"Idly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between us, I glanced at him. His chin was sunk upon his breast, his brows knit, his thin fingers toying idly with ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... man, of himself commander high, Whom want, nor death, nor bands can terrify, Resolved t'affront desires, honours to scorn, All in himself, close, round, and neatly borne, Against whose front externals idly play, And even fortune ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... unfortunately turned into the thing itself. Edward and his retinue were so successful in the jousts, that the French knights, provoked at their superiority, made a serious attack upon them, which was repulsed, and much blood was idly shed in the quarrel.[**] This rencounter received the name of the petty battle ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... his own dart has made;[21] Love the Artist sets his signature beneath the soul which he has created;[22] Love the Helmsman steers the soul, like a winged boat, over the perilous seas of desire;[23] Love the Child, playing idly with his dice at sundawn, throws lightly for human lives.[24] Now he is a winged boy with childish bow and quiver, swift of laughter and speech and tears;[25] now a fierce god with flaming arrows, before whom life wastes ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... and Ben Zoof now proceeded to make their way through the thicket until they came to a little glade, where two men were stretched idly on the grass, one of them playing the guitar, and the other a pair of castanets; both were exploding with laughter, as they urged the performers to greater and yet greater exertions in the dance. At the sight of strangers they paused in their music, and ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... heaven; and from the heated sands a damp radiation was shimmering, giving tremulous, hazy outlines to objects in the distance. Nothing was going on along the beach itself. The casa del bous, where the launching oxen were idly chewing their cud, rose with its red roof and its blue trimmings, over long lines of boats drawn up on shore to make a sort of nomad city with streets and cross roads, much like a Greek encampment of the Heroic Age, when the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... frosty morning she went over to Jake Crabbott's store where she found the usual congregation of loungers, and among them was Bas Rowlett leaning idly on the counter. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... swayed them back on the hindermost; for neither was there outgate for the felons on the flanks of the spearmen, since there the feathered death beset them, and the bowmen (and the Bride amongst the foremost) shot wholly together, and no shaft flew idly. But the wise leaders of the Dalesmen would not that they should thrust in too far amongst the howling throng of the Dusky Men, lest they should be hemmed in by them; for they were but a handful in regard to them: so there they stayed, barring the way to the Dusky Men, and the bowmen still loosed ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... idly threatening what his weak arm could never execute, night came on, and a loud storm of thunder and lightning with rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not to admit his followers, he called ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tore out the leaf, folded and directed it, and seemed about to throw it in through the open sash upon the dining-table; but, on second thoughts, edged himself through the loiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one of the waiters who had been serving inside was now idly leaning against the doorpost. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... clear what was the garden-drift of the century. Even Waller, the poet,—whose moneys, if he were like most poets, could not be thrown away idly,—spent a large sum in levelling the hills about his rural home at Beaconsfields. (We shall find a different poet and treatment by-and-by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Great Britain, it is your business—it is your duty,—to give to negro slavery no rest, but to put it down—not by letting the trunk alone, while you idly busy yourselves in lopping off, or in aiding others to lop off, a few of the straggling branches—but by laying the axe at once to its roots, and by putting your united nerve into the steel, till this great poison-tree of lust and blood, and of all abominable and heartless ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... editions had gone to press, and I had given up in despair, determined to go up to the laboratory and sit around idly watching Kennedy with his mystifying experiments, in preference to waiting for him ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... at the page before me, I fumbled idly in a pocket, with unthinking hand, and brought out to place before me on the table, an object of which at first I was unconscious—the little Indian blanket clasp. As it lay before me I felt seized of a sudden hatred for it, and let fall on it a heavy hand. As I did so, I heard ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... was part instinct and partly remembrance of what the boy on the moving wagon had told him. The people he had left were too inert to think of giving him any instructions. But down the road he passed the big boys of the house sitting idly by the roadside. They had heard with satisfaction their father's opinion as to Steve's going in search of "larnin'." As Steve came in sight one of them nudged the other and said, "Less throw ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... beat of the high sun the light stern wind fell. The slack sail drooped like a sick-hearted thing. Idly drifting on the slow glassy flood, we seemed only an incidental portion of this dream in which the deepest passions of man were bodied forth in eternal fixity. Towers of battle, domes of prayer, fanes of worship, and then—the kneeling women! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... come and drink at the fountain of Pirene. He was afraid lest King Iobates should imagine that he had fled from the Chimera. It pained him, too, to think how much mischief the monster was doing, while he himself, instead of fighting with it, was compelled to sit idly poring over the bright waters of Pirene as they gushed out of the sparkling sand. And as Pegasus came thither so seldom in these latter years, and scarcely alighted there more than once in a lifetime, Bellerophon feared ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the throes of a blizzard. The wind howled and shrieked, heralding the approach of March, the Wind King's month of the year. Mrs. Davenport stood at a second story window of a room of the Gilsey House, and looked down idly on the bleak thoroughfare. She was a young-looking woman for her thirty-five years, and had an extremely sweet face, denoting kindliness ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... song is sung the audience pay little attention. To patriotic songs they listen respectfully. A song which breathes the glories of literature as represented by Montaigne, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Moliere is tolerated idly. But when the stage is presently cleared for a ballet the young blousards—for they are mostly young men who gather here—are all attention. What is their disgust at perceiving that the dancers are men in ancient Greek costumes, who do a sword-fight to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... for which the men who made them cared no longer. The hungry noses of old guns snuffed at the car as it rolled by, guns dragging still upon their flanks the torn cloak of camouflage—small squat guns which stared idly into the air, or with wider mouths still, like petrified dogs for ever baying at the moon—long slim guns which lay along the grass and pushing undergrowth—and one gun which had dipped forward and, fallen upon its ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master's gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the golden days, I was so lucky as to see several times wonderful dances of flocks of saras cranes on the low sandy islets in the River Jumna, northern India, just below Etawah. It was like this: While the birds are idly stepping about, apropos of nothing at all, one suddenly flaps his long wings several times in succession, another jumps straight up in the air for a yard or so, and presto! with one accord the whole flock is galvanized ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Dale with cold, unwavering eyes until the latter, sneering, turned and ordered his men to remove the rope from Nyland. With his hands resting idly on his hips he watched Dale and the men ride away. Then he shook hands mechanically with Nyland, permitted Peggy to kiss him—which she did fervently, and led her brother away. Then Sanderson turned, to see Mary smiling and blushing, not more than ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... this cow; and her mother cut off the hands of the maids who had betrayed the daughter to her father; wherefore now the images of them have suffered that which the maids suffered in their life. In thus saying they speak idly, as it seems to me, especially in what they say about the hands of the statues; for as to this, even we ourselves saw that their hands had dropped off from lapse of time, and they were to be seen still lying at their feet even down to ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... rest. He gazed earnestly at the house. Nothing stirred there save the open doors swinging idly in ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... sharing in some triumphal procession. She chattered on, and then at last was silent. I remember that the great heat of the morning wrought in us all a kind of lethargy. We were lazily confident that day that nothing evil could overtake us. We idly watched the sky, the river, the approaching forest, with a luxurious reliance on the power of man, and I caught much of my assurance from Semyonov himself. He did really seem to me, that morning, a "tremendous" figure, as he sat there, so ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Susan; you will know from this letter how highly I admire her abilities, and esteem her character; but if you are not equally convinced by my full and solemn assurance that your fears have been most idly created, you will deeply mortify ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... occupied himself with watching idly the movements of the black cat, and, as he watched, something icy cold began to grow within him, a sensation more terrible than he had ever known before. He found himself shivering as if that summer day had all at once turned to January, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... among the various tribes of Indians has never been surpassed; for his close intimacy with them made him know what would best please their taste, and they bought of him when other traders stood idly at their stockades, waiting ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... moment and I mused idly on the boyhood of little Fyne. I could not imagine what it might have been like. His dominant trait was clearly the remnant of still earlier days, because I've never seen such staring solemnity ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... But the astute animal, making the best use of his legs till he could get the advantage of the first ditch, ran, and crept, and jumped absolutely through the pack. Then there was shouting, and yelling, and riding. The men who were idly smoking threw away their cigars. Those who were loitering at a distance lost their chance. But the real sportsmen, always on the alert, always thinking of the business in hand, always mindful that there may be at any moment a fox just before the hounds, had a glorious ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... he sat on the lifting, breathing swell, floating idly. There was nothing else on the face of the lonely waters except himself and a flock, or fleet, I should say, of razorbills and guillemots, very far away, who alternately showed all white breasts, and vanished—as they dived and rose all together—like white-faced, disappearing targets, and one ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... finally wriggling snake-wise to the very edge of the thicket. Beneath them lay a narrow beach, on which some of the voyageurs had built a fire to prepare the morning meal. Others lay about, smoking and chatting idly. Jean de La Verendrye sat a little apart, perhaps {40} recording the scanty particulars of the journey. The Jesuit priest walked up and ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... That is of course. The Flag of France never hangs idly when there is a brave life's loss to be reckoned for; I shall know again the cur that fled. Trust to me, and now be silent. You bawl out your oath of vengeance, oh, yes! But you bawled as loud a minute ago for bread. Biribi loved you better ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... parochial schools of Rome, which are nothing more nor less than schools of dogmas, and these dogmas are incubators of anarchy, for without education and without love of country, anarchy is as certain to follow as the day is certain to follow night, but still Protestantism stands idly by and allows Catholicism to villify her institutions, and at the same time permits Catholicism to place her followers in a position to draw salaries from the institutions which they despise and hate with ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... and realising how like a prison-cell it was compared with what he had expected, he felt oppressed as with the want of air. He sought vainly about the window for latch or hinge to open it, and as he did so glanced along the castle wall painted yellow by the declining sun. He noticed idly that some one was putting out upon the sill of a window on a lower stage what might have been a green kerchief had not the richness of its fabric and design suggested more a pennon or banneret. It was carefully placed by a woman's hands—the woman herself ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... "My wayward lover often I excite So vain and bootless an emprize to quit; Nor idly hope to turn her stedfast sprite, Too deeply with another passion smit; And make apparent to the Scottish knight, Ariodantes such a flame had lit In the young damsel's breast, that seas in flood Would not have cooled one ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... day in my study I was listless and ill at ease, And my fingers twiddled idly With the novel upon my knees. I know not where I was straying On the poppy-clustered shore, But I suddenly struck on a Sparkler Which fairly made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... has been placed in the middle of the stage, with chairs around it. A lamp is burning on the table. The door into the hall stands open. Dance music is heard in the room above. Mrs. LINDE is sitting at the table idly turning over the leaves of a book; she tries to read, but does not seem able to collect her thoughts. Every now and then she listens intently for a sound at ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... pale opalescent sky, and broad waves of light rippled slowly over the wide level plain. The little keen breeze of the morning, the herald of the dawn that runs ever in front of its chariot, stirred the branches of the palm trees by the Nile, and played a moment idly with the flap of a tent door before it passed onward. Here, some two miles away from cool Assouan, lying out in the desert, was the Bishareen encampment, and the last small tent of the long line had its door ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... stared at him who had spoken with a countenance half severity, half deep affection. "What! stings that yet?" he said. "I think you may have that knowledge of yourself that you were born to lead, and that knowledge of higher things that shame is of the devil, but defeat ofttimes of God. How idly ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the offices of the Moniteur and to the printing works of L'Ami du Peuple. He had seen the citizen Dufour at the Club and, presumably, had spent the rest of his time wandering idly about the streets of the quartier, for he did not return to the rue des Cordeliers ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... over to me to guard my stables and clean my yard, and I will give him whey to drink, which will fatten his limbs. But work does not suit such a fellow. He would rather ramble idly about and beg for food to fill his empty stomach. Let him once come to the palace of Odysseus and the guests that woo the queen will fling footstools at him." With that Melanthios kicked him in the thigh. ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... discontented with the old life of toil, and pouted crossly because duties called her when she wanted to do nothing but sit idly dreaming of the gay court scenes in which she had taken a bright brief part. The old Flax-spinner's fingers trembled as she spun, when she saw the frowns, for she had given of her heart's blood to buy happiness for this maiden she loved, and well she knew there can be no happiness where frowns ...
— The Legend of the Bleeding-heart • Annie Fellows Johnston
... full of clouds to-day, And idly to and fro, Like sheep across the pasture, they Across the heavens go. I hear the wind with merry noise— Around the housetops sweep, And dream it is the shepherd boys, They're driving home ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... if I had been ready for them and could catch on; I had heard of kings presumably, and also of fleeing: but that kings had sometimes to flee was a new and striking image, to which the apparent consternation of my elders added dramatic force. So much, in any case, for what I may claim—perhaps too idly—on ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... slips by, a rook emerges from yonder mass of foliage, and idly floats across, and is hidden in another tree. A whitethroat rises from a bush and nervously discourses, gesticulating with wings and tail, for a few moments. But this is not possible for long; the immense magnetism of London, as I have said before, is too near. There comes the quick ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... not intently carried on, and she was watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and then it passed ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... feebleness of age or childhood, of peasants and vagrants, and of all who had joined the camp in the blind hope of plunder and martyrdom. The common impulse drove them onwards to the wall; the most audacious to climb were instantly precipitated; and not a dart, not a bullet, of the Christians, was idly wasted on the accumulated throng. But their strength and ammunition were exhausted in this laborious defence: the ditch was filled with the bodies of the slain; they supported the footsteps of their companions; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... man, about twenty-five years of age, of a commanding height,—six feet full, the heels of his boots not included in the reckoning,—and dressed in scrupulous keeping with the fashion of the time, might have been seen sauntering idly along one of the principal streets of Cincinnati. To the few who could claim acquaintance with him he was known as an actor, playing at the time referred to a short engagement as light comedian in a theatre of that city. He does not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... that when he asked the Ambassador how he got on with the United States, he replied: "Very well, indeed; we pay no attention to the Government, but go ahead and do what we please." Within a fortnight the sinking of the Lusitania showed that Bernstorff had not boasted idly. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... sadly. "The brain, overwrought, will soon give way to madness, and then a welcome death will spare me the life of a maniac. I do not speak idly," she continued, observing the look they cast upon her; "from the depths of my mind, a voice whispers that my troubles on earth will soon be o'er. I have one desire, however, and should like to see ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... vain. Every bulletin from Washington exhibited its list of new-made officers, but my name appeared not among them. In New Orleans—that most patriotic of republican cities—epaulettes gleamed upon every shoulder, whilst I, with the anguish of a Tantalus, was compelled to look idly and enviously on. Despatches came in daily from the seat of war, filled with newly-glorious names; and steamers from the same quarter brought fresh batches of heroes—some legless, some armless, and others with a bullet-hole through the cheek, and perhaps the loss of a dozen teeth or ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... and formidable. So as they appear insidious in deceit and fatal in the combat, they have served their end. Danger is the matter with which this class of novel deals; fear, the passion with which it idly trifles; and the characters are portrayed only so far as they realise the sense of danger and provoke the sympathy of fear. To add more traits, to be too clever, to start the hare of moral or intellectual interest while ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turned his back on the lurid sky and pointed to the crest of Beausejour. There, in long, dark lines, stood nearly a thousand French troops, drawn up on parade. The light from the ruined village gleamed in blood-red flashes from their steel, and over them the banner of France flapped idly with ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he was at the door, begging a search party to enter to see for themselves that I was not hidden there. The galliot got under way, at that moment, with a good deal of crying out from her sailors. As she swung away into the canal, I saw the handsome lady idly looking on. She was waiting at the door with the other riders. She was the only woman there. To show her that I was a skilled seaman I cast off the stern-hawser nimbly, then dropped on to the deck like one bred to the trade. A moment later I was aloft, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... important. He looked the letter all over again, and examined the envelope idly. The Spanish Gulch postmark bore ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... visitors' hours were from two to four, and none would be admitted earlier. No. 18 in the next cot asked him a question once, but No. 20 only shook his head wearily. Some of the children had books and games, but they soon tired of them, and lay idly staring about the long, sunny room, or looking out at the sky and the trees, or watching the door. Sometimes mothers or fathers came through that door, and if you hadn't any of your own, at any rate you could look at those that came to see ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... all day in a boat; lovely weather and almost dead calm, only the most infinitesimal and indeterminate of oscillations moved us hither and thither; the sails were duly set, and flapped about idly overhead. Our boatman was a man of a delightful humour, who told us many tales of the sea, notably one of a doctor, who was an Englishman, and who seemed almost an epitome of vices—drunken, dishonest, and utterly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must be re-created from within. The main work must be done in Ireland, and the centre of interest must be Ireland. When Irishmen realise this truth, the splendid human power of their country, so much of which now runs idly or disastrously to waste, will be utilised; and we may then look with confidence for the foundation of a fabric of Irish prosperity, framed in constructive thought, and laid enduringly ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... Haynes idly thrust the head of the pin repeatedly in under the sole at the toe of his right boot. Somewhat to his surprise the head went well in, then stopped at last, fitting snugly and ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... If a rainy day lacks sunshine, it has vigor for a substitute. The wind whistles briskly among the chimney tops. There is so much life on wet and windy days. Yesterday Nature yawned, but today she is wide awake. Yesterday the earth seemed lolling idly in the heavens. It was a time of celestial vacation and all the suns and moons were vacant of their usual purpose. But today the earth whirls and spins through space. Her gray cloud cap is pulled down across her nose and she leans in her hurry ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... idly at the strength of ties such as those which bound together these two, and the length of their duration, he has never considered their nature—the similarity of tastes, similarity of pursuits, and the crowning fact of the mutual benefit derived ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... is no matter. What this girl is, though you lived a thousand years, you would never have the grace to imagine. She gave you her young love, in childish blindness, not knowing what she did, and you killed it idly, wantonly, as a beast tortures its frail victim, for sport. You find her again, still weak and bleeding from her wounds, and you fling her marriage, in words whose every syllable is an insult. Marriage! When every fibre of her nature must cry out against you, if she is woman. Take your words ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... and put to sea. A fair wind filled their patchwork sails and bore them from the hated coast. Day after day they held their course, till at length the favoring breeze died away and a breathless calm fell on the face of the waters. Florida was far behind; France farther yet before. Floating idly on the glassy waste, the craft lay motionless. Their supplies gave out. Twelve kernels of maize a day were each man's portion; then the maize failed, and they ate their shoes and leather jerkins. The water-barrels were drained, and they tried to slake their thirst with brine. Several ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wending on its way, Beside my path a stream was playing; And down its banks, in humor gay, A thoughtless boy was idly straying. ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... them. She sat watching where the light of the sun flickered among the birches; and he had the book in his hand, and was turning the pages idly. He read— ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... voice broke into the song with the order to let go the anchor. As the ship swung to the tide the steersman, who wore neither coat nor waistcoat, could be seen idly handling the wheel still, though his duties were necessarily at an end. He was a young man, and a gay salutation of his unemployed hand toward the assembled people—as if he were sure that they were all friends—stamped him as the light-hearted singer, so different from ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... that precise time when Mrs. Agar was endeavouring To teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small, keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the Hotel Wagstaff at Suez. He was idly turning over the newspapers lying there in the hopes of finding something comparatively ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... paper in the morning, and idly and slowly peruse the advertisements on the first page, forget it, eat some bacon, grumble at the youngest boy, open the paper, read the breach of promise case on page three, drop it, and ask your wife for more coffee—hot—glance at your letters again, then reopen the paper at the news page, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... from among the trees just at this moment and crossed the grass with a peculiarly graceful and swaying step, as though she had just drifted down with the sunshine and was being idly blown along by the wind, another girl in the palest of pink dresses, with ripples of snowy lace all over it, and a wide-brimmed hat shading her eyes. And speaking distance being gained, she said, with a breezy little laugh: "Sewing? Why, it's ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... lit a cigar and began to smoke, letting the paper drag idly from his hand. He fixed his gaze upon a white sunshade that was advancing at snail's pace from the beach. He could see it plainly between the gaunt trunks of the water-oaks and across the stretch of yellow ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... tones that evoke all phantom pain of perished passion;—there are tones that resurrect all dead sensations of majesty and might and glory,—all expired exultations,—all forgotten magnanimities. Well may the influence of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun. He finds that music is a Necromancy;—he feels that to every ripple of melody, to every billow of harmony, there ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... as were recently made by a former chief of police in Chicago when he successfully cleared the streets of their presence, demonstrates that legal suppression is possible. At least this obvious temptation to young men and boys who are idly walking the streets might be avoided, for in an old formula one such woman "has cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her." Were the streets kept clear, many young girls would be spared familiar knowledge that such ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... city roaring outside for John Perkins to come dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half scorned, had ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the sidewalks were groups and couples—the plumbers' apprentices, the girls of the ribbon counters, the little families that lived on the second stories over their shops, the dressmakers, the small doctors, the harness-makers—all the various inhabitants of the street were abroad, strolling idly from shop window to shop window, taking the air after the day's work. Groups of girls collected on the corners, talking and laughing very loud, making remarks upon the young men that passed them. The tamale ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... time, watching the ominous stirring of the clouds, that seemed like an invading army whose might would soon be unleashed and burst out with fierce violence. Then, in the distance, we saw a small boat. The tan-hued sails flapped idly and one could see that the men ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... if I idly flit away, All my sunny summer day, Dancing round from flow'r to flow'r; What shall grace my winter bow'r? No, I'll not wander with the bee, So tempt me ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... idly shows this rage, which carries you, As men convey'd by witches through the air, On violent whirlwinds! This intemperate noise Fitly resembles deaf men's shrill discourse, Who talk aloud, thinking all other men To have ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the regiment was not engaged on Monday. We remained all that day at the place where we bivouacked Sunday night. The ends of the staffs of our regimental flags were driven in the ground, the banners flapping idly in the breeze, while the men sat or lay around with their guns in their hands or lying by them, their cartridge-boxes buckled on, and all ready to fall in line at the tap of the drum. But for some reason that I never knew, we were not called on. Our division commander, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... from cornice to floor. That which was opposite to me presented, I remember, Jacob receiving the blessing which his brother Esau should have had; and I wondered, as I sat there, whether I myself were come, as Jacob, to get a blessing to which I had no right. Idly Lord Abbot said nothing at all; for he was a stout man and a little out of breath; and almost before he had got it again, and before I was sure as to whether I were more like to the liar Jacob, who won a blessing when he should not, or to unspiritual Esau, who lost a blessing which he should have ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the wind died almost completely away; and shortly afterwards a few heavy drops of rain fell, speedily followed by a drenching shower. This killed the remaining light air of wind, and the boats lay idly upon the water, their saturated canvas flapping heavily against the masts. But not for long; the sails were speedily lowered down and spread across from gunwale to gunwale to catch the precious moisture, and so heavy was the downpour that in the quarter of an hour during which the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... expressions of gratitude, in praises of his heroism, but he waived the whole matter off by saying, "Think of me as well as you can, for Heaven knows I have need to retrieve my character. But please do not speak as if I had done more than I ought. For a young man to stand idly by, and see the home of his childhood, the place where he had received unbounded hospitality, destroyed, would be simply base. If I had not been reduced by months of ill health, the thing would not have been difficult at all. But you, Miss Walton, displayed the real heroism ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... branched from the road and led under the oaks and hickories towards the pond, and we had not taken twenty paces in it before the notes of a guitar and the sound of a voice reached our ears. And then, when the six of us stood huddled in the rank growth at the water's edge, we saw a boat floating idly in the forest shadow on the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at the bungalow, and on one such occasion was surprised to see a carriage, one of the turnouts supplied by the Eastboro livery stable, roll up to its door and Mrs. Bascom, the housekeeper, emerge, climb to the seat beside the driver, and be driven away in the direction of the village. He idly wondered where she was going, but was not particularly interested. When, a half hour later, Ruth Graham left the bungalow and strolled off along the path at the top of the bluff, he was very much interested indeed. He realized, as he had ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... He answered. They fell into conversation. She asked him about his family, his life, whether he would have to be a soldier; whether he had a sweetheart. She forced herself to listen attentively to his replies. He was a responsive boy and soon began to talk volubly, letting the oars trail idly in the water. With energy he paraded his joyous youth before her. Even in his touches of melancholy there was hope. His happiness confirmed her in her resolution. She put herself in contrast with this boy, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... consent, could he have obtained it, would not have opened to the convert the way into the priesthood. A greater trial had been required of him; he was nothing, a man whose career was over. He stood idly, in a kind of languor, looking on while the Curate performed the duties of his office—feeling like a man whom sickness had reduced to the last stage of life, and for whom no earthly business remained; while, at the same time, his aspect struck awe, as that of a bishop at ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... The glass was soon laid aside: the medal remained idly in his hand, and his mind would recur to the things he ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and then awhile stood mute, And idly struck sweet chords upon his lute, Watching Yolande's fair, frowning face the while, With eyes that held a roguish, wistful smile. She, meeting now these eyes of laughing blue, Felt her cheeks ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... serve, forbear thy rest; A stranger doth thy lands in thraldom bring, Nice is a slave, by Christian yoke oppressed; Sleepest thou here, forgetful of this thing, That here thy friends lie slain, not laid in chest, Whose bones bear witness of thy shame and scorn! And wilt thou idly here attend ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... book hastily, and ran upstairs to her room, and locked the door in order to breathe freely. There were traces of tears upon her face when she returned into the drawing-room half-an-hour afterwards, walking straight and demurely up to her former place, where Cynthia still sate and gazed idly out of the window, pouting and displeased; Mrs. Gibson, meanwhile, counting her stitches aloud with great distinctness ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... flies! the vessel flies, that bears away To distant shores my Daphne, fair as May. Guard her, ye loves! be lull'd each ruder gale; Let Zephyrs only fill the swelling sail; Ye waves flow gently by the vessel's side, While pensive she surveys you idly glide; Ah! softly glide, prolong her reverie, For then, ye Gods! 'tis then she thinks of me. When near the nodding groves that shade the shore, To her, ye birds, your sweetest warbling pour; No sounds be heard, but such as ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... on his heel and walked to where Sir Charles Carew leaned against a tree, idly flicking the mud from his boots with his riding cane. Landless standing near and listening with strained ears heard the master say in answer to the other's ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... o'er the fatal pool whence none return:— "By every tongue thy constancy is sung, Thine and thy favourite's—chiefly by the young." But lo, the future is in heaven's high hand: Meanwhile thy graces all my praise demand, Not false lip-praise, not idly bubbling froth— For though thy wrath be kindled, e'en thy wrath Hath no sting in it: doubly I am caressed, And go my way repaid ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... She was idly turning over lavallieres on a tray—holding them up for inspection, and letting the pretty chains run through her fingers to drop into the tray ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... and inventions that have advanced the human race, his were, in the main, accidental; yet he could now reason from the accidental to the analogous. Idly swinging his girdle around his head, one day, and letting go, he was surprised at the distance to which, with little effort, he could send the stone-laden pouch. Months of puzzled experimenting produced ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... feeds and is fed by the whole of matter: so that he held, in exact antagonism to the skeptics, that, "the wiser a man is, the more will he be a worshipper of the Deity." In short, he was a believer in the Identity-philosophy, which he held not idly, as the dreamers of Berlin or Boston, but which he experimented with and established through years of labor, with the heart and strength of the rudest Viking that his rough Sweden ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... which I had devised myself, heavy enough for twice her tonnage. On the deck I could see an occasional figure, but though I plied my binoculars carefully, not the figure which I sought. A man leaned against the rail, idly, smoking, but this I made out to be the engineer, Williams, come up to get the evening air. Billy, the deck-hand, John, my Chinese cook, and Peterson, the boat-master, were at the time out of sight, as well as Cal Davidson, who had ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... watching eye; Trust him to the hand that made him. Mortal love weeps idly by; God alone has power to aid him. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot know! Lay ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... in an unknown country. But there was another man-of-war in port with which we were familiar. We passed it far out on the Indian Ocean. It again passed us, and reached Aden before we did. The 'Porcupine' lay not far from the 'Fulvia', and as I leaned over the bulwarks, idly looking at her, a boat shot away from her side, and came towards us. As it drew near, I saw that it was filled with luggage—a naval officer's, I knew it to be. As the sailors hauled it up, I noticed that the initials upon the portmanteaus were G. R. The owner ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the birds visited the reserve early. Shortly before sundown I counted sixteen. They were resting silently on the sodden remains of the nests, for there have been heavy showers; some were picking idly at loosened strands as if merely to beguile time. Now and again they fly briskly and noisily in close company—always "diagonalising." Failure to add largely to the population of birds does not seem to have damped the gaiety and impulsiveness ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of Knut, there was nothing could be done upon them by Knut this year,—or, if anything, what? Knut's ships ran into Lymfjord, the safe-sheltered frith, or intricate long straggle of friths and straits, which almost cuts Jutland in two in that region; and lay safe, idly rocking on the waters there, uncertain what to do farther. At last he steered in his big ship and some others, deeper into the interior of Lymfjord, deeper and deeper onwards to the mouth of a big river called the Helge (Helge-aa, the Holy River, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... Judy, that puts the sparkle into life," said Elinor absently, with her flexible artist hands straying idly over the pale mass of her little sister's straight heavy locks. "Many girls lead vastly more interesting and exciting lives than our dear Miss Pat, but they have dull spirits, and so we don't notice them; while we're all bursting with enthusiasm over every little thing she happens to ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... And could I lift each pious veil, And see the blushing cheek it shades,— Oh! I should have full many a tale, To tell of young Azorian maids.[3] Yes, Strangford, at this hour, perhaps, Some lover (not too idly blest, Like those, who in their ladies' laps May cradle every wish to rest,) Warbles, to touch his dear one's soul, Those madrigals, of breath divine, Which Camoens' harp from Rapture stole And gave, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... pinching cold and griping hunger. At this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his heart, and he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past life;—considers within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he is at present in the utmost need of;—looks back with shame on the iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror on the rueful scene of misery that awaits him; until his brain, torn with excruciating thought, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the brass-rimmed round table, she took up a book which was lying there. It was a guide to Paris, arranged on the alphabetical principle. Idly she began turning over the leaves, and then suddenly Nancy Dampier's cheeks, which had become so pale as to arouse Senator Burton's commiseration, became deeply flushed. She turned over the leaves of the guide-book with feverish haste, anxious to find what it was that ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... for her usual solitary walk while her mother was enjoying her siesta. She wandered idly along under the trees down the road along which the jampannis had whirled her the evening before, and so to the broken edge of the kudd where she ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... more—my heart swelled into my throat—my eyes filled with tears; I felt as if I were acting a barbarous part in standing by and gazing idly on this scene of maternal anguish. I wandered to another part of the churchyard, where I remained until the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... so later, as I stood one morning basking in the sun at that gate of the palace gardens which overlooks the temple of Ptah, idly watching the procession of priests passing through its courts and chanting as they went (for because of the many sicknesses at this time I left the palace but rarely), I saw a tall figure approaching me draped against the morning cold. The ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... He turned the pages, idly glancing at the headlines. It was hard to realize that the paper wasn't right off the presses of Earth; it must have been brought out to Clovis on the latest ship. He checked the date, and frowned in surprise. According to the rough ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... the shade of nodding branches gray, 4 'Mid rude romantic woods, and glens forlorn, The merry hunters wear the hours away; Rings the deep forest to the joyous horn! Joyous to all, but him,[26] who with sad look Hangs idly musing by ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the morn, With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming, Slow glided o'er a field late shorn Where walked a poet idly dreaming. He saw her, and joy lit his face, "Oh, vanish not at human speaking," He cried, "thou form of magic grace, Thou art the poem I ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... course in the direction of the Daphne. Her towering spread of canvas alternately appeared and vanished as the enormous idly flapping sails caught and lost again, with the heave of the vessel, the glint of the golden moon-beams; but, save this, all was dark and still on board her; no lanterns flashed in her rigging as a recall signal, so I exultingly gave the order for the boats to be headed straight for the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... comfort, none; All the dewy tender breath Idly falls when life is done On the starless ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell
... to his dog. He had seen Spain humbled to the dust by babble, and the sight had, perhaps, dried up the spring of his speech. For he rarely spoke idly. If he had anything to say, he said it. But if he had nothing, he was silent. Which is, of course, fatal to social advancement, and set him at one stroke outside the pale of political life. Spain at this time, and, indeed, ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman |
