"Biding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into his veins by the touch of their soft hands and their gentle ministrations. Cal Galbraith, became troubled with strange thoughts which clamored for attention till he laid eyes on the Mission girl, Madeline. Yet he gave no sign, biding his time patiently. He strengthened with the coming spring, and when the sun rode the heavens in a golden circle, and the joy and throb of life was in all the land, he gathered his still ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... hanging over my head, biding behind every corner. I caan't stand it; I caan't wait for it. I'll grow sheer devil if I've got to wait; an', so like as not, I'll meet un faace to faace some day an' send un wheer neither his bark nor bite will harm me. Ess fay—solemn truth. I won't answer for it. I can put so tight a hand 'pon ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... opposition and showed no sign of resentment, for he was biding his time. The beachcomber asked questions and he answered them, about the lading of the vessel; but both Carey and Bostock noticed that he carefully avoided all reference to the ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... is no biding, masters: get ye in, Take a short blessing at your mother's hands. Much, bear them company; make Matilda merry: John and myself will follow presently. John, on a sudden thus I am resolv'd— To keep in Sherwood ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... close observer of these pleasant veranda days that Felipe knew nothing about. That was Margarita. As the girl came and went about her household tasks, she was always on the watch for Alessandro, on the watch for Ramona. She was biding her time. Just what shape her revenge was going to take, she did not know. It was no use plotting. It must be as it fell out; but that the hour and the way for her revenge would ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and silent, calmly biding his time to express the disapproval which such childish behavior made incumbent upon him. Cold, hard anger like his can always wait; and waiting only makes it colder and harder; there is never heat enough in it to ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... great problems that keep men here restless and murmuring are not solved! If even there the rebellious spirit is not quieted! Nay, if those whom we think of as having won peace for themselves in this world, do in that join the malcontents, and are each one biding their time— ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... himself from sensuality. The man who has attained a high state of spiritual knowledge is always conscious of the great deficiency (instability) of all matter. Such a person keeping in view the final doom (of all), never grieves. I too, O learned man, do not grieve; I stay here (in this life) biding my time. For this reason, O best of men, I am not perplexed (with doubts)". The Brahmana said, "Thou art wise and high in spiritual knowledge and vast is thy intelligence. Thou who art versed in holy writ, art content with thy spiritual wisdom. I have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... arranging things as best she could. But the young people, always with Mr. Lintzow at their head, seemed determined to make as much confusion as possible. Even the Pastor was infected by their merriment, and to Rebecca's unspeakable astonishment she saw her own father, in complicity with Mr. Lintzow, biding a big paper parcel under Mrs. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... rejected suitor would not please me," laughed Don Carlos. "I shall be the strong, silent man, biding his time, confident of eventually gaining his heart's desire. Meanwhile I am congratulating myself on having made it possible to fulfil my boast that I should be your fellow-guest ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... sense of biding here," said he, "to be burned to deeth wi' drought? Let's flood the mine, and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... sympathizing for the Allied occupation of Constantinople, d'Annunzio's Foreign Department informed him that "the Legionaries of the Commandant d'Annunzio put to flight the English police-bullies who were biding their time to snatch the tortured city." Opinions vary as to whether the poet-pirate was at that time acting in collusion with Rome—his defiance and their thunders being included in the stage directions—or whether he was a real rebel. We ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the drivers turned back their oxen to follow Captain Hunt and overtake him on the San Bernardino trail by which he led his company in safety to Los Angeles. But twenty-seven wagons remained parked among the twisted junipers, their occupants biding the return of scouts whom they had sent ahead to seek a pass. Although the map had proved of no value when it came to showing a road, they still believed in the snow-clad peak which it had promised, somewhere before them in the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Sempronius was biding his time. The two slaves were still high in Flavia's favour, but he was in hopes that something might occur which would render her willing to part with them. He watched Julia narrowly whenever Malchus ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... mountains were there two boys as tall, as straight, as deadly with rifle and revolver, as fierce, as relentless, as these two boys of his. He had sharpened their tempers, and he rejoiced in the sullen ferocity with which they looked at him now, unloving, cunning, biding their time and finding that it had almost come. But he was not yet done. His body was wrecked; there remained his mind, and they would find it a great power. But he did not talk until the lights had been put out and the three ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... of Miss Nugent, Mr. Wilks replied that he was biding his time. Every delay, he hinted, made it worse for Master Hardy when the day of retribution should dawn, and although she pleaded earnestly for a little on account he was unable to meet her wishes. Before that day came, however, Captain Nugent heard of the proceedings, and after a painful interview ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sent the car smoothly away. And now it was that King discovered how a girl may fence and parry, so that a man may not successfully introduce the subject he is burning to speak of, without riding roughshod over her objection. And presently he gave it up, biding his time. He sat silent while she talked, and then finally, when she too grew silent, he let the minutes slip by without another word. Thus it was that they drew up at the house, still speechless concerning the ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... was lost. However, ye'll hear all about that matter again. Just leave it all to me, Halcro, and dinna be downcast about biding here another night. But I must away now. Good e'en ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... don't like it; I don't like him, Tom! He plays the fiddle well, I admit but he is so queer and shifty, nosing about, looking this way and that, never meeting your eyes. It's just as though he were waiting, biding his time, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... until the only friend he had with courage to speak out (Agrippa d'Aubigny) gave him a lecture. Agrippa lashed his master with the words "coward" and "sluggard," letting his faithful servants work for his interests while he remained the slave of a "wicked old witch." The Bearnais had been biding his time—"crouching to spring": but that slap in the face set him on fire. He could no longer wait for the right moment. He decided to make the first moment the right one. His quick brain mapped out a plan of escape in which the sole flaw was that he must ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... hands of his fellow-students did much to increase his irritability, but he kept himself well in hand, biding the time when he could repay their insults with interest. They jeered him because he was short—short of stature and short of funds; they twitted him on being an alien, calling him an Italian, and asking him why he did not seek out a position in the street-cleaning bureau instead of ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher costume. 'Now, begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the same roof making merry without ye. Your husband, poor man—lovely picters that a' would make to be sure—would have been in with us long ago if he had been in your place. I can take no nay from ye, upon my honour. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... lot, and that her aspirations after independence were over. For fifty years she had made no sign. Even the troubled time between the death of Artaxerxes I. and the accession of Darius II. had not tempted her to strike a blow for freedom. But still she was, in reality, irreconcilable. She was biding her time, and preparing herself for ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... him," he said. "I have argued the matter from every possible side. I found him, I must say, absolutely impossible. He will not deal with us upon any terms. I fear that he is only biding his time. Every day I see by the papers that the agitation increases, and it seems to me that if this bill passes, we shall all practically be criminals. I think that Norris Vine is waiting for the moment when he can do so with the greatest dramatic ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Barter. He never doubted it had been Barter who had telephoned her. And even now he fancied he could hear Barter's chuckle of amusement. Barter was watching, perhaps even listening. Bentley felt that the madman was just biding his time. Barter could have taken Ellen in this attempt, but hadn't tried greatly, knowing himself invincible, knowing that he could take her at any moment if it was necessary. And he might take her even if it were not necessary, since he had warned Bentley ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... constructed near the top of his log stockade and answered the volley, shooting at random into the timber. But only as a man's head appeared, or as his body showed between the spaces of the logs, were their shots returned. MacNair's Indians were biding their time. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Biding their time, and pretending to act in good faith, as the years rolled by, the distrust and suspicion with which the old Rebel-conspirators had naturally been regarded, gradually lessened in the public mind. With a glad heart, the Congress, year after year, removed the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... about the dismal "clearing" in a chaos of prostrate trunks, tangled boughs, and withered leaves, waiting for the fire that was to be the next agent in the process of improvement; while around, voiceless and grim, stood the living forest, gazing on the desolation, and biding its own day of doom. The owner of the cabin was miles away, hunting in the woods for the wild turkey and venison which were the chief food of himself and his family till the soil could be tamed into the bearing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... purpose of the Gospel to give earthly riches. But in spiritual blessings ye come behind in no gift and have need of naught except this one thing, that the Lord himself should come. This blessing you are yet to have, and biding its advent you here live by the gifts and grace with which you were enriched, until you are finally redeemed from the sinful, wicked life of the world and from all its oppressions. You must know, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the other things might be hers, just by Melody's singing. By Melody's singing! Miss Vesta stood very still, her face quiet and stern, as it always was in thought, no sign of the struggle going on within. The stranger was very still too, biding his time, stealing an occasional glance at her face, feeling tolerably sure of success, yet wishing she had not quite such a set look about ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... smouldering in the woods for a long time. It was soon fanned to a flame by the brazen profiteering of the lumber trust. The loggers had been biding their time—rather sullenly it is true—for the day when the wrongs they had endured so patiently and so long might be rectified. Their quarrel with the lumber interests was an old one. The time ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... went ashore, biding the vessel getting ready for sea. In a week we lifted anchor and made for the passage, but the Equator was unwilling to leave. She hung on to a reef, and not until she had parted with her false keel would she push on and gain the open. During the first few ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... your life at court, Francois; where you would make a good figure, and would take things as they come. He would not. If he did not like things he would intrigue, he would look below the surface, he would join a party, he would be capable of waiting, biding his time. I am only seventeen, Francois; but it is of all things the most important for a prince to learn to read men, and to study their characters, and I ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... and body, and wealth, and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, and the oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him in calm shadow, with their death's eyes fixed upon him, biding their time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the stones,—this happy person shall have no stripes,—shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation; or, if other things ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... 'varsity and the two chums on the second, they saw each other practically every afternoon on the field or in the gymnasium. But it wasn't difficult to avoid a real meeting where so many others were about. Roy Draper pretended to think that Eric was only biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to murder the two in cold blood, and delighted to draw gruesome pictures of the ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... conquered as his boat passed the Prussian cordon over waters that once were Polish. Thus he came down to the quaint old port of Danzig, with its stately old-world burgher palaces and heavily carved street doors, then still Poland's, but which Prussia was only biding her time to seize in a fresh dismemberment of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... arrived, the attacking party was already retiring, leaving their dead and wounded in the casemates and on the wall. Rockets and light shells illuminated their retreat. There was desultory fighting during several days thereafter, and then the Russian army settled down to a routine investment, biding the time when their heavy siege guns could be brought up and the way made ready for an effective assault. On October 18, 1914, there was a battle to the east of Chyrow and Przemysl, which was successful for the Austrians. The fighting near Mizynico was especially severe. The Magiera Heights, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... faster than they had expected. All the old Indian village would soon go, and now they watched attentively the Council House where the sharpshooters lay. Meanwhile several shots were fired from the forest without effect and the five merely lay close, biding ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "were we na ready to have fought it out? And that we should have been a' frae hame, too,—ane and a' upon the hill—Odd, an we had been at hame, Will Graeme's stamach shouldna hae wanted its morning; but it's biding him, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Under his feet the ground seemed mined; down there below him in the dark the huge tentacles went silently twisting and advancing, spreading out in every direction, sapping the strength of all opposition, quiet, gradual, biding the time to reach up and out and grip with a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... girls," said a friend of Aguirre, "are never in a hurry. They're accustomed to biding their time. Just see how their fathers have been awaiting the Messiah for thousands of ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but marking time, wasting opportunity? Had one somehow to be stirred into action and reality? Was there something in the background, which did not insist or drive or interfere with one's inclinations, because it knew that it would be obeyed and yielded to some time? Was it just biding its time, waiting, impelling but not forcing one to change? It gave him an impulse to look closer at his own views and aims, to consider what his motives really were, how far he could choose, how much he could prevail, to what extent he could really do as he hoped and desired. He was often ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the midday meal, which was hurriedly eaten. Lars Gunnarson and the clerk still sat on the fence, laughing and chatting. They reminded Jan of a pair of hawks biding their time to swoop down upon helpless prey. Finally the men got down off the fence, opened the gate, and went ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Barni; it was there Bolli's house-carles were working. Halldor and his companions rode across Ran-meads unto Oxgrove, and thence above Hammer-Meadow, which was right against the dairy. They knew there were many men at the dairy, so they got off their horses with a view to biding the time when the men should leave the dairy for their work. Bolli's shepherd went early that morning after the flocks up into the mountain side, and from there he saw the men in the wood as well as the horses tied up, and misdoubted that those who went on the sly in this manner would be no men ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... young men had indulged in overt love-making. According to their reckoning, Sylvia's personal choice counted for little in the matter. Robert seemed to assume that his "cousin" was merely waiting to be asked, while Hilton's attitude was that of a man biding his time to snatch a prize when ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... gentleman into alley, friend did work. That's Banin's story. Perhaps a lie. You have a brother in Algiers? Thought so. Girl went out there once? So I was told. Probably there now. African officers say not; but they're a sleepy lot. If I was a criminal, I'd go to Algiers. Good biding.' The detective went. Delette stood where he was in silence. I went to him, and helped carry him up-stairs. We put him in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered is large enough to justify me in going over to the camp of the enemy, over I go. If no advertisement appears, or if Mr. Noel Vanstone rates my invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I remain, biding my time till my fair relative wants me, or till I make her want me, which comes to the same thing. If the anonymous letter falls by any accident into her hands, she will find disparaging allusions in it to myself, purposely introduced to suggest that ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and the Maumee. It was a beautiful spot covered by the Indian corn fields and gardens. The Kentucky militia in parties of thirty and forty, throwing aside all discipline, wandered about in search of plunder. The Indians were wary. They lurked in the woods and thickets, biding the time when they might destroy the army in detail. Major McMullen now discovered the tracks of women and children in a pathway leading to the northwest. Harmar resolved to locate the Indian encampment and bring the savages to battle. On the morning of the eighteenth, Colonel ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the beginning, in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long succession of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the tiger's den; and now, in smothered fury the patient savage would lie biding ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... fire in whichever direction they were required; while the Infantry Native officers pleaded that they had no power over their men, and could give no guarantee. Thus, Chamberlain ascertained that the Cavalry were loyal, the Artillery doubtful, and the Infantry were only biding ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Europe, I tried to dispossess Deforrest," Ebenezer told Fred, "but he beat me in court. I wanted to clean up the scandalous mess. I felt he was breaking God's law in harboring a woman of that kind. But I'm only biding my time." His voice sank as he cast his eyes slowly from one to another, at last, fixing them ominously upon his wife. "Biding my time," he growled deeply, laying ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... achieved, without his drawing the sword, and the world began to regard him as an apostle of peace, a wise and capable ruler who could gain his ends without the shedding of blood. What are we to believe now? Had he been wearing a mast for all these years, biding his time, hiding from view a deeply cherished purpose? Or did he really believe that a mission awaited him, that regeneration of the world through the sanguinary path of the battle-field was his duty, and that by the aid of a successful war he could inaugurate a safer ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder. Whilst he was biding his time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not, awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something more than mortal, that they respected his flag, saying that God would be displeased if any one meddled with it. So he reigned over all the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... should come to crown our queen of days but a thunder-storm, a most real and vivid thunder-storm, marshalling up from the west its grand, cumulose clouds; black, jagged, bulging with impatient, prisoned thunder biding their time, sharp and fierce against the brilliant sky, spreading swiftly over the heavens, fusing into one great gray pall, dropping a dim curtain of rain between us and the land, closing down upon us a hollow hemisphere pierced with shafts ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... expert as himself, she clutched the rough trunk with accustomed hands. Then she hesitated, and shut her eyes. Should she obey, yielding to her fate? Mawg, her late captor, she had hated with a murderous hate; yet she had submitted to him, in a dim way biding her time for vengeance. He was of her own race; and it was in her mind, her spirit—though she herself could not so analyze the emotion—that she hated him. But this new master was an alien, and of a lower, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of, but the girls, and the winking stars above me were their eyes, glinting merrily and kindly on a stout young gentleman soldier with jack and morion, sword at haunch, spur at heel, and a name for bravado never a home-biding laird in our parish had, burgh or landward. I would sit on my horse so, the chest well out, the back curved, the knees straight, one gauntlet off to let my white hand wave a salute when needed, and none of all the pretty ones would be able to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... may near the less, And draw it through her weltering shade, But not one biding trace impress Of all the darkness that she made; The greater soul that draweth thee Hath left his shadow plain to see On thy ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... elephants found wandering in the forests are usually young males—animals debarred from much intimate association with the herds by stronger rivals; but they usually keep within a few miles of their companions. These wandering tuskers are only biding their time until they are able to meet all comers in a herd. The necessity for the females regulating the movements of a herd is evident, as they must accommodate the length and time of their marches, and the localities in which they rest and feed at different ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... savor of treachery in the government thus biding its time. In this the government simply, from a wise consideration of the exposed situation of the settlements, refrains from the full exercise of the authority which it claims. It in no wise deceives the Indians, but only indulges their illusion till the time comes when ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... if it's a wise and right thing for your father to take you all over the sea, the going or the biding o' your elder brother can make no real difference. You must seek to see the rights o' this. If your father hasna him to help him with the bairns and—ither things, the more he'll need you, and you maun hae patience, and strive no' to disappoint him. You hae ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... books,—choosing such books as her cousin did not read; and she would interlard her conversation with much Italian, because her cousin did not know the language. There was a carriage kept by the widow, and they had themselves driven out together. Of real companionship there was none. Lizzie was biding her time, and at the end of the three months Miss Greystock thankfully, and, indeed, of necessity, returned to Bobsborough. "I've done no good," she said to her mother, "and have been very uncomfortable." ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... square, two great diligences loomed up before them, horses were tramping, men shouting, and eager travellers scrambling for places. In the dimly lighted office, people were clamouring for tickets, scolding at the delay, or grimly biding their time in corners, with one eye asleep, and the other sharply ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... three gradations of distance by which each nation is divided from the trenches. France had her tribulation thrust upon her. She was attacked; she had no option. England, separated by the Channel, could have restrained the weight of her strength, biding her time. She had her moment of choice, but rushed to the rescue the moment the first Hun bayonet gleamed across the Belgian threshold. America, fortified by the Atlantic, could not believe that her peace was ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... yerself? Well, there's the cob, sir. Really that cob is getting oncontrollable through biding in a stable so long! If you wouldn't mind ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... required without making himself troublesome; but it must not therefore be surmised that he doubted his own power, or failed to believe that he could himself take a high part in high affairs when his own turn came. He was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk and direct, and rule the roost, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well accustomed himself ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Softer than love, in his turbulent charms; Who taught me to strike, and to fall, dear fighter, And gathered me up in his boyhood arms; Taught me the rifle, and with me went riding, Suppled my limbs to the horseman's war; Where is he now, for whom my heart's biding, Biding, biding ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Flemish and Dutch ports, with building up a mercantile and a war navy, with advocating the historical maritime philosophy of Captain Mahan, and with repeating on every occasion the famous note of warning: 'Unsere Zukunft ist auf dem Wasser.' Biding her time, and following the line of least resistance, Germany for the last twenty years therefore extended steadily towards the south and towards the east. Towards the south she saw two decaying empires, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... be thankful to me for biding. How would the farm go on with nobody to mind it but a woman? But mind this, I don't wish 'ee to feel you owe me anything. Not I. What I do, I do. Sometimes I say I should be as glad as a bird to leave the place—for don't ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... child as though there had always been a Guida and the child. Thus it was that he counted himself her protector, though he sat far away in the upper room of Elie Mattingley's house in the Rue d'Egypte, thinking his own thoughts, biding the time when she should come back to the world, and mystery be over, and happiness come once more; hoping only that he might live ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the darkness and the rushing water it is close, and I go up and struggle desperately with the teak door, biding my time until the waters surge back to the rail. The door crashes to again, and I struggle on to the poop. To my amazement there are men here, four of them at the wheel. And my friend the Mate, in oilskins ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... at your board, with its tasty viands and its cake with lighted candles, and bent his furtive glance upon the beauty of your guileless Virginia—if you could but have known that in his black heart the canker jealousy was gnawing and that, behind the smile he wore as a mask, the brainy man was biding his time! ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... sovereign hostess our leaves kindly taken, (For her king, as 'twas rumoured, by late pouring down, This morning had got a foul flaw in his crown,) We mounted again, and full soberly riding, Three miles we had rid ere we met with a biding; But there, having over-night plied the tap well, We now must needs water at a place called Holmes Chapel: 'A hay!' quoth the foremost, 'ho! who keeps the house?' Which said, out an host comes as brisk as a louse; His hair combed as sleek as ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Annas was silenced. He had made small headway in the informal examination of his prisoner, and he now gave it up. Whatever resentment he may have felt at our Lord's answer he carefully concealed, biding the hour when he might vent the vials ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... permitted. Fear deterred her. But, after Jennie had been in Chicago for a few days, she wrote to her mother saying that Lester wanted them to take a new home. This letter was shown to Gerhardt, who had been merely biding her return to make a scene. He frowned, but somehow it seemed an evidence of regularity. If he had not married her why should he want to help them? Perhaps Jennie was well married after all. Perhaps she really had been lifted to a high station in life, and was now able to help the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of iron wings or plates. The saddle, at some time in its history, had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the horse dodge, it cracked the rest of the way, whereupon the jagged point of metal pressed into his shoulder with her weight upon it. It was nothing less than this ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... faces with their garments' hem now hiding, They stand afar, whom once I counted friends: Even foes have smiles for men with Fortune biding: But friends prove faithless ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... point to the world, and a man Is but a point to the world's compared centre! Shall then a point of a point be so vain As to triumph in a silly point's adventure? All is hazard that we have, there is nothing biding; Days of pleasure are like streams through fair meadows gliding. Weal and woe, time doth go! time is never turning; Secret fates guide our states, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... on horseback with Tom and Jill. The three took a scamper over the downs, and returned by way of the shore. Biding with Tom and Jill, as may be imagined, was a series of competitive exercises, rather than a straightforward promenade. Tom was an excellent rough horseman; and Jill, when Mr Armstrong was at hand, was ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... table laid for five, with plenty of nice glass and silver, and banked with pink and white roses. As everybody exclaimed at the sight, an inner door opened and two waiters from the Levedag, who had been biding their time for my signal, appeared in answer ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... so she now termed me, "would pe for biding in some fine street apout the town. Now Shanet wad ill like to live in a place where polish, and sheriffs, and bailiffs, and sie thieves and trash of the world, could tak puir shentlemen by the throat, just because they wanted a wheen dollars in the sporran. She had lived in the bonny ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... resemblance to a mop or a wisp of tow—was to mop up Pug, and polish him off the hearth-rug of Fashion; a mission which he appears to have at least partially accomplished. For now the black muzzle of Pug is but seldom to be seen protruded from carriage-window, biding his time for a snap at the first kid-gloved finger that wags within range of his overlapping tusks in waving salutation to his dowager mistress,—for, of the dowagers, above all, he was one of the chronic calamities. Oftener, now, are the well-combed whiskers and moustaches of Skye Dog ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... He was keenly sensitive to the sensation he was creating, and was biding his time to launch another. It came when he announced Maude Adams as John Drew's leading woman. He had watched her development with eager and interested eye. She had made good wherever he had placed her. Now he gave her what was up to this time her biggest ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... dark the night is closing; Heavy and dark may its biding be: Better for all from grief reposing, And better for all who ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... biding his time. He had absorbed himself in writing, content to leave in suspense the training of his enchanted leopardess. Half-absent glimpses of her desolate beauty as she moved about his winter-bound house, contemplation of her unself-consciousness as she companioned his meals, the pleasure ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... been conscious that he had observed it; but the image had lain latent in his mind, biding its time. It might be ten, twenty precious moments before another boat could be found. This one was on the spot to do its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... into the territory of Apollonia—about the middle of the day—and dispersing over the district, were employed in pillaging; but as luck would have it, Derdas had arrived that day with his troopers, and was breakfasting in Apollonia. He noted the enemy's incursion, but kept quiet, biding his time; his horses were ready saddled, and his troopers armed cap-a-pied. As the Olynthians came galloping up contemptuously, not only into the suburbs, but to the very gates of the city, he seized his opportunity, and with his compact and well-ordered squadron ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... hidden, saw that more than half their friends had succumbed. One by one the remainder dropped out; their forms lay all about what was left of the fire. The two women could easily see what their friends were blind to: the bees were simply biding their time. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... cure of his malady, yet Sir George Anderson assured him that with care he might live for a very much longer time than he had thought possible a few months before. Thus death stood back, not altogether thrust aside, but biding its time. ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... comrades, we might have pitied them, but we could not admire their action, and there would have been no strong conclusion. In "Riders to the Sea," where the characters are compelled by bitter poverty to face the relentless forces of storm and sea, and in "The Biding to Lithend," we expect a tragic end almost from the first lines of the play. We recognize this same dramatic tensity of hopeless conflict in many stories as well as plays; it is most powerful in three or four novels by George Eliot, George ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... crushed. She remained motionless, the letter on her lap, seeing through the cunning of this girl who had had such a hold on her son for so long, and had not let him come to see her once, biding her time until the despairing old mother could no longer resist the desire to clasp her son in her arms, and would weaken and grant ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... "Houston is biding his time. He is doing at present the hardest duty a great man can do: setting an example of obedience to a divided and incompetent government. Lopez, you said rightly that we had too many leaders. When those appointed for sacrifice ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's bench nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love to benighted India;—these are the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... outside nature, crude, as all stage representations of it must be, but unobtrusive (and, in the prologue, at least, thoroughly dignified), serving a useful purpose in keeping before us the imminence of Nemesis biding its appointed hour. It is not easy to suggest how better an insistence upon this lofty ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures. Peril around, all else appalling, Cannon in front and leaden ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... own residence he was dead! One sorrow after another pressed heavily upon her; yet she was still the same sweet, gentle, holy-minded woman she had ever been, bending with Christian faith to the will of the Almighty,—"biding ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... and well-recognised leaders of parties could command a sufficient following for the carrying on of the Government. With unusual patience these two gentlemen had now for the greater part of three Sessions sat by, offering but little opposition to the Coalition, but of course biding their time. They, too, called themselves,—perhaps thought themselves,—Cincinnatuses. But their ploughs and peaches did not suffice to them, and they longed again to be in every mouth, and to have, if not their deeds, then ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... am well," he said to his surgeon; "and I assure thee that biding here will harm me more than mend me, for ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... he had written most urgent letters to Earl Richard to hasten his arrival, according to the terms agreed upon at Bristol. That astute and ambitious nobleman had been as impatiently biding his time as Dermid had been his coming. Knowing the jealous sovereign under whom he served, he had gone over to France to obtain Henry's sanction to the Irish enterprise, but had been answered by the monarch, in oracular phrases, which might ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Aegean was greatly depressed, through the predominance which Venice had acquired there by her part in the expulsion of the Greek Emperors, and which won for the Doge the lofty style of Lord of Three-Eighths of the Empire of Romania. But Genoa was biding her time for an early revenge, and year by year her naval strength and skill were increasing. Both these republics held possessions and establishments in the ports of Syria, which were often the scene of sanguinary conflicts between ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Sarah hated me with her whole heart and soul, and she is a woman who can hate, too. I was a fool to let her go on biding with us—a besotted fool—but I never said a word to Mary, for I knew it would grieve her. Things went on much as before, but after a time I began to find that there was a bit of a change in Mary herself. She had always been so trusting and so innocent, but now she became ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... went to dances, did not accompany them. Pansy was as ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had not extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on those of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a prevision of success. Isabel thought this unlikely; it was much more likely that Pansy had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... and then her day begins; and she'll traipse about under the trees, and never go into the high-road, so that nobody in the way of gentle-people shall run up against her and know her living in such a little small hut after biding in a big mansion-place. There, we don't find fault wi' her about it: we like her just the same, though she don't speak to us in the street; for a feller must be a fool to make a piece of work about a woman's pride, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... disciplines. He formed a great but pleasing contrast to his wife, whose glowing complexion and dark yellow eye bespoke an origin in some climate more familiar with the sun. He looked as if he could sit there a great while patiently, and live on his own mind, biding his time; she, as if she could bear anything for affection's sake, but would feel the weight of each moment ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... yet; she had been silent so long, waiting, hoping, trusting, biding her time, that to her his voice and her own at eventide was a happiness yet ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... told her cousin nothing of Renwick's nationality or predicament, but that he was a friend who had gotten into a trouble, and that the police of Sarajevo were looking for him. Selim was to shelter him and speed him upon his way. Selim asked many questions which Renwick answered as he chose, biding his own time. Yes, he, Stefan Thomasevics, had gotten into trouble in Sarajevo, all because of a woman (and this Renwick knew to be true), and desired to leave the country. He did not wish to go to the war and he would not fight against the Serbians who were not in the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Washington had evinced such nobility of soul and great military capacity that all American hearts were soon filled with love and admiration. With far-seeing wisdom, he was patiently biding his time to strike his enemies, and in foreign lands other great soldiers were applauding the mingled caution and boldness ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... and the boy lay thus biding their time in the shrubbery, Bones got over the wall ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... luxuriance, their stems thick as the body of a man, drinking the shaft of light that pierced downwards, drinking it with eagerness ere the boughs above met again and starved them. Where no tree had fallen the creepers were thin and weak; from year to year they lived on feebly, biding their time, but still they lived, knowing that some day it would come. And always it was coming to those expectant parasites, since from minute to minute, somewhere in the vast depths, miles and miles away perhaps, a great crash echoed in the stillness, the crash of a tree ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... and the night, now at hand, biding them, they entered the little wood with confidence that they would fall into no trap. But it was empty, and returning to the edge of the town, they scouted cautiously all the way around it, finding no sign of either a friend or ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... out-door recreations, and the hurts my vanity received, I managed to escape for the time being any very serious attack of that love fever which, like the measles, is almost certain to seize upon a boy sooner or later. I was not to be an exception. I was merely biding my time. The incidents I have now to relate took place shortly after the events ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... long before Adam Bede appeared; I destroyed the book in which I trotted her out, but kept her, and once in a while tried her on my husband, but as he did not seem to see it, put her away in her green box, biding my time. As to Juliet, my good man loathes so to read about bad people that he almost made me cut out all my last mention of her. I was in an unholy frame when I did it, and with reason, for they who like Pemaquid ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... fumbled with his papers, and endeavoured to maintain his equanimity and show an indifference which his stern but fascinated glances at the youthful witness amply belied. He was biding his time, but biding it in decided perturbation of mind. Neither he nor any one else, unless it were Moffat, could tell whither this tale tended. While she held the straight course which had probably been ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... poor Madam Oakshott never had her health since the Great Fire in London, when she was biding with her kinsfolk to be near Major Oakshott, who had got into trouble about some of his nonconforming doings. The poor lady had a mortal fright before she could be got out of Gracechurch Street as was all of a blaze, and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Crow was not far. Though his friend the Stag would not so much as cast him a look, the Crow followed him ever, biding his time; and ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... with his soldiers through the Iroquois cantons, he did little harm and less good; for the wily warriors had simply withdrawn their families into the woods, and the Iroquois were only biding their time for ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... men who muttered angrily, but stood still. Thus much it took to hold the old Bay State to the Union in 1854, and carry one slave from it to bondage. Down the old street it was South Carolina that walked that day beneath the national flag, and Massachusetts that did homage, biding her time till her sister State should turn her arms upon the emblem. "Shame! shame!" the people were crying. But they kept ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... then was biding Beowulf the Scylding, Dear King of the people, for long was he dwelling Far-famed of folks (his father turn'd elsewhere, From his stead the Chief wended) till awoke to him after Healfdene the high, ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... himself, not knowing at all that the seed had floated across wide spaces, and was biding ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... in Trinity Ward just now, if he wants to see poor folk. He may find them there at any time, but now he cannot help but meet them; and nobody can imagine how badly off they are, unless he goes amongst them. They are biding the hard time out wonderfully well, and they will do so to the end. They certainly have not more than a common share of human frailty. There are those who seem to think that when people are suddenly reduced to poverty, they should become suddenly endowed with the rarest virtues; but it never ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh |
