"Wild-goose chase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my eyes open for him from the beginning, and when I discovered that he was not at school, I had felt alarmed. Had Cynthia sent me down here, to work as I had never worked before, on a wild-goose chase? ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... day and by night, behave in the company of others as if I were absent; want you; dream of you; think of you; wish for you; delight in you—in short, I am wholly yours, body and soul! If ever I leave you again on a wild-goose chase through Europe, may the Elector of Hesse-Cassel appoint me his prime minister, or the Duke of Baden his ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... N. caprice, fancy, humor; whim, whimsy, whimsey[obs3], whimwham[obs3]; crotchet, capriccio, quirk, freak, maggot, fad, vagary, prank, fit, flimflam, escapade, boutade[Fr], wild-goose chase; capriciousness &c. adj.; kink. V. be capricious &c. adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... probable that a whistle from the Caesar, or a scream from Agelastes, would bring a thousand to match us, if we were as bold as Bevis of Hampton.—Stand still and keep quiet. I counsel this, less as respecting my own life, which, by embarking upon a wild-goose chase with so strange a partner, I have shown I put at little value, than for thy safety, and that of the lady thy Countess, who shows herself as ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... are on a wild-goose chase," Julian declared, "because the Germans who think as you do are in a ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again, still sourly. "But there are none. None except you employees of United Planets. I'm afraid you're on a wild-goose chase." ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... here," he said. "You and I have got to leave, at once; we have to get Pelton and Claire to safety. He can help Major Slater till we can get back with re-enforcements. I am going to kill a man named Horace Yingling, and then I'm going to round up the storm troops he diverted on a wild-goose chase to North Jersey." He nodded to the medic and the four plain-clothes guards. "Get Pelton on the stretcher. Better use the canvas flaps and the straps. He's under hypnotaine, but it's likely to be a rough trip. Claire, get anything you want ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... when little Hans and his mother arrived in New York. The latter had repented bitterly of her rashness in stealing her child from his father, and under a blind impulse traversing half the globe in a wild-goose chase after fortune. The world was so much bigger than she in her quiet valley had imagined; and, what was worse, it wore such a cold and repellent look, and was so bewildering and noisy. Inga had been very sea-sick during the voyage; and ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this wild-goose chase, Skinner," Cappy said wearily, "she is chartered by the Blue Star Navigation Company to Alden P. Ricks personally, at the prevailing rates. The stockholders mustn't pay for my fancies, Skinner. You'll see to ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates. But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of South Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish creeks and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain Anstis, Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others—a score or more of wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in their shoes ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... Golden Boar went westward ho! again, and Dan Pengelly and all her old company that were above ground went in her. And Captain Jacob Whiddon went too, in a second ship called the Elizabeth. There was no wild-goose chase this time after golden cities that could not be found. But the Englishmen harried the Spanish settlements along the South American coast and in the Mexican Gulf, and preyed upon King Philip's shipping. They sent an expedition two hundred strong across to Panama and raided ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... York. The Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the Herald, of the date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "The Great Wild-Goose Chase after the Thermal Equator"—presenting one of the most humorous bits of sensational pleasantry ever ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Buckhurst to Morsbronn, where I lost all traces of him; and now here I was with my orders concerning the unfortunate people at La Trappe, staring out at the dismal weather and wondering where my wild-goose chase would end. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the driver well to be taken rapidly to Nogent-sur-Marne. At Nogent-sur-Marne the porter told him that monsieur and madame had started for Paris. Birotteau returned home, shattered in mind and body. When he related his wild-goose chase to his wife and daughter he was amazed to find his Constance, usually perched like a bird of ill omen on the smallest commercial mishap, now giving him the tenderest consolation, and assuring him that everything would ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... seems to have taken the thing very much to heart. I hope she won't be disappointed, but I wish I hadn't come on this wild-goose chase." ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... Government not content with the proofs of utter imbecility'—(order)—'I will say, of excruciating feebleness, it has given to the public, that it must squander the resources of the nation for the sake of a wild-goose chase like this? As for the German envoy, he has gone to Jupiter for the benefit of a settled climate, and to drink the waters, not to annex a planet which, with the present indifferent means of communication, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang |
