice wherever he went. At beat of drum for conference we all came scrambling down the ratlines like tumbling acrobats of a country fair, Godefroy grasps ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... show that poor old man, Grizel, while I know all the time that he is plotting to diddle me! You should see me when it is he who is fidgeting to know why the piano has stopped. He stretches his head to listen, and does something to his ear that sends it another inch nearer the door; he chuckles and groans on the sly; and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... went "Bum, bum, bum, diddle dum," and pranced around on a pair of short, fat legs in red stockings. Two fat little arms beat the drumsticks on the top of his head, or what appeared to be the top of his head, which was in reality a funny face, which winked ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory |
