"Willy-nilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silly. His neighbouring, willy-nilly, Must smirch the Bee, the Lily, Or stain the snow-white flag. Wielder of mere stage-dagger, Loud lord of empty swagger, In peril's hour a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Melville, Clark Russell and many other favorite writers, both British and American. In Smollett's hands, it is a strange muddle of religion, farce and smut, but set forth with a vivid particularity and a gusto f high spirits which carry the reader along, willy-nilly. Such a book might be described by the advertisement of an old inn: "Here is entertainment for man and beast." As to characterization, if a genius for it means the creation of figures which linger in the familiar memory of mankind, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... to say she had never been told that it was left to her to do so. When first her aunt had come Kitty had handed over to her the reins of government, willy-nilly, and she had not thought it her duty to take them up again in Mrs. Pike's absence; but it is to be feared that in any case she would not have prepared a feast of welcome for Anna. And the result was that they would arrive tired and hungry ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... privileged throng of near kin, every one calling over every one's head, "Good-by!" "Good-by!" "Here's your mother, Johnnie!" and, "Here's your wife, Achille!" Midmost went the Callenders, the Valcours, and Victorine, willy-nilly, topsy-turvy, swept away, smothering, twisting, laughing, stumbling, staggering, yet saved alive by that man of the moment Mandeville, until half-way down the shed and the long box-car train they brought up on a pile of ordnance ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... were running about, each asked the other what this meant; the old men took counsel together, the young men saddled their horses while the women held them; the boys scuffled about, in a hurry to run and fight, but did not know with whom or about what! Willy-nilly, they had to stay behind. In the priest's dwelling there was in progress a long, tumultuous, frightfully confused debate; at last, not being able to agree, they finally decided to lay the whole matter before ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his breath ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Willy-nilly he accompanied his captor to the extremely private and secluded rear of Tom Kane's new barn. Here were the remains of a broken wagon, several wheels, and the major portion of a venerable and useless stove. Marie released his arm and Racey ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... mind is made up. I'll go to Ganlook and bring him back with me, willy-nilly. He is too good a man to be lost in the hills. Good-bye, Baron Dangloss. Thank you ever and ever so much. Oh, yes; will you write an order delivering him over to me? The hospital people may ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... her say, and Julie had been forced, willy-nilly, upon discussion and self-defence—nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and stiffly erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a laughing matter, she had vouchsafed the Duchess some kind of assurance that she would for the future ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... why not knowing, Nor whence, his heart with madness overflowing; Then out of it—and thence, without a pause, Into another, willy-nilly blowing. ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... popularly known as "Chaude Pisse, the Pole." If there is anything particularly terrifying about prisons, or at least imitations of prisons such as La Ferte, it is possibly the utter obviousness with which (quite unknown to themselves) the prisoners demonstrate willy-nilly certain fundamental psychological laws. The case of Surplice is a very exquisite example: everyone, of course, is afraid of les maladies venerinnes—accordingly all pick an individual (of whose inner life they know and ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... August 2nd Mr. Huxley added: "Darwin wrote me a very kind expostulation about it, telling me I ought not to waste myself on other than original work. In reply, however, I assured him that I MUST waste myself willy-nilly, and that the 'Review' was only a save-all.") I suppose you mean really a REVIEW and not journal for original communications in Natural History. Of the latter there is now superabundance. With respect to a good review, there can ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to remember; yet, in spite of it, I have sometimes found myself on a Saturday, after a week's work, without a loaf of bread in the cupboard. I doubt, ma'am, if any one who has not experienced it can wholly understand the power of mere hunger to degrade a man; to what lengths he can be urged, willy-nilly, as it were, by the instinct to satisfy it. There were Sabbaths, ma'am, when to attend divine worship seemed a mockery; the craving drove me away from all congregations of Christian men and out into the fields, where—I tell it with shame, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... His well-meant pretext of sleep was not destined to grow into a reality. He had really believed that it would, so soothing was the touch of her hand in his own. The moment he was alone his mind leapt, willy-nilly, to the analysis of one point or other in the past that had just come back to him. He tried to silence thought, and to sleep, knowing that his best hope was in rest; but each new effort only ended in his slipping back to what he had just dismissed. And that terrible ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... that moment the Countess picked up the ladies with her eyes and they rose, to leave the men over their cigars. So Paul was left, to be drawn, willy-nilly, into a discussion of an international alliance, which did not interest him in ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... cherry-stone carver. Here you've shown us the skeletons of two stories and yet given none of them flesh enough to live upon." "Berkeley you belong to a past full of novelistic monsters. You are the three volume man with the happy ending tacked on willy-nilly. It is the tact of omission—" "Hang your art-for-art theories. I'll make more money than Cintras ever did when I publish my "Art of Anonymous Letter Writing!" cut in Hodson. Cintras calmly continued, "Here is my title and see ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... more highly in his main calling—the management of men in the practice of arms. Becoming a specialist does not ipso facto make him a better officer, or win him preferment. It is part of the mechanism, though not the main wheel. As Admiral Forrest P. Sherman has so well said: "We are not pushed willy-nilly into specialization; there is never an excess of the all-around, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... man, with a long, heavy head crowned with vibrant, still entirely dark hair and pointed by a black, carefully kept beard, above which arose—"arose" is the word, for Sir John's face was architectural—a splendid, slightly curved nose—a buccaneering nose; a nose that, willy-nilly, would have made its possessor famous. One suspected, far back in the yeoman strain, a hurried, possibly furtive marriage with gypsy or Jew; a sudden blossoming into lyricism on the part of a soil-stained Masters. Certainly from somewhere Sir John had inherited ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... birdy sings, For he's running over With the music that he flings To his sweet bird-lover;— Willy-nilly, baby laughs, Gay and glad and gleeful; Brimming over high with health, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... dear, as I mean nothing else. You are in many ways an admirable people, and you are in all ways a formidable people. So I admire, I dread, I avoid, and at the very last pinch I defy. For you are not my people, and willy-nilly my gorge rises against your laws, as equally insane and abhorrent. Mind you, though, I assert nothing. You may be right in attributing wisdom to these laws; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong: but still, at the same time—! That is the way I feel about it. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... a dependent commission arising out of the first of the duties imposed on me by the Prince, I bore a letter to my Lord Ogilvie from her ladyship. She had summoned me willy-nilly to ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... as soon as foot has touched the threshold, Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about And makes for town again. In such a way Each human flees himself—a self in sooth, As happens, he by no means can escape; And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes, Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail. Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then, Leaving all else, he'd study to divine The nature of things, since here is in debate Eternal time and not the single hour, Mortal's estate ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... first four years of each one's growth. Students of child psychology are insistent that the pre-school period is the most important in the life of the individual and requires the most skilful attention. Natural affection is not enough; it must be wedded to care for the child's mind. Now, willy-nilly, modern life itself takes such toll of nervous energy that there are few educated women today who go through all the child-bearing period and have sufficient nerve force to welcome each child that may 'come along' and rear it happily. ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... Shore" was the title of Miss Virginia Harned's massive production at the Hudson Theater. Jane Shore was dragged, willy-nilly, from history almost as though she were the heroine of a so-called popular novel, and two ladies, Mrs. Vance Thompson and Lena R. Smith, propelled her toward 1905. While, on moral grounds, we may inveigh against ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... for the present your love has conquered—I it is, alone, who can obtain for you this woman, because in the long run I overcome all things and persons. Life is my province, and the birth cry of every infant is an oath of allegiance to me. Thus I am overlord where all serve willy-nilly except you, who have served of your own will. And as you have served me, so ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... story, and I feel confident now that I shall get it done. Furthermore, I shall send the chapters to Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick as I write them, so that there must be no failure. I shall be compelled to finish the tale, whatever may happen, and Miss Andrews shall go through to the bitter end, willy-nilly." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... about to back my way out of the crowd and seek another route, even if a roundabout one. But just then the blockade was partially raised, an opening presented itself immediately in front of me, and I was forced forward willy-nilly. Arrived at the other side of the street, I drew out of the press as quickly as possible, and it was then that I discovered Mr. Indiman's carte de visite tightly clutched in my left hand. Impossible to ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... morning?' he thought; 'I've only just lain down.' All the same he had to gather his bones together, when each one individually held to the bed; willy-nilly he had to get up. So hard was the resolution sometimes, that he even thought with pleasure of the eternal sleep, when his wife would no longer stand over him and urge: 'Get up, wash...you'll be late; they'll ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... instructions from certain members of the household of the Queen of France, and from others whom Vaucelas said he dared not mention, were intriguing to blast Henry's designs against the house of Austria, and to bring him willy-nilly into a union with Spain. These agents had gone so far in their utter disregard of Henry's own intentions as to propose to the Council of Madrid that the alliance should be cemented by a marriage between ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Nightmare; we twain are going to pay our brother Death {43b} a visit, and want a third to accompany us, and lest thou shouldst resist we came upon thee, just as he does, unawares. Consequently come thou must, willy-nilly." "Alas," I cried, "must I die?" "Nay," said Nightmare, "we will spare thee this time." "But an't please you," said I, "your brother Death has never spared anyone yet who came beneath his stroke—he who ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... man could not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Diamond. If you choose to take the bounty and come voluntarily, you'll be allowed to go ashore whenever your ship's in port. If you don't, and we've got to pinion ye, you will not have your liberty at all. As you must come, willy-nilly, you'll do the first if ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... said Mollie approvingly. "All in favor please say Aye." Amy still showed some inclination to hold back, but Mollie and Betty each took an arm and hurried her willy-nilly with ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... to her knock the door swung open—a little way. The glow of a dingy lamp fell about her, through the opening—she felt suddenly as if she had been swept, willy-nilly, before the footlights of some hostile stage. For a moment she stood blinking. And as she stood there, quite unable to see, she heard the voice of Bennie Volsky, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... glance into the chart-room gave me the cue to the Samurai's blunder—if blunder it can be called, for no one will ever know. He lay on the floor in a loose heap, rolling willy-nilly with ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... harnessed willy-nilly to religious tasks by commissions from the pious. In the church of Saint Sulpice Delacroix extinguishes all the feeble art that surrounds him, but his sense of Catholic art ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... seem to suppose is A buckler and barrier against trichinosis; Bat trichinae pass without passports. Bacilli And microbes that Yankee might miss willy-nilly, Which nobody ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... The priests, willy-nilly, now permitted Ulrich to be laid on the leathern sack between them, and while first Sutor, and then Stubenrauch, shrunk away to mutter prayers over a rosary for the senseless lad's restoration to consciousness, and to avoid coming in contact with his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Belgium, a sort of willy-nilly blowing about by the North Sea winds, drew us next to Ostende. If there is one place more splendidly chic than Ostende it is Monte Carlo. The palm is still with Monte Carlo, but, for August at any rate, Ostende, with its Digue, its hotels and terrace cafes ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... knew that willy-nilly you would follow me," she cried. And he, taken aback, could not but smile in answer, and profess that she had ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... for I read 'bout what he went through awnly last night, for somethin' to kill an hour in the evenin'. An' I won't suffer it. It's contrary to nature, an' if Phoebe ban't here come winter I'll go down an' bring her, willy-nilly." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... apparently not content with winning the victory; they must furnish material for dissension for many days afterwards. When the British army withdrew from Louisiana on January 27, 1815, they carried away with them 199 slaves, whom they had acquired by the very easy method of taking them willy-nilly. The matter of having these bondmen restored to their original owners, of convincing the British that the Americans did not see the joke of the abduction caused one of the most acrimonious discussions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... scourged her for her foul practices. He had dragged her home, and when Ralph Hart had come after her, had threatened him with a quarter-staff, called out a mob of fishermen, and finally had brought him to Sir Lucas, who married them willy-nilly. He was the runaway son of a currier in York, and had taken her en croupe, and ridden off to his parents at the sign of the Hart, to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... several trees of the bellflower variety, whose branches sagged near to the ground. Dick was going along very decorously and sedately, as if he were studying the golden text or something equally absorbing, when, all at once, some spirit of mischief seemed to possess him and away he bolted, willy-nilly, right under the low-hanging branches of one of those trees. Of course, I was raked fore and aft, and, while I did not imitate the example of Absalom, I afforded a fairly good imitation, with the difference that, through many trials and ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... invented, and for which he still is revered. Never excited or angry himself, he would ply her with questions until she found herself entangled in a network of contradictions; and then she would be driven, willy-nilly, to that last argument of woman—"because." Then Socrates—the brute!—would laugh at her, and would go out and sit on the front door-steps, and look henpecked. This is positively the meanest thing a ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... reached the ridge before he encountered the full violence of the storm, for the wind had shifted within the last hour or two. Then, stalwart as he was, it caught and whirled him and sent him running willy-nilly for a hundred yards or more. But there was not a nail in his boots which was not familiar with every acre of that country-side for a mile or two, and he found the path with ease and certainty, and ploughed ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray |
