"Fritter away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not; you had but one rival; a very young lady, wise before her age; a blonde, with violet eyes. She was dressed in light mauve-colored silk, without a single flounce, or any other tomfoolery to fritter away the sheen and color of an exquisite material; her sunny hair was another wave of color, wreathed with a thin line of white jessamine flowers closely woven, that scented the air. This girl was the moon of that assembly, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... is properly resorted to to illustrate and confirm the text.... It can never abrogate the text; it can never fritter away its obvious sense; it can never ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... for once, at least, to loosen the strings of my purse, if I never did again; so I laid out to expend three dollars or so, each day, say eighty dollars for the trip; a good round sum, I assure you, to fritter away; but, by banks of Brandywine, I was determined to do it, and I did. It was very odd, but the first person I met at New York was an old friend, a schoolmate of mine. I was glad to see him, and sorry enough to learn that he had ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... be narrow, to be ignorant, to be out of touch with the great masses of one's fellow-beings, to play the part of a harlequin or a ballet-girl on the stage of life? I understand how a stupid ass can fritter away his one chance to live in saying and hearing and doing silly things. But ought not an intelligent person try to enjoy life, try to get something substantial out of it, try to possess himself of its ideas and emotions? Why should one play the fool simply because ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... said, "let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Harriet must not fritter away her time writing plays; she must study Butler's Analogy. She must also read Baxter's Saints Rest, than which, says Mrs. Stowe, "no book ever affected me more powerfully. As I walked the pavements I wished that they might sink beneath me if only I might find myself in heaven." In this mental condition ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... your last day of service in these offices. This afternoon I will pay you what is due you, and to-morrow I will endeavor to get a boy who is willing to attend to business and not fritter away his time ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... instant to waste, nor was it the way of the ape-man to fritter away precious moments in the uncertainty of belated decision. Before Lu-don or any other could guess what was in the mind of the condemned, Tarzan with all the force of his great muscles dashed the screaming hierophant in the face of the high priest, ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth;" and on this we would base one of our arguments for the subordination of a part of the human family. It is not necessary to the vindication of our cause, or of truth, to deny the authority, or to fritter away the evident meaning of any part of the word of God, as is done by most of the abolitionists. It is sufficient for our purpose that we have shown that the negro is an inferior variety of the human race; that he is inferior in his physical ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... on tiller and the other on main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make out the near-lying north shore. He was unaware of her gaze, and she watched him intently, speculating fancifully about the strange warp of soul that led him, a young man with signal powers, to fritter away his time on the writing of stories and poems ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... be controlled? Who is going to teach, or look after, all these things? How are they to be kept going? Are they, or any of them, to be compulsory, or is a boy or girl to be allowed to do anything or nothing, or to flit, butterfly-fashion, from one to another, learning nothing except to fritter away energy in endless ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... after day, Sunday after Sunday, they read only what this unknown person selects for them. Instead of going to the library and cultivating their own tastes, and pursuing some subject that will increase their mental vigor and add to their permanent stock of thought, they fritter away their time upon a hash of literature chopped up for them by a person possibly very unfit even to make good hash. The mere statement of this surrender of one's judgment of what shall be his intellectual life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... designed scores of military engines. Francesco di Giorgio has left a whole bookful of such sketches, in one of which he anticipates the torpedo-boat.[84] So, too, Michael Angelo took his share in erecting fortifications, though he did not fritter away so much time on experiments as some of his contemporaries. Donatello and his colleagues did not even leave us plans to compensate for their ignominious failure. One is struck by the confidence of these Renaissance people, not only in art but in every ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... undertakes to do a thing, she has always a reason for her undertaking; argoul, as my friend, the grave-digger, said, the heroine of this Epic must have had an object in view. Otherwise, what would take her to the Cupboard? She was evidently a strong-minded woman, and would not fritter away her valuable time for nothing. To the Cupboard she went "to get her poor dog a bone," says the author, following out the logical sequence of the plot. The hero of the tail was not in the Cupboard. Of course not. The "bone" was there. Ah! but was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... self-evident lie"; while at the birthplace of freedom—in the shadow of Bunker Hill and of the "cradle of liberty," at the home of the Adamses and Warren and Otis—Choate, from our side of the house, dares to fritter away the birthday promise of liberty by proclaiming the Declaration to be "a string of glittering generalities"; and the Southern Whigs, working hand in hand with proslavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln |
