"Fooling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ch'ing Wen, as she came to meet him with a smile on her face, "you tell me to prepare the ink for you, but though when you get up, you were full of the idea of writing, you only wrote three characters, when you discarded the pencil, and ran away, fooling me, by making me wait the whole day! Come now at once and exhaust all this ink ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... yer fooling" the strange voice iterated. "I'll larn ye ter be afeared o' the devil. Long legs now ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... hands; it isn't any good for business, and you can't work a telephone with it. Many a time the attention of the missionaries has been called to this defect, and they are always promising they are going to fix it; but no, they go fooling along and fooling along, and nothing is done. Speaking of education, everybody there is educated, from the highest to the lowest; in fact, it is the only country in the world where education is actually universal. And yet every now and then you run across instances of ignorance that are simply ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... in parting from his patient a few days later, "and for the land's sake keep away from back alleys at night. When you know a little more about New York you'll learn that it's best to keep just as far away from such places as possible. Don't go fooling around under the impression that you can convert any of those blackguards. They need to be blown up, every one of them, and the place obliterated. Mind, I say, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... the tomb of Adam—only to be fully appreciated in connexion with his satiric indignation over the drivel of the maudlin Mr. Grimes, who "never bored, but he struck water"—is an admirable example of the mechanical fooling of self-ridicule. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of it," he said thoughtfully. "I suppose rich people are so busy with all the things they have to do that they haven't much time for fooling round with their children. I have a good time with mine though. They're too young to get away anyhow. We read French history aloud every evening after supper. Sylvia is almost an expert on the Duke of Guise and the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... dawn; then put on my sea-weeds, and lay still to be stared at. I wanted some one to come and live on me; then I should be equal to the island of the polypes. But no one came, and I was beginning to be tired of fooling people, when I was fooled myself. An old sailor came to visit me: he had been a whaler, and he soon guessed the secret. But he said nothing till he was safely out of danger; then he got all ready, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Pete's expense. Also he had known nobody during that time but the five fingers which deposited said bread and water with conscientious regularity on the ground beside him. Being a Hollander neither of these things killed him—on the contrary, he merely turned into a ghost, thereby fooling the excellent French Government within an inch of its foolable life. He was a very excellent friend of ours—I refer as usual to B. and myself—and from the day of his arrival until the day of his departure to Precigne along ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... join a string, don't be saying it,' he said; 'I don't know what way you're after fooling us, but you didn't join that string, not a ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... "Excellent fooling—excellent!" he said with a laugh. "Tell the premier that I should lose when I have five million men to their three million! What a harlequin chief of staff I should be! Excellent ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... and some other words he can't catch, and the coxswain yelling back: Don't be long, sir. . . What is it? Cloete asks feeling faint. . . Something about the ship's papers, says the coxswain, very anxious. It's no time to be fooling about alongside, you understand. They haul the boat off a little and wait. The water flies over her in sheets. Cloete's senses almost leave him. He thinks of nothing. He's numb all over, till there's a shout: Here he is! . . . They see a figure in the fore-rigging waiting—they ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself. But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of "Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and each character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on observation of the men of the London of the day. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... no fooling here; turn in all your accounts. Destroy everything that could give a clew to us. Pack the bombs in the vault under the cellar floor. We may come back some day, when we land with our men on the shores of Long ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... Stu. Fooling my time away: playing my tricks, like a tame monkey, to entertain a woman—No matter where— I have been vext and disappointed. Tell me of Beverley. How ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... "Stop your fooling and get in there—quick!" commanded the anxious boy, pushing his sister into the tonneau. With the injured Jerry, the back of the car was well filled. Tom leaped into the front seat and tried to ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... Budowa was up. The debate, thought he, was fast becoming a farce. The King was fooling his subjects. The King must be taught a lesson. As the Diet broke up, he stood at the door, and shouted out in ringing tones: "Let all who love the King and the land, let all who care for unity and love, let all who remember ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... describe my fooling, but what occurred. When the Abyssinians were a little less than a mile from us, Ruppert's adjutants galloped along our front for the last time and bade our men to fire: 'But not a shot after they begin to waver!' Then among us there was a stillness as of death, whilst from the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... I fled from civilization only to fall a prey to a female like this? It looked like it. There wasn't much fooling about this damsel's love-making. Cold chills ran down my spine. My eye avoided hers; I bit my nails and looked ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... did me was to cure me of "fooling" on the stage. "Did she?" I thought I heard some one interrupt me unkindly at that point! Well, at any rate, she gave me a good fright one night, and I never forgot it, though I will not say I never laughed again. I think it was ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... even for a moment, cause consternation in the Driscoll camp? He had always said he "saw things big"; but no one had ever believed he was destined to carry them out on the same scale. Yet apparently in those idle Apex days, while he seemed to be "loafing and fooling," as her father called it, he had really been sharpening his weapons of aggression; there had been something, after all, in the effect of loose-drifting power she had always felt in him. Her heart beat faster, and she longed to question Van Degen; but she was afraid of betraying ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... means it?" asked Tom, after a pause, during which they watched the retreating figure of the carpenter. "Maybe he was fooling us." ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... mightily frightened us, and not without cause; since we could see nothing, yet heard such various sounds and voices of men, women, children, horses, &c., insomuch that Panurge cried out, Cods-belly, there is no fooling with the devil; we are all beshit, let's fly. There is some ambuscado hereabouts. Friar John, art thou here my love? I pray thee, stay by me, old boy. Hast thou got thy swindging tool? See that it do not stick in thy scabbard; thou never scourest it half as it should be. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... walking around the tree and talking to his dog and telling him that there wasn't anything up in that tree at all, and that Mr. Dog had just been fooling him. I could tell by his voice that he was getting mad at Mr. Dog, and I hoped that he'd get mad enough pretty soon to take a stick to him for chasing me up a tree like that, calling all the time for Mr. Man to come and see me when there wasn't ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had nothing to do with this, Rolfe. As I have told Miss Sheldon, it was Leyden who looked in on us; and it was Leyden's men who got us, fooling me with their ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... have what you are big enough not to take," said he. "And I'm not fooling myself I shan't be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at times. The difference is, that if I go down now I won't stay down. If there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be—kids. I'd like kids. My own kids. And ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... tell where you're going. Who's been fooling with the bell at St. Morval's, I wonder? If the clapper has fallen out, they should have had it put in again at once. But that's just the way with them. It's nobody's business, and everybody puts it on to somebody else until ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... of those rogues upstairs. I'll take the doll back and tell them they must fix it to-night, or I'll complain of them for their fooling at this busy time," she announced, energetically; for she noted the twitching around the corners of Katy's mouth, notwithstanding the ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... Patty, gaily, paying no attention to his fooling. "You are not to tell of this episode! I know you'll want to, for it IS a good joke, but I should be unmercifully teased. And as you owe me something for—for putting me in ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... walked over to the Princess, and looking at her, said sneeringly, "Well, my beauty, are you going to make up your mind to be the wife of the King of the Oyster Mountains? I'm taking you to him, and mind now, no fooling!" ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... not a fraud he must be fooling you!" I rejoined irreverently. "No capable master would come ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... was only fooling. But let's start back, Daddy, for I know Sue will be very anxious to-night ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... exactly what I'm going to do. No—I'm being perfectly serious. I've thought for ages that we're all wrong somehow. We're all so beastly artificial. I don't want to preach, but I want to test things for myself. My religion tells me—" He broke off. "No; this is fooling. I'm going to do it because I'm going to do it. And I'm really going to do it. I'm not going to be an amateur—like slumming. I'm going to find out things ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... petulant young clerk, continually fooling with the mate, swearing at the stevedores and laboring men, who regard ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and on the refusal of his demand of the lands belonging to the earldom of Hereford the Duke lent his ear to the counsels of Margaret Beaufort, who had married his brother, Henry Stafford, but still remained true to the cause of her boy. Buckingham looked no doubt to the chance of fooling Yorkist and Lancastrian alike, and of pressing his own claims to the throne on Richard's fall. But he was in the hands of subtler plotters. Morton, the exiled Bishop of Ely, had founded a scheme of union on the disappearance of Edward the Fifth and his brother, who had been ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... ample evidence that he was a man of modest conversation. Pepys, who was by no means squeamish (for he found "Sir Martin Marall" "the most entire piece of mirth ... that certainly ever was writ ... very good wit therein, not fooling"), writes in his diary of the 19th June, 1668: "My wife and Deb to the king's play-house to-day, thinking to spy me there, and saw the new play 'Evening Love,' of Dryden's, which, though the world commends, she likes not." The ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... train running into Tulsa," wrote a gadder, "a native was fooling with the roller curtain, when suddenly it flew up with a snap. He looked bewildered, stuck his head out of the window, and finally said to himself, 'Well, I reckon that's the last they'll see of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... me that all would be well. You said there would be no trouble at the last. You told me if I did so and so, you would do so and so. Now you corner me, and hedge me up, and submerge me in everything evil." "Ha! ha!" says Satan, "I was only fooling you. It is mirth for me to see you suffer. I have been for thirty years plotting to get you just where you are. It is hard for you now—it will be worse for you after awhile. It pleases me. Lie still, sir. Don't flinch or shudder. Come now, I will tear off from you ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... you can think of something," he said. "No, I can't," she replied; "I can't think of anything I want very much." "Well, I'll wish for you," he explained. "Will you, really?" she asked. "Yes." "Well, then there's no use fooling with the old wishbone," she interrupted with a glad smile, "you ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... went about his work Farmer Brown's boy kept an eye on Unc' Billy and chuckled. "You old fraud," said he. "You think you are fooling me, but I know you. Possums don't die of nothing in hens' nests. You certainly are a clever old rascal, and the best actor I've ever seen. I wonder how long you will keep it up. I wish I had half as ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... grown up, and have a fine complexion, and wear a great square muslin shawl. I have not expressly enumerated myself among the party, but there I was, and my cousin George was very kind, and talked sense to me every now and then, in the intervals of his more animated fooling with Miss B., who is very young, and rather handsome, and whose gracious manners, ready wit, and solid remarks, put me somewhat in mind of my old acquaintance L. L. There was a monstrous deal of stupid quizzing and common-place nonsense talked, but scarcely any wit; all that bordered ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... be killed for fooling dad, but he craved for excitement, and he got it. The "Catacombs" are where Roman citizens have been buried for thousands of years, in graves hewn out of solid rock, and they are petrified, and after they have laid in the graves for a few hundred ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... Prothero's public is unmistakably in the right place.' Oh—if Mrs. Prothero's public knew what Mrs. Prothero thinks of it. I give them what they want, do I? As if I gave it them because they want it. If they only knew why I give it, and how I'm fooling them all the time! How I make them pay—for you! Just think, Owen, of the splendid, the ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... a fish I must deliver by three o'clock for a great dinner at Stors; there's no fooling with customers, or ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... girl, now then!" he said, trying to force a frown upon his good-humoured face, "stop that fooling with them young jackanapes and get ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... fun made of the bandolining by Our Young Ladies, and of Our Missis's lecture on Foreign Refreshmenting, and of Sniff's corkscrew and his servile disposition, it is intentionally fooling, no doubt, but it is—excellent fooling! As was admirably said in the number of Macmillan for January, 1871, by the anonymous writer of a Reminiscence of the Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House,—the remark following immediately after Charles ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... said Linda lightly. "I didn't mean to alarm you. He merely carried that bug-catcher nonsense a trifle too far. I wouldn't have minded humoring him and fooling about it a little. But, Peter, do you know him quite well? Are ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... swordfish take my bait, swim away on the surface, showing the flying-fish plainly between his narrow beak, and after fooling with it for ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... heart stopped beating for several seconds. He searched Captain DeCastros' face for a sign that he might be fooling. He was not. He looked too pleasant. Mr. Wordsley had always managed to pass the Aberrations Test by the skin of his teeth, but he was sure that, like most spiritual geniuses, he was sensitively balanced, and ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... for a brief holiday, let us laugh and be as pleasant as we can. And you elder folk—a little joking, and dancing, and fooling will do even you no harm. The author wishes you a merry Christmas, and welcomes you ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and things a horse wears on the inside of his self, and the horse was standing not far away, eating grass, and looking at dad. If dad had had his revolver along he would have killed the horse, but the horse seemed to know he had been fooling with an unarmed man. I got dad righted up, and he rode my pony to town, and I had to lead the bucking horse, and he eat some of the cloth ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy, While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock. This music mads me; let it sound no more; For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me it seems it will make wise men mad. Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me! For 'tis a sign of love; and love to ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... graduate students were there, fooling around with Rhine cards when we arrived, and Shari chased them out without ceremony. She locked the door behind them. We were to have privacy. She didn't bother with ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... Diemuth pretends that her strength is failing. At his entreaties she loosens and lets down her long hair, but when he tries to grasp it she jerks it back with a cry of pain and rates him harshly.—At last he perceives, that she has been fooling him all the time. He is helplessly caught in the trap and the returning citizens seeing him hanging between {436} heaven and earth deride him, congratulating Diemuth on having caught such a ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... more for his family lying flat on his back than you do for yours, up and walking around! You're not fooling me one bit, Mr. Flathers, and there's no use trying to fool yourself. You either mean seriously to go to work or you don't. Which ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... a contemporary of that Flying Monk of whom I spoke in Chapter X, and he belonged to the same religious order. If, in what I then said about the flying monk, there appears to be some trace of light fooling in regard to this order and its methods, let amends be made by what I have to tell about old Salandra, the discovery of whose book is one of primary importance for the history of English letters. Thus I thought at the time; and thus ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... slowly along through the bare sprout-land, and evidently having a hard time holding the trail. Now and then he would throw his head up into the air and howl, a long, doleful howl, as if in protest, begging the fox to stop its fooling ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... religion, the eternal religion, the only religion. How came he by this, this young Syrian? Would he rival the Buha? Rise above him? They are of kindred races—their ancestors, too, may be mine. Love the splendour of God—God the splendour of Love. Have I been all along fooling myself? Did I not know my ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... this fooling, fellows," begged Dick. "We all know that Ted and Hi can fight. What we want to find out is whether there are brains and muscle enough in town to get three football elevens together. Ted, put your hands in your pockets. Hi, you move back. We don't ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... hanged if I can associate psychics with a biceps like Berber's; somehow those things seem the special prerogative of anemic women in white cheese-cloth fooling with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... vision narrowed. His eyes came down to the great gash at his feet where red earth and tufts of grass mingled, where the daisies had grown on that June day, where she had sat, proud and aloof, and watched him fooling with the white petals. Very vividly he recalled that summer afternoon, her scorn of him, her bitter hostility—and the horror he had surprised in her dark eyes when the hawk had struck. He laughed oddly to himself, his teeth clenched upon his lower lip. How furiously she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... more paragraph to this sermon. You remember what I told you about old stagers, and the roast beef diet? Well, that applies right through life. It's all very well to trifle with the little side-dishes at first, but there comes a time when you've got to quit fooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of this world, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. That other stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or later it will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roast beef, medium. It may sound ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... and quite assertive, are the lower characters, the maid-servants and men-servants, Madge Mumblecrust, Tibet Talkapace, Truepenny, Dobinet Doughty and the rest. Need it be added that the battle in Act IV is pure fooling? or that jolly songs enliven the scenes with their rousing choruses (e.g. 'I mun be married a Sunday')? Ralph Roister Doister is an English comedy with English notions of the best way of amusing English folk of the sixteenth century. With all its improvements it has no ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... man, "when I come and ketched you fooling about with that furnace door! Do you know that you might have made the fire rage away if you got stoking hard, and perhaps blow up the whole place. There's too ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat? Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me if ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Vice-Chancellor of the University.] has taken up the game, and I am going to a committee of the University this day week to try my powers of persuasion. If the Senate can only be got to see where salvation lies and strike hard without any fooling over details, we shall do a great stroke of business for the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... for you fellows," he says; "you like it, but I don't. There's nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I don't smoke. If I see a rat, you won't stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I call ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... well worked up now. He had thrown down his walking-stick and was plunging at his pockets with his teeth set. "It's that cursed young boy of mine," he hissed; "this comes of his fooling in my pockets. By Gad! perhaps I won't warm him up when I get home. Say, I'll bet that it's in my hip-pocket. You just hold up the tail of my overcoat ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... "I know who they are. This precious girl that he is fooling with, for one, I suppose." He was right: Perkins was off on the wings of love, to see Miss Lucy; and she and Aunt Biggs and Uncle Crampton had promised this very day to come and look at the apartments which Mrs. John Perkins was to ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as much! So Charity Coe is human, after all, the sly devil! She's fooling even that foxy husband of hers. She's playing the same game, too—and a sweet little ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints," Skinner complained. "A lot of Rivers's, and everybody else's who's been fooling with it around ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... composed of nominated representatives was constituted, which had no possibility of agreement except an agreement on the lines of Partition and which was doubtless planned and conceived for the purpose of fooling Ireland and America and keeping the Convention "talking" for nine months until America was ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Foppington is come down, and shall marry my daughter before she's a day older. Lord Fop. Now give me thy hand, old dad; I thought we should understand one another at last. Sir Tun. The fellow's mad!—Here, bind him hand and foot. [They bind him.] Lord Fop. Nay, pr'ythee, knight, leave fooling; thy jest begins to grow dull. Sir Tun. Bind him, I say—he's mad: bread and water, a dark room, and a whip, may bring him to his senses again. Lord Fop. Pr'ythee, Sir Tunbelly, why should you take such an aversion to the freedom of my address as to suffer the rascals thus to skewer ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... desperate gaiety; and, also, a hard, indifferent levity, which, to brother and sister alike, was a rampart against obsession, or a stealthy way of temporising with the enemy. That tinge is what gives its strange glitter to his fooling; madness playing safely and lambently around the stoutest common sense. In him reason always justifies itself by unreason, and if you consider well his quips and cranks you will find them always the play of the intellect. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... to pay my brother five dollars a day just to run errands and keep accounts for these six men. You're fooling him. You're paying him a salary out of sheer good nature because you like him. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... and gold all the way down. At the sharpest hazards of trail and river and famine, the message was that other men might die, but that he would pull through triumphant. It was the old, old lie of Life fooling itself, believing itself—immortal and indestructible, bound to achieve over other lives and win to its ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... ever heard of such a thing! Merriwell is all right, but he doesn't know anything about rowing. He may think he knows, but he is fooling himself." ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our wedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . . Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look here, we won't expect too much affection from each other—but let's stop this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... you don't think I'm in earnest!" cried Lapham, facing fiercely about. "You think I'm fooling, do you?" He struck his bell, and "William," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to Gallop & Paddock's, in State Street, right ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... stand this any longer," muttered the lieutenant, as he took his six strides forward. At this first sound of his master's voice the dog pricked up the remnants of his ears, and they both turned aft. "She has been now fooling me for six years;" and as he concluded this sentence, Mr Vanslyperken and Snarleyyow had reached the taffrail, and the dog raised his tail to the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... arranged in joke? Tell me that it is not all a pretence! A poor woman encounters so much perfidy. Men amuse themselves by troubling her heart and confusing her mind; they excite her vanity, they compass her round with homage, with flattery, with temptation, and when they grow tired of fooling her, they despise and insult her. Tell me, was this all a preconcerted plan? This love, this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... keep away," Captain Arms said warningly. "There's no good comes of fooling round volcanoes in ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Jack Osborne as Albeury ended his cross-examination, "now you've got it all in black and white. And that's the woman you've been fooling with and say you're going to marry—not merely an adventuress, but a criminal who has herself instigated common burglaries and has connived at and been an accessory to murders! You must be mad, Jack—stark, staring. For Heaven's sake get ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... sane, coherent, and rational, we must never feel conscious of a limitation, or a possibility of stint or check. The draught must seem to come from an exhaustless fountain of boisterous laughter, irony, and caprice. Perfect fooling is so rare an art, that not half a dozen men in literature have really possessed it; perhaps only Aristophanes, Rabelais, Shakespeare. Candide, wonderful as it is, has many a stroke of malice, and Tristram Shandy, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... fiddle" in the description of the band. The subsequent explanation, how the poet had purposely intertwined the various handkerchiefs which rescued Pat Jennings's hat from the pit, lest the real owner should be detected, and the reason for it, is a not less exquisite piece of fooling:—"For, in the statistical view of life and manners which I occasionally present, my clerical profession has taught me how extremely improper it would be by any allusion, however slight, to give any uneasiness, however trivial, to any individual, however foolish or wicked." It might perhaps be inferred ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Pansey Cottrell knew that this was all fooling; but then, like many other middle-aged gentlemen, he rather liked such fooling with a pretty girl; in fact, was somewhat given to what may be ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... plate. Frank had heard that it was impossible to discover the little man's weak point, and he resolved to start right in by fooling him—if possible. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... I with a foxy wink. Don't you think because I am a countryman I gambol exclusively on the green. I am not altogether to the emerald by a pailful! I've got you where I want you, and you know it! Quit your fooling and hand over the wallet! There's a cop over there ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... this pleasant fooling came to an end. Charlotte advertised for a place, and found it. While she was away she had a letter from Miss Wooler, offering Charlotte the goodwill of her school at Dewsbury Moor. It was a chance not to be lost, although what inducement Emily ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... I've been fooling all this summer!" his wife pleaded, her eyes filling afresh. "I've loved it all—the peach ice-cream, and the picnics, and everything. But—but people can't help this sort of thing, can they? It does happen, and—and ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... and her ripe mouth twitching merrily. Then the air of the room seemed to be filled with a sweet presence. He could have fancied there was a perfume of lace and dainty things. "Sweetheart!" He laughed—he hardly knew if it was himself that had spoken. It was dear, delicious fooling. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... wished to come And give him monetary schooling; And I propose to give you some Idea of his insensate fooling. ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... the gendarme, who seemed not to have the shadow of a doubt of Guespin's guilt, "Francois, the count's valet de chambre, and Baptiste, the mayor's servant, who were there, hastened to meet him, and seized him. He was so tipsy that he thought they were fooling with him. When he saw my men, he was undeceived. Just then one of the women cried out, 'Brigand, it was you who have this night assassinated the count and the countess!' He immediately became paler than death, and remained ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... on the fruit farm, that could be managed easily. They'd live in Indianapolis and he'd buy a new car, a good one, to run back and forth. If, when her grief for Tom had lessened, she wanted to go on with laboratory work and such—well, that was easy, too. Only there would be no fooling around with this dimensional stuff—she'd had enough of ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... N. wit, humor, wittiness; sense of humor; attic wit, attic salt; atticism^; salt, esprit, point, fancy, whim, drollery, pleasantry. farce, buffoonery, fooling, tomfoolery; shenanigan [U.S.], harlequinade &c 599 [Obs.]; broad farce, broad humor; fun, espieglerie [Fr.]; vis comica [Lat.]. jocularity; jocosity, jocoseness^; facetiousness; waggery, waggishness; whimsicality; comicality &c 853. banter, badinage, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mother. "No. It wouldn't be at all funny to spoil your father's morning coffee. It would be tragic. Put the salt back, rinse out the sugarbowl, and refill it with sugar. And no more April-fooling with your ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... public-house, and I stopped there and never had my boots off till I went to sea again. Every duty was neglected, my wife went cold in the bad weather, and my children were barefooted. When you're drinking and fooling you can see nothing at all, and you think you're a-doing all right, and everybody else is wrong when they try to help you. Out at sea I gambled and drunk when I could get the money; I made rare game of religious men, and lived as if I had never to die. Then I was persuaded by one of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Yip! Martin felt shame of his recent low estimate of the Chinaman. Yip was fooling the Japs—perhaps coached by the safely ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of confusing folks with his lies, and so firmly did he state the tales of his own invention that it was hard to tell whether he was fooling or speaking ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Prayer Meeting Buying a Stone Crusher "Cash!" Camp Meetings in the Dark of the Moon Church Keno Colored Concert Troupes Dogs and Human Beings Effects of Mineral Water Expedition in Search of a Doughnut Failure of a Solid Institution Fishing for Pieces of Women Fooling with the Bible George Washington Granite Head Cheese Internal Improvements Joke on the Hat Killing Big Game Large Mouths are Fashionable La Crosse Nebecudnezzer Water Laying up Apples in Heaven Mr. Peck's Sunday Lecture Nearly Broke up the Ball Our Blue-Coated ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... cried. "We must have been fooling around this beaver dam for more than an hour. We must be about our business. We'll go on and ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... "Stop fooling, you two, and help us think of something," Mollie demanded. "We can't stand here and admire the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... know what she was really leaving for! Do old folks honestly think they are fooling us all the time, I wonder? But even if I hadn't known then, I'd have known it later, for that evening I heard Mother and Aunt Hattie talking in ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... glides over and above them defiantly, that he had without doubt taken on the character of them. The portrait of Homer gives him as one would expect him to look, and he looks like his pictures. His visage bore a ferocity that had to be met with a rocky certainty. It is evident there was no fooling him. He was filled with yankee tenacity and yankee courage. Homer is what you would expect to find if you were told to hunt up the natives of "Prout's Neck" or "Perkins Cove," or any of the inlets of the Maine coast. These sea people live so much with the roughness of the sea, that if they are ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... a motion as though to strike the helpless prisoner; but the other tramp restrained him, saying: "Hold on, Bill, we hain't got no time for fooling now. Don't you hear the engine coming back? I'll take this lantern and give 'em the signal to go ahead, in case that fool of a brakeman doesn't turn up on time, which I don't believe he will." Here the fellow chuckled meaningly. "You," he continued, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... artillery, tried to rush Tekrit and burn the stores. This proved impracticable, so we shelled the dumps at long range. My brigade stood by, and watched from a high plateau the bursts and the great smoke-curtains which went up, as once from burning Sodom. The affair furnished Fowke with some excellent fooling. He would stand on a knoll and gnash his teeth, in Old Testament fashion declaiming, 'I will neither wash nor shave till Tekrit has fallen.' It is unnecessary to say that the vow was kept, and overkept; and not by Fowke alone. At other times he was plaintive and reproachful. We were shelling ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... me, and how by your manner you showed me that it was not vanity alone had misled me. You had fooled me, I thought; even in that hour I imagined you were fooling me; you made light of me; and my sufferings were naught to you so that I might give you some amusement to pass the leisure and monotony of ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... till he could walk no more; then he sank on a dark seat on the Quai Saint-Michel, cursing himself. Had he no nerve left for the last act—was that what this delay, this fooling meant? Coward! ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fooling us; isn't he Aunt Lolly?" asked Hal. His aunt was hoeing some weeds away from between the hills of cucumbers she had planted, for she was going to raise some of them, as well as pumpkins, which last had been planted in between the rows ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... said, "I'm a City man, I am. I began life with nothing, but I said to myself I'd make my fortune, and I've made it. While other fellows were fooling about, I worked till I could afford to do as they did, and then, perhaps, I had my turn. Then I saw you, and when I had seen you I said to myself that's the woman ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... her to Batignolles again. Thus, on the morning of the day when Mathieu repaired to the mill, she had once more gone to Paris after a frightful quarrel with her husband, who asked if their good-for-nothing son ever meant to cease fooling them and spending their money, when he had not the courage even to turn a spit ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... don't you hunt for it, then?" asked Mr. Beech crossly. "I thought you were going to be of some use. Fooling around here with your silly ten-cent fortune-telling, having the time of your life while all of us are worrying about that Dragon's Eye. Why ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Unless Nick was intentionally fooling me, he was not to be feared. He was willing for me to believe that he had run away from ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... wanted a cigarette and she began to blow smoke in my face, laughing and fooling and—finally she put her lips up so temptingly for another light that I ... I'll never forget how she bent over me and held my face between her two hands and kissed me slowly with a little sideways movement and told me to call her Fauvette—not Penelope. She said she hated the ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... Guinea' is curiously near my line, but of course I'm fooling; and your Admiral sounds like a shublime gent. Stick to him like wax - he'll do. My Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand sea-miles off the lie of the original or your Admiral Guinea; and besides, I have no more about him yet but one mention of his name, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thought," said Alma, encouraged by her father's smile—"I thought I would like to have a home for sick little children. I wanted to save my money to do something really good and lasting, instead of fooling it away by giving a little here and there, that did not after all do much good to anybody. I have saved all I could, and have given nothing away for anything else, but it went very slowly, and then I thought of those ornaments that were to be mine, and—I really did not think you ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... Boswell, is too 'awful, melancholy, and venerable.' Such 'admirable fooling' as he describes here is but rarely shown in his pages. Yet he must often have seen equally 'ludicrous exhibitions.' Hawkins (Life, p. 258) says, that 'in the talent of humour there hardly ever was Johnson's equal, except perhaps among the old comedians.' Murphy writes (Life, p. l39):—'Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... young Scammon, "that I can't be played with, jest because some folks think I'm down. If you come fooling around me you'll have to explain ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... "I wonder's that nurse fooling us! I didn't like the look of the woman from the moment she came into the house. I don't ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... radio room. The signal was coming through frantically as Tiger reached for the pile of punched tape running out on the floor. But as they crowded into the radio room, Dal felt Jack's hand on his arm. "If you think I was fooling, you're wrong," the Blue Doctor said through his teeth. "You've got twelve hours to get ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... that her friends were puzzled at this remark; they did not quite see how paying for the house was "fooling the company." Evidently they were very inexperienced. Cheap as the houses were, they were sold with the idea that the people who bought them would not be able to pay for them. When they failed—if it were only by a single month—they would lose the house and all that they had ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... "stoop" of the Allen Street tenement. His mother had gone to the butcher's. Chajim, the father,—"Chajim" is the Yiddish of "Herman,"—was long at the shop. To Abe was committed the care of his two young brothers, Isaac and Jacob. Abraham was nine, and past time for fooling. Play is "fooling" in the sweaters' tenements, and the muddling of ideas makes trouble, later on, to which the police returns ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... is never plausibly explained why Penelope cannot do this, and from bk. ii. it is clear that she kept on deliberately encouraging the suitors, though we are asked to believe that she was only fooling them. ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... do so. They were willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is—Who shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round here have the same aspirations, but they ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... moving of laughter always the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... in the grayness of the August dawn; and Johnny was, as usual, prepared to throw a handful of gravel at Edith's window to hurry her downstairs. But when he loomed up in the mist, who should be on the porch, fooling with a rod, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... make a long story out of nothing," he exclaimed, impatiently; "and fooling my time here may cost me ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... exploits of the jester in "Twelfth Night," who, reserving his sharper jests for Sir Toby, had doubtless enough of the jargon of his calling to captivate the imbecility of his brother knight, who is made to exclaim: "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spokest of Pigrogremitus, and of the vapours passing the equinoctials of Quenbus; 't was very good, i' faith!" It is entertaining to find commentators seeking to discover some meaning in the professional jargon of such a ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... thinks it's easy for me to face enlisting, and the rest. She thinks I'm the makeup which can meet horror and suffering light-heartedly. And I'm not. She admires me for that—she said so. I'm not it. I'm fooling her; it's not honest. Yet"—he groaned aloud. "Yet I may lose her if I tell her the truth. I'm afraid. I am. I hate it. I can't bear—I can't bear to leave my job and my future, just when it's opening out. But I could do that. Only I'm—Oh, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... thing and told Guy to get to work at the potatoes, and if he left down the bars so that the Pig got out he'd skin him alive; he would have no such fooling round his place. But Mrs Burns calmly informed him that she was going. It was to her much like going to see a university ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... tangled up with the consul," said Peter, "we'll have to fall back on you," and they took it as an excellent piece of fooling which they were later to come back to as a ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... you cease your fooling, and allow me to proceed? "I," the author of Gebir, "never lamented when I believed it lost." The MS. was mislaid at my grandmother's, and lay undiscovered for four years. "I saw it neglected; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various |
