"Idling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laugh at the wrong side of his mouth," thought the squire, alighting and giving his horse to the care of one of the little ragged boys who were idling in the street. He approached Murphy with a very threatening aspect, and confronting him and his party so as to produce a halt, he said, as distinctly as his rage would permit him to speak, "You little insignificant blackguard, I'll teach you how you'll cut your jokes on ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Already a crowd was idling, whittling, gossiping in the road, when the Turner cavalcade came in sight—and for ten miles up and down the river people were coming in ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... edification, yes? But your term is a term of inadequate comprehensiveness. It is to me more what you call a 'beast-garden,' to include all species of fauna. Are there not here moths and human flames? are there not cunning serpents crawling with apples of knowledge to unreluctant, idling Eves, yes? Do we not hear the amazing converse of parrots and note the pea-fowl negotiating admiration from observers? Mark at that yet farther table also the swine and the song-bird; again, mark our draught-horses who have achieved a competence, yes? You note also the presence ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a shock which loosed another riot, but one of a kind different from that which greeted Representative Rollinson's vote on the "Breaker." The reading-clerk had sung his way through an inconsequent bill; most of the members were buried in newspapers, gossiping, idling, or smoking in the lobbies, when a loud, cracked voice ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... her teeth with a pin, and snuffed the sea air, and gave a passing neighbor "good-afternoon" with greater warmth of manner than usual. Presently her mood changed; she noisily rated herself and her stepdaughter for standing idling; then both went back ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Clary, starting from his arms, and gazing upon him with a distracted air. "While I have been idling in my bed something dreadful has happened. I read it in your averted eyes—on your sad, sad brow. Do not leave me in this state of torturing doubt. I beseech you to tell me the cause ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... age when Caesar was still idling away his time, Pompey had achieved honors such as the veteran generals of Rome were accustomed to regard as the highest to which they could aspire. He had only just left, if indeed he had left, school, ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... curiosity than his attendant's, dismounted, and gave his horse to a boy who stood idling near. It arose, perhaps, from the shyness of his character in early youth, that he felt dislike at applying to a stranger even for casual information, without previously glancing at his physiognomy and appearance. While he looked about in order to select the person with whom he would ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... of in college with its practise conflicts, and handle yourself precisely as you would if your whole career depended upon each task set for you. If you mean to go to college for the principal purpose of idling around, wearing a small cap and good clothes, and being the adoration of your mother and your sisters on your vacation, you had a good deal better be at work at some gainful occupation. College is not helping you if that is what you are doing. It ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... for Renaut, the secretary just alluded to. But Renaut was nowhere to be found, nor could any news be heard of him. Flotte stayed some time in Madrid, and then went to the army, which was still in quarters. He remained there three weeks, idling from quarter to quarter, saluting the Marechal in command, who was much surprised at his long stay, and who pressed him to return into France. At last Flotte took leave of the Marechal, asking him for an escort for himself and a commissary, with whom he meant to go in company across the Pyrenees. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a group of three idling on the promenade deck of the Assyrian, Lanyard turned sharply and stared through narrowed eyelids into the quarter whence the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... father defended him. "It isn't as if you'd been idling. Your four years abroad have been just so much capital. Educational capital, I mean. I've got plenty of the other kind, for both of us. You don't need to go into the business ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... for rest and repair. Group Two was idling at extreme radar range, making a convincing blip, and he designed some false messages to be beamed toward it with the expectation of interception. The impression he wanted to give was that Group Two was the Force that had been bombarding Coar, coming in now to join ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... you are not quick, you will have to wear crape. However, proceed, I can suffer with the best of them.... Are you certain that I can be of no assistance? I feel selfish, idling here like this. Besides, since I am ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... my companion, I listened to the gentlemen who were idling through the rooms. Everywhere that word 'dollar,' constantly repeated, struck upon my ear. All conversation had for its subject mercantile and financial transactions; profits, either realized, or to be realized, by the speakers, or the general prospect of ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... all right. I supposed you had been idling your time over the paper. Go and ask Mr. Murdock what time it is. I left ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... were free to take it or leave it. For so miserable a recompense were the producers of wealth compelled to toil rising early and lying down late, while the master clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich by their exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, is what the weaver would have if justice were done. [199] We may therefore conclude that, in the generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in the great staple manufacture of England thought himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sticky, and insects coming against these are entangled. The Latin name of Silena arose from an old legend that it belonged first to a young man whom the goddess Minerva employed to catch flies for her owls. She found him one day idling about, and in her anger turned him into a plant which should be always catching flies. Yorkshire has a night-flowering plant of this kind, with pale flowers and a forked stem. Then there is the white or evening campion of our hedgerows, which opens generally in the twilight, sending ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a freight train, loaded with still more ties and iron, standing upon a siding guarded by the idling trainmen and by an operator's shack. Smoke was welling from the chimney of the shack—and that domestic touch gave me a sense of homesickness. Yet I would not have been home, even for breakfast. This wide realm of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... unseasonable labor,[14] are either carding wool, or twirling the threads with their fingers, or are plying at the web, and keeping the handmaids to their work. One of them, {as she is} drawing the thread with her smooth thumb, says, "While others are idling, and thronging to {these} fanciful rites, let us, whom Pallas, a better Deity, occupies, alleviate the useful toil of our hands with varying discourse; and let us relate by turns to our disengaged ears, for the general {amusement}, something each in our turn, that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... somewhere idling with his drawing-book and bits o' colors. He takes himself off whenever it is a finer day than common. Most likely he's gone to Great-Ash Ford. He's met with a mate there after his own mind—an artist chap. Was ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... next day. Soule had called to see the man when he came to Pittsburg, and spent an hour or two in his cell. The next morning he was free to go, but he had stayed a week longer, making a pair of red morocco shoes for the jailer's little girl,—idling over them: when they were done, tying them on, himself, with a wonderful bow-knot, and looking anxiously in her clean Dutch face to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... also earned a meed of my neighbor's disparagement. He was a worthless, trifling "boy," an idling dreamer, an irresponsible, inconsequent visionary, in whose baseless fancies it was astounding that a woman of her ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... be—crucified upon. "They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."[257] Does that mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity—none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen's coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds—yes, and life, if need be? Life!—some ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... that the very first individual they saw in Big Run was Sanchia Murray. She was in white and looked fresh and cool and girlish and inviting as she sat idling upon the porch at the hotel. When she saw them, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... did was to send me head over heels, to the great discomfiture of my temporary costume, and equal delight of the bathers there assembled. We remained in this room, which was of an increased temperature, idling upon other couches, until we were pronounced ready to go into the second chamber. I contrived, with great care and anxiety, to totter into it upon my clogs, and found another apartment of marble, very warm indeed, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... (or was it only that it seemed so to him in his old age?) so little from Harvard College; but at any rate he graduated with honors, and afterwards enjoyed the blessed boon of two care-free years of idling and study in Germany and Italy. For six years, as private secretary to his father on one of the most difficult and successful diplomatic missions in the history of his country, he watched history in the making, and gained an inside knowledge of English politics and society such as comes to one ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... you if you are," she retorted. "People are simply shirking work nowadays. And you're as bad as anyone. You've not tried to pick up the threads again—you're just idling round." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... his feet, with my head resting against him. I drew his half reluctant hand around my throat, then I exerted every part of my brain force ... to hold him. Ceaselessly I talked of our old days together—camping trips to the Northern woods of Canada, wonderful weeks of idling down the river in our launch, days of ideal happiness, spent together. I appealed to his love for me, his old love, and the memory of our early married life. He was unresponsive, and I could feel the restlessness of his fingers in ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... that Milton turned back from his unaccomplished tour because he "deemed it disgraceful to be idling away his time abroad for his own gratification, while his countrymen were contending for their liberty." From these words biographers have inferred that he hurried home with the view of taking service in the Parliamentarian ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... one of a hundred landings, draw your boat up on the gravel, spring out and plunge into the thickets, flushing the blackbirds from their nests, or unpack your luncheon, spread your mattress, and watch the clouds sail over your head. Don't be in a hurry. Keep up this idling day in and day out, up and down, over and across, for a month or more, and you will get some faint idea of how picturesque, how lovely, and how restful this rarest of all the sylvan streams of ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... accounts the latter seem to have behaved well—a little excited at first, but full of pluck. Let the siege only last a week and they will be capital soldiers, and then we shall no longer be called upon, to believe the assertions of military men, that it takes years of drill and idling in a barrack ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and in a few minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever distracted them. They were like two children together, often as quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of forgetting everything utterly but ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... ugliness coming towards them, leading his horse by the halter, an animal larger, it seems, than six ordinary horses, but broken down and knock-kneed, with jaws that stuck out far in advance of its head. How the heroes, idling pleasantly about in the sunshine, laughed aloud at the uncouth "foreigner" and his ugly raw-boned beast, "covered with tangled scraggy hair of a sooty black." How he came before the king and, having made obeisance, told ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... practical Doctor these things were no better than the gun—it was idling, anyway. Natural History as a pastime was excellent, and sportsmanship for exercise and recreation had its place, but the business of life must not be neglected—Charles should get himself to a divinity-school, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... smiled to himself reminiscently, tenderly, as he thought of "the boy Shelby" whom he had read into John Fairfield's letter; "the boy Shelby" who was twenty-two years old and the only child; "the boy Shelby" whom he had blamed with such easy severity for idling at Fairfield; "the boy Shelby" who was no boy at all, but this white flower of girlhood, called—after the quaint and reasonable Southern way—as a boy is called, by the surname of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... he rose, and going to the door he bade his page who was idling in the anteroom go summon the captain. Then he paced slowly back, not to the place he had lately occupied at table, but to the hearth, where he took his stand with his shoulders ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walking briskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition, dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothes man, idling a hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attention elsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyes straight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn't ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... officers over him, and good messmates to serve with, why need he wear and tear his feelings about those he leaves behind? Or rather, why need he grieve to part from those who are better pleased to see him vigorously doing his duty rather than idling in other people's way at home? Or wherefore should he sigh to quit those enjoyments in which he cannot honourably participate till he has earned his title ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... compelled thereto by a higher power—that the edict has gone forth that the employees of the I. & G. N. must work longer hours for less money that interest be paid on the $15,000,000 which the blessed "business revival" added to the value of Mr. Gould's securities while he was idling ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... (155 miles). Rather dingy villages, these—each, after their kind, with a stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flouring mill at the head of the landing; a few cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and men lounging about with that air of comfortable idling which impresses one as the main characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry running to the opposite shore—for cattle and wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to drift with the current; and for foot ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... deepened. In consequence the annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating, barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born. Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and the girl idling beside. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... His friends, idling on the lawn, hailed him. He passed by them quickly without answering, without so much as a glance at them over his shoulder. Arriving at the rose-garden, he stopped and took out his pipe; then suddenly ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... by Mrs. Meredith thus idling within doors, and was sharply reproved for it. Neither to this, nor to the squire's orders that he should put an end to his "night-walking" and to his trips to the village, did he pay ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Gossiping, idling, smoking, writing personal letters during working hours (these usually on the firm's stationery), and a thousand and one other petty acts of dishonesty are ruinous, not so much to the house which tolerates ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... legislation to interfere. The aversion to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the increase.(4) Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering and gazing ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... master and mistress went from home, as they sometimes did, and left me to take care of the house and premises, I had a good deal of time to myself, and made the most of it. I took in washing, and sold coffee and yams and other provisions to the captains of ships. I did not sit still idling during the absence of my owners; for I wanted, by all honest means, to earn money to buy my freedom. Sometimes I bought a hog cheap on board ship, and sold it for double the money on shore; and I also earned a good deal by selling coffee. By this means I by degrees acquired a little cash. A ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... priest did not chide her for idling, as her grandmother would have done. The old priest ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... over, Goldsmith for a while made his home with his sister and her husband near Lissoy, enjoying fishing and otter-hunting. Principally he passed his days idling, as people say, or seeing visions, as the poets and the prophets plead. He was often with his brother Henry, sharing in the pastor's work. Precious these fraternal communions must have been. Abiding was Oliver's love for Henry, to the last, deep, devoted, and revering. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London altogether—get him to take to serious landscape painting on some wild coast—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... Gaveston away. Then, the Barons came, completely armed, and appointed a committee of themselves to correct abuses in the state and in the King's household. He got some money on these conditions, and directly set off with Gaveston to the Border-country, where they spent it in idling away the time, and feasting, while Bruce made ready to drive the English out of Scotland. For, though the old King had even made this poor weak son of his swear (as some say) that he would not bury his bones, but would have them boiled ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... he has in his mind, for improving something in his own department of the business. "Yes, thank you, that's a good idea;" and putting half-a-crown into his hand, he passes on. In another place he finds a man idling. You can soon see, that of all spectacles this is the one least to his mind. "If you waste five minutes, that is not much; but probably if you waste five minutes yourself, you lead some one else to waste five ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... that day, I felt as if I were in a horrible dream. I scarce knew what was said to me, and was more than once blamed by the men for idling my time. At last the hour to return aboard came. We marched down to the beach, and I felt relief for the first time when my feet rested on the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the moral courage—a quality much wanted in these days—to tell his constituents some hard but honest truths. He argued with them about the coal famine, and their desire to prolong it. They were working three days a week, and idling the other days. Some of them did not do a stroke of work during a week or a fortnight; others were taking about a hundred Bank holidays yearly. But what were they doing with the money they earned? Were they saving it for a rainy day; or, when the "roaring times" ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... room, everybody and everything were found just as they had been the day before—a day that seemed to Marcus a month ago. The jury were idling over the newspapers, or lazily turning their quids. The coroner, who looked a little the worse for his dinner of the day before, was bandying jokes with the facetious reporters. The other reporters ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... furnish him with some food for this hope, Eve began to loiter at the gates, talk to the warders and the turnkeys, and mingle with the many groups who on some business or pretext were always assembled about the yard or stood idling in the various passages with which the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... in eight days must be made; there was no idling for man or beast. When the express rode up to the station, both rider and pony were always ready. The only delay was a second or two as the saddle-pouch with its precious burden was thrown on and the rider leaped into his place, then away they rushed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... assembled in the standing room, "I propose, during this trip, at the suggestion of Captain Littleton, who would have carried out the plan if he had come with us,—I propose to instruct you a little in the practical duties of seamanship to give you something to think about, while we are idling around the decks. You see that ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... of the guard which is presently to relieve us. If you wait here, you are certain to see him." Michaela thanked him quietly, and went away. The soldiers were strange to her, and she preferred to wait in another part of the square rather than where they were idling. She had no sooner disappeared than the music of the relief guard was heard in the distance. It was the soldiers' chorus: a regular fife and drum affair. It came nearer, nearer, nearer, till it arrived in full blast, fresh as a pippin, the herald of all that was going to happen through four acts ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... daresay you will. Very irksome to be idling about the decks all day. I should think change of air would ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... his presence in London, if that had been possible, might, to a great extent, have averted. "The welfare of Greece at this moment rests much on your lordship," wrote Orlando, the chief deputy in London, "and I dare hope that you will hasten her triumph:" yet Orlando and his fellows were idling in London, profiting by delays that increased their opportunities of peculation, and doing nothing to quicken the construction of the fleet. Galloway, the engineer, wrote again and again to promise that his work should be done in three weeks,—it ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... was formed out of an old chest, and my sole employment and amusement was idling. I had not a book to read, no table to write on; and if I once really succeeded in getting something to read or made an attempt at writing, the whole tribe of youngsters would come clustering round, staring at my book or at my paper. It would certainly have been useless to complain, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made of idling a career—pursued it with intelligent purpose where others simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering himself and his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Edith had hired an Italian lad to act as a guide, when she had wished to buy an Italian flag and could find none in the shops near the Piazza. She had made her wish known, by signs, to one of the young boys idling at the base of the Lion's Column. He could speak no English, but Edith showed him a tiny American flag which she ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... after idling and gossiping since the death of Monsieur de la Billardiere, were now recovering their usual official look and the dolce far niente habits of a government office. Nevertheless, the approaching ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... morris din; Gone, the song of Gamelyn; Gone, the tough-belted outlaw Idling in the "grene shawe;" All are gone away and past! And if Robin should be cast Sudden from his turfed grave, And if Marian should have 40 Once again her forest days, She would weep, and he would craze: He would swear, for all his oaks, Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes, Have ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... And brings evil into a region where the very purity of the air nourishes it! Mr. Thorndyke, beware of idling! Miss Verity, beware of idlers. Good-day, sir. (crosses to table L., for hat, and then goes up to archway. Kate ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... interruption: since a continuation of the remainder of the journal, through the remainder of the week, would most probably have exhibited nothing more than a repeated relation of the same circumstances of idling and luxury. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... better than I do," I said. "But she has even less time than I have, for she is busy from morning till night; there is no time to spare for amusement of any sort. Uncle Jeff would not approve of our 'idling our time,' as he would call it, in ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... into a week, and the Shawnees still clung to the banks of the great river, occasionally hunting, but more often idling away their time in the deep woods near the shore. Paul's wonder at their actions increased. He could not see any purpose in it, and he spoke several times to Braxton Wyatt about it. But Wyatt ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... must be alone, and this can be done in the United States with more security than elsewhere, from the circumstance of everybody being actively employed, and there being no people at leisure who are strolling or idling about. I think that the portion of time which elapses between the period of a young girl leaving school and being married, is the happiest of her existence. I have already remarked upon the attention and gallantry ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory and Alec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiences in common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with their committees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the things they had for dissection—college, contemporary personality and the like—they had hashed and rehashed for many ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... him, he went forth himself, to seek for him and for the girl, whenas fate led him to the city of Zumurrud. He entered it on the first day of the month and finding the streets deserted and the shops shut and women idling at the windows, he asked them the reason why, and they told him that the King made a banquet on the first of each month for the people, all of whom were bound to attend it, nor might any abide in his house or shop that day; and they directed him to the racing-plain. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... admitted that an alluring prospect was opened for a young man idling away his life over a custom house desk at three hundred dollars a month; and in the enthusiasm of youth I undertook to make an exploration of the new territory and to locate the Iturbide Grant. Who could have foreseen that the attempted location of the Iturbide Grant ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... walked thoughtfully away, said to herself: "That is the way. Live the truth. It is a different day, and the trials and experiences are different, but life must be the same. It is not the day for half-way Christianity nor for idling; I will be an earnest Christian, or I will not dishonor the name and disgrace the memory of such men as Knox by claiming to ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... be so good for the boys! They were idling away their time, but now they will have to set to work in earnest to make their way in the world. It will be the making of them, so even if we do feel homesick at times it will be a light price to pay for their good," said Bridgie ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... NIGGLING, which means idling, wasting time, doing anything slowly, may be derived from some other Indo-European source, but in English Gipsy it means to go slowly, "to potter along," and in fact it is the same as the English word. That it is pure old Rommany appears from the fact that it is to ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit 20 By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, 25 To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... Mary and I have passed while sitting at our work by the fire, or wandering on the heath-clad hills, or idling under the weeping birch (the only considerable tree in the garden), talking of future happiness to ourselves and our parents, of what we would do, and see, and possess; with no firmer foundation for our goodly superstructure than the riches that were expected to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... his great trouble, and, lastly, the complaint which rendered him so obviously feeble, had engendered in his heart a shyness that made it terrible to him to go alone across the hotel verandah, where men and women were idling. In truth, though he was obviously ill, the people noticed him much less than he supposed, for strangers often came there; but egotism is a knife which shyness uses to wound itself with. When he got into the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the benefit of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it back and took a copy of "Fearne on Contingent Remainders," and looked at that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing to do. Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down the second volume ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... nonsense," said Mrs. Elwell, taking a bottle from the shelf above her with the air of one who closes a discussion. "Here, run down to the Bridge and get me this bottle full of vinegar at Jacob's store. Be smart, too, d'ye hear! I ain't going to have you idling around the Bridge neither. If you ain't back in twenty minutes, it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... retrospectively, and idling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. "Can't-be. Spoke good French. Yet like ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Harriet was idling about the parlor, dusting the already dusted furniture as they entered. The face was as impassive as a bronze statue. "Go and ask Miss Phillis, Harriet, if she is able ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... took them past the mill. It was too cold for outdoor idling. Every window was curtained with frost, and not a soul saw them as they tramped along past the place and down to continue on ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to his flame, As I from Forum idling came. Forthright some whorelet judged I it Nor lacking looks nor wanting wit, When hied we thither, mid us three 5 Fell various talk, as how might be Bithynia now, and how it fared, And if some coin I made or spared. "There was no cause" (I soothly said) "The Praetors or the Cohort ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... piston and worked the pump. Next Humphrey Potter, a youngster hired to open and shut the valves of a Newcomen engine, made it self-acting by tying cords to the engine-beam, had his hour for play or idling, and proved that if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is sometimes its father. Half a century passed without material advance; even as perfected in detail by Smeaton, the Newcomen engine required ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... twenty-four hours, and Jules was still idling like a boy undriven by his task-master, leaving the boat to rock under bare poles at anchor on the rise and fall of the water, Clethera went into their empty house. It contained three rooms, and she laid violent hands on male housekeeping. The service was almost religious, like preparing ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... at a short distance, Eyelids was diligently idling above a broken net. "Somewhere where we can't be overheard," he reiterated. At that moment Eyelids ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... chiefs of the I-kun-uh'-kah-tsi which were within the circle served as lounging and eating places for such members of the bands as were on duty, and were council lodges or places for idling, as ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... murmured, glancing apprehensively at the troopers idling in the road and very plainly interested in what the small group were doing, "do you really think you'd ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... Children, do you want me still in anything? do not spare the sweat of my body, for God's sake. Adam—that is, man—was made to labour and work, as the birds were made to fly. Our Lord's will is that we get our bread with the sweat of our brows, not idling and doing nothing, like this tatterdemalion of a monk here, this Friar Jack, who is fain to drink to hearten himself up, and dies for fear. —Rare weather.—I now find the answer of Anacharsis, the noble philosopher, very proper. Being asked what ship he reckoned the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the nailer gets metal which does not suit him, so he has to change it, and this he does at the price of 2d. per 10d. bundle, at a metal changers, a relative of the fogger. (His friend who has to wait till Wednesday for his bundle is kept idling about in order that he may drink what is left of last week's earnings at a 'wobble shop' which is owned by yet another branch of the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... am glad we are off at once," he said, "for I was sick of doing nothing but idling away my time at Carthage; and I suppose it would be just the same here. How busy are the streets of the town! Except for the sight of the mountains which we see through the breaks of the houses, one might believe one's self ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... content, too, else how could she have been so? It was doing him no end of good. Painting a little, sketching a little, reading and idling a good deal, and through it all, immensely amused at the enthusiasm with which his daughter threw herself into the village life. "I shall begin to think soon, that you were born and raised in Winton," he had said to her that very morning, as ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... men walk long alone; if they do keep their own company, they are frowned on as "misanthropes." The morning visit to the Agora "to tell or to hear some new thing"[] will be followed by equally delightful idling and conversation later in the day at the Gymnasia, and later still, probably, at the dinner-party. Easy and unconventional are the personal greetings. A little shaking out of the mantle, an indescribable flourish with the hands. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it probable ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... trees below. Still must it trace (the flattering tints forgive) Each fleeting charm that bids the landscape live. Oft o'er the mead, at pleasing distance, pass [a] Browsing the hedge by fits the pannier'd ass; The idling shepherd-boy, with rude delight, Whistling his dog to mark the pebble's flight; And in her kerchief blue the cottage-maid, With brimming pitcher from the shadowy glade. Far to the south a mountain-vale retires, Rich in its groves, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... the pupils in a room to watch each other, and to tell if they caught anyone idle. One boy had a grudge against another, and he thought that now would be the time to get even with him. So he watched carefully, and as soon as he found the other boy idling he called the teacher's attention to it. Of course every boy and girl waited anxiously to see what the teacher would do. And then something unexpected happened. The teacher said to the tell-tale: "So you saw ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... the King, Queen, and Princess against him; how he was so ignorant that he could not spell the commonest words, and actually wrote Valoroso Valloroso, and spelt Angelica with two l's; how he drank a great deal too much wine at dinner, and was always idling in the stables with the grooms; how he owed ever so much money at the pastry-cook's and the haberdasher's; how he used to go to sleep at church; how he was fond of playing cards with the pages. So did the ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the South Pacific, a thousand miles away from me. In my own house Struthers was putting a petulant-voiced Poppsy to bed, and Gershom, up in his room, was making extraordinary smells at his chemistry experiments. Susie I found curled comfortably up in front of the fire, idling over my first volume ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... nets; and he would laugh heartily at their cleverness in avoiding them. Tryballot senior went into a passion when he found his grain considerably less in a measure. But although he pulled his son's ears whenever he caught him idling and trifling under a nut tree, the little rascal did not alter his conduct, but continued to study the habits of the blackbirds, sparrows, and other intelligent marauders. One day his father told him that he would be wise to model himself ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... looking at Buster severely. "Are you idling this lovely day away? You don't seem to be making ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... you will think, have we disposed of this one definition: but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist of Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my casual friend, be neither like-minded ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... through one of the windows, the trio found their host, already in evening dress. Bristow was idling on the hearth with no more immediate concern than a cigarette and the enjoyment of the crackling logs, unspoiled by ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Janet, "and I'll not call my work 'weeding.' What are you doing, idling here, Mr. Farmer? I thought you never allowed a ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Detroit and Port Huron and Sarnia are big and sumptuous, and upon them one sits under awnings in midsummer, and if knowing, takes much delight in the wonderful scenery passed. The St. Clair River pours into St. Clair Lake, and Lake St. Clair is one of the great idling places of those upon this continent who can afford to idle. It is a shallow lake, upon the American side stretching out into what are known as the "Flats," a vast area of wild rice with deep blue waterways through them, the haunt of the pickerel and black bass ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... wile to induce the publisher—himself a struggling man—to accept his wares, when he knew that a refusal would mean mingled scoffs and lamentations at home, and possibly a menace that not much longer leisure would be allowed him for idling. There is pathos in the fate of one whose genius is unrecognised till his day on earth is over, but far harder seems the lot of the man who longs and struggles, feeling that the power is in him, and who yet, by some strange gulf between thought and expression, can only produce ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... of course you would take the other side. And what do you know about it? There you are, lolling about in your chair, idling week after week, until all the town ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... passage of time. Two other wayfarers were in the street with me. One had no right there, nor anywhere, and knew it, slinking along with his head and tail held low, trailing a length of string through the puddles. The other, too, seemed lost. He was idling as if one street was the same as another, and on that day there was rain in all. He came towards me, with his hands in his pockets and his coat collar up. He turned on me briskly, with a sudden decision, when he drew level. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... often hung about the little station, watching the trains come and go and dive into the heart of the hills and vanish. No one said anything to him for idling about; people are kind-hearted and easy of temper in this pleasant land, and children and dogs are both happy there. He heard the Bavarians arguing and vociferating a great deal, and learned that they ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... life, my Calyste," said Sabine. "Young noblemen in these days ought to busy themselves about recovering in the eyes of the country the ground lost by their fathers. It isn't by smoking cigars, playing whist, idling away their leisure, and saying insolent things of parvenus who have driven them from their positions, not yet by separating themselves from the masses whose soul and intellect and providence they ought to be, that the nobility will exist. Instead of being a party, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... week-end boarders and many others had left, and I was still idling my precious time away on the big veranda, listening to the gossip of women who bored me and trying to keep track of a girl who shunned me. My establishment in New York was feverishly busy and my presence was urgently needed there. It was more ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... plentifully stored with all necessaries of war. And although he perceived it would be no small work to take it, and no little time would be required for it, yet he was willing to exercise the citizens and keep them abroad, that they might have no leisure, idling at home, to follow the tribunes in factions and seditions; a very common remedy, indeed, with the Romans, who thus carried off, like good physicians, the ill humors of their commonwealth. The Falerians, trusting in the strength of their city, which was well ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle. Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... any other early day. He's been idling for a month now, and his father says 'the very looms are calling out for him.' I'll bring him to see you just as soon as he comes home, looms or no looms, and he'll be fain to come. No one appreciates a pretty girl more than ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... goods to the amount of each person's portion. This is an affair of three or four days. They do not, however, think it necessary to leave the colony so soon as their business is settled, but remain some time after idling about the streets. Two or three days before they really intend returning by the canoe to Porto Logo, the whole party call and say that they are going, which is intended as a hint to prepare some present for them. They repeat ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the years we're not to do Much finer deeds than we have done; If we must merely wander through Time's garden, idling in the sun; If there is nothing big ahead, Why do we ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... a sort of dream, into the rocking-chair in which I had been idling, the garden caught my eye through the open window. The gate overarched with honeysuckle, the long alley with its fragrant flowering border, the grape arbor, the steep green hill behind, lay before me in the still, rich beauty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... one at the desk in the little reception alcove, but he heard the sound of voices through a side door leading out. He went through it, to find a larger yard with more men idling. There should be someone here who knew more of what was going on in this world than ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... tobacco, Master Parson," said Amyas; "for we must be up and away again to-morrow. We have been idling here three mortal ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... * * * * * Jackson went on leave. To his deep disgust he had to wait a few hours in London on his way to more civilised parts, and fate led him idling to Brownhill's. He flattened his Celtic nose on the window and stared fascinated at the array of super-pipes displayed there. After a furtive glance along the street he crept into the temple. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... respect as to a porter. But the 'deity' pocketed them with inexpressible joy; there is nothing like money won by the sweat of your brow. For, my dear Germaine, you must not imagine that there is any idling in the Academie. Every year there are fresh bequests, new prizes instituted; that means more books to read, more reports to engross, to say nothing of the dictionary and the orations. 'Leave your book at their houses, but do not go in,' said Picheral, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to try to elevate the great mass of our people to a high standard of citizenship and usefulness, and it is only when we remember that the hand of the great God is in the work, that one can have any hope. How many to-day are idling away their time, breaking the Sabbath, engaging in sinful sports, violating the State laws, disturbing the peace of quiet ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... indifferent, and it was with a tolerably large train at his heels that he reached the entrance to the principal street. Here crowds of well-dressed dogs, both male and female (the latter always well-attended), were walking about or idling the time away; town-bred puppies, with insolent stare, were lounging at every turn, their delicate paws proving how little they were used to labour. On one side Bruin observed a gracefully-proportioned white cat, veiled, gliding demurely along, whilst a strong tabby, her nurse, purred ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... explanation of all this. It simply recalled what it had seen and heard. Nor could we of to-day understand the explanation were we to get it. Unable to reconcile industry and leisure, we underrate the real work that went with the idling of those early Virginians; and as to the gayety, we long ago lost sight of the fact ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... that was not the way to help Charlie. "I know he will feel it hard at first if he goes; but still I am sure he is a brave boy and will not shrink from it, if he feels it to be his duty. You would not have him idling about at home, thinking only of his own comfort, and picking and choosing his work, when his father, who has done so much for him, is suffering from a lingering illness, and wanting so many little comforts that cannot be bought ...
— Charlie Scott - or, There's Time Enough • Unknown
... Idling over the fire in the evening, Fanny's eye was caught by a stain upon her armchair. It was sticky; it might well be champagne—the champagne which stuck even now to the bottoms of ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... subsidize the whole continent of Europe from 1793 to 1815, and which made that long war really a contest between the despotic power of Napoleon Bonaparte and the productive genius of James Watt. All this vast and teeming future was hidden from the good grandmother, as she saw the boy idling over the teakettle. "James," she said, "I never saw such an idle young fellow as you are. Do take a book and employ yourself usefully. For the last half-hour you have not spoken a single word. Do you know what you have been doing all this time? Why, you have taken ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... evening Barradas brought his friend on board, and introduced him as Mr. Rawlings. My husband and he had quite a long talk. Rawlings was himself a sailor, and had made, he said, a good deal of money as recruiter in the kanaka labour trade between Fiji and the Solomon Islands; but was tired of idling away his time in Honolulu, and thought that among the Caroline or Marshall Group he might find an island whereon he ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... Apollonians of Bein, and others, will work, and are well acquainted with gold-working. But they work in their own way; and, save under exceptional conditions, they are incapable of regular and continuous labour. It gives one the heart-ache to see their dawdling, idling, shuffling, shiftless style of spoiling time. They are now taking to tribute, piece and contract work. The French mines supply them with tools and powder, and, by way of pay and provisions, allow them to keep two-thirds of the produce. It is evident that such an arrangement ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... remounted to his garret, exulting over his extensive winnings. Nothing, however, could turn him aside from his project of writing Cromwell, and he set himself a date on which he should present his tragedy to the members of his family gathered together for the purpose of hearing him read it. After idling away long days at the Jardin des Plantes or in Pere-Lachaise, he shut himself in, and wrote with that feverish zeal which later on he himself christened "Balzacian"; revising, erasing, condensing, expanding, alternating between despair and enthusiasm, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... The idling engines were speeded up and the flying boat moved slowly across the harbor. A tug with smoke curling from her single thick funnel ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... been almost noon when they had at last come into this section. If two of them had not remained idling on the street as the long moments crept by, he would have believed that they had given him the slip, that he was now a cat watching a deserted mouse hole. But at the moment they were coming back, ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... moment I caught sight of Rockel, with two men of the citizen army who were carrying some guns, making his way towards me. He gave me a most friendly greeting, but turned at once to Hiebendahl and his companion and asked him why he was idling about here in uniform instead of being at his post. When Hiebendahl made the excuse that his gun had been requisitioned, Rockel cried out to him, 'You're a fine lot of fellows!' and went away laughing. He gave me a brief account as we proceeded of what had happened ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... therefore he could never have been an outsider," replied the naval officer quickly. "By adventurer I mean that he led a strange, unconventional life. He was met by men who knew him in all sorts of out-of-the-world corners of Europe, where he spent the greater part of his time idling at cafes and in a section of society which was not ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... of June 8th, while we were idling about decks awaiting the order to get under way, a small boat came alongside, having as a passenger a captain of the army. He proved to be a special agent who had succeeded in visiting the vicinity of Santiago, and was on his way to Mole St. Nicholas for the purpose of cabling ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... my dear birdies,' is it, young man? 'Eat, dear birdies,' indeed! I'll tickle your breeches, and see if you say, 'Eat, dear birdies,' again in a hurry! And you've been idling at the schoolmaster's too, instead of coming here, ha'n't ye, hey? That's how you earn your sixpence a day for keeping the rooks ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... seen them on their return to their wigwams, in the depth of winter, with six inches of snow on the ground, and scantily clad, and with six little children crying round them for bread. No fire in the tent, and her husband idling about in other tents. In cases of confinements, the men have to do something, or they would all starve. For a few days they wake up out of their idle dreams. I know of Gipsy women who have trudged along with their loads, and their children at their heels, to within the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... showed you had faith in me; you reminded me of the ambition I had as a kid, before Hetty and all that trouble had crushed it out of me; you came down here to the office and talked and planned, and took it for granted that I was going to pull myself together and stop idling, and kicking, and fooling away my time; and all through these six weeks of rough sailing, you've let me go up there to the Hall and tell you everything—and then you wonder if I could ever be jealous!" His tone, which had risen almost to ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... began readily; and the old man listened, smoking meanwhile a second pipe produced from the compact stores in the knapsack. In the web of encounters and escapes, he placed his little questions now and then; no, Waring had no plan for exploring the region, no intention of settling there, was merely idling away a summer in the wilderness and would then go back to civilization never to return, at least, not that way; might go west across the plains, but that would be farther south. They talked on, one much, the other little; after a time, Waring, whose ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... better man for it. Whether it poured with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything, with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't happened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... mandatory on the driver of a vehicle, whether moving or idling at the curb, for the reason that the operator is presumed to need both hands for driving. Salutes are not exchanged between moving vehicles, between moving and halted vehicles, or between persons walking and persons riding in official cars except when it is obvious that ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Yet hunting and idling were not the whole of life's programme up there on that wild ridge with its shaggy pelt of spruce and firs, and in the riparian lowlands that it parted. We had a bit of war now and again. There was an occasional "affair of outposts"; sometimes a hazardous scout into the enemy's country, ordered, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the water to imitate the swimming of a real fish; this is generally done by a long line attached to the stern of a sailing-boat. The word of old signified sauntering or idling about. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn. But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to Mary Doul, as she is going by without looking at them.] — Look on him now, Mary Doul. You'd be a great one for keeping him steady at his work, for he's after idling and blathering to this hour from the ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... folk would seem to have associated smoking with idling. In the rules of the Grammar School at Chigwell, Essex, which was founded in 1629, it is prescribed that "the Master must be a man of sound religion, neither a Papist nor a Puritan, of a grave behaviour, and sober and honest conversation, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson |
