"Twiddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should I be denied a privilege enjoyed by every good-looking soldier who carries a sword in my army—my army, do you understand? I leave it to you, Dank, is it fair? Who are you that you should presume to think of a happy marriage while I, your Prince, am obliged to twiddle my thumbs and say 'all right, bring any old thing along and I'll marry her'? Who are you, Dank, that's ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... you. You just keep right on being a good boy, and don't start trying stunts off your own beat, and you'll do fine. Don't forget that I'm the big noise here. I'm old Grayback from 'way back in Mervo. See! I've only to twiddle my fingers and there'll be a revolution and you for the Down-and-Out Club. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the ghastly voice. "It's a plot, see?—to kidnap Nelson. There's a gal in it—o coorse. Thinks she can twiddle the A'mighty round her thumb because her face ain't spotty. Lay that ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... or less, while Hans continued to twiddle the hat. I begged him to put it on his head because it fidgeted me, and then ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... mode of those days, at the very time when no war was going on anywhere. The finishing touch to this get-up was supplied by a thin tortoiseshell cane with a bird's head carved in ivory, which a beau with any pretensions to bon ton used regularly to twiddle ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... distraction, he was always at liberty to twiddle his thumbs, twirl his pencil, yawn, blink, and look out of the window at the City Park across the way, where excited citizens maintained a steady yelling monotone before the neighbouring ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... feeling; palpation, palpability; contrectation^; manipulation; massage. [Organ of touch] hand, finger, forefinger, thumb, paw, feeler, antenna; palpus^. V. touch, feel, handle, finger, thumb, paw, fumble, grope, grabble; twiddle, tweedle; pass the fingers over, run the fingers over; manipulate, wield; throw out a feeler. Adj. tactual, tactile; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of stories, drank; found it immortalised his pen; Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then; Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling Flat in your face a soul-thought — Bing! Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie stripped to the buff in swinish shame, If I can blaze in the radiant sky out of adoring stars my name. Sober am I nonentitized; drunk am I more than half ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... nation that conquered Paraguay, he enjoys his privileges, one of which, apparently, is to keep the ceremony waiting for half an hour, while the president of the republic, his cabinet ministers, the foreign representatives and the officers of the army of occupation who are present twiddle their thumbs, the Paraguayan officials showing in their faces their sense of the Brazilian's want of respect. Finally the minister arrives in a coach-and-four. The vehicle is of the hackney-coach variety. The horses stop in the thick sand in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... got to get her out of it. You're not going to desert me, are you, Jimmy? You WILL help me, won't you, dear?" Her breath was on Jimmy's cheek; he could feel her lips stealing closer to his. He had not been treated to much affection of late. His head drooped lower—he began to twiddle the fob on his watch chain. "Won't ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... Company) the strains of the Blue Danube float out upon the night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye with flying feet and do our little dance upon your unwholesome carcasses. Already the toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath their petticoats. Come, then, Stoopid—can't you move? No!—they change it to a galop—and eke the good old Sturm. Firm and steady, now, fair partner mine, whiles we run that gobemouche down and trample him miserably. There: ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and queened it in Petersburg with the best of 'em—she's in a whitewashed Convent, superintending the education of Dutch and Afrikander schoolgirls in Greek, Latin, French, Algebra and Mathematics, calisthenics, needlework, the torture of the piano, and the twiddle of the globes. He has something to answer for, that old ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that they would tumble the cart over again, but here the intelligent foreigner is misled. The correct proceeding now is for the cartmen to lie on their backs and push with their feet, after the manner of the gentlemen in music halls, who, reclining on sawed-off sofas, twiddle gold-spangled spheres with their toes; only our cartmen lie in water and mud and the gold-spangled sphere is changed for a three-ton log. The force the men can exert in this position is little short of marvellous. Out one crawls, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... curse himself for a purblind idiot, it was too late to place the contracts. Every shipyard in the United States and abroad was loaded up with building orders for three years in advance, and the Blue Star Navigation Company was left to twiddle its corporate thumbs. Matt Peasley was so angry that he almost speculated on the delight of being at sea again, in command of a square rigger, with Cappy Ricks and Mr. Skinner signed on as A.B.'s; in which condition of servitude he ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... what they had before they started on their travels. The gentlemen wear their hair in long curls; the ladies patch and paint their faces. If they haven't a pimple or a wart they make one. They wear gorgeous dresses. The gentlemen twiddle canes ornamented with dogs' heads or eagles' beaks, with gold tassels; carry attar of rose bottles in their gloved hands, and squirt rosewater on their handkerchiefs. They ogle the ladies through their quizzing glasses, wear high-heeled slippers, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... like hyena in his den; another stands stately with folded arms (this one seldom thinks to the purpose); another sits cross-legged, brows lowered: another must put his head into his hand, and so keep it up to thinking mark: another must twiddle a bit of string, or a key; grant him this, he can hatch an epic. This commandant must draw himself up very straight, and walk six paces and back very slowly, till the problem was solved: I suspect he had done a good bit of sentinel ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... indestructible trait of humanity. It can outface the Sphinx. It is destructible only by death. Whoever has married a prim woman must hand over his breeches and his purse, he will collect postage stamps in his old age, he will twiddle his thumbs and smile when the visitor asks him a question, he will grow to dislike beer, and will admit and assert that a man's place is the home—these things come to pass as surely as the procession ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... last beaver-skin it is! Do you think I was old Cam's private secretary for nothin'? Not I! I say—get your wares as you may and sell 'em to the highest bidder. So here I am, snugly berthed, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, all through judicious—distribution—of—information." And the boy gurgled with pleasure over his own cleverness. "And say, Gillespie, I'm in regular clover! The Little Statue's here, all alone! Dad's gone to Pembina to the buffalo hunt. I've got ahead of all you fellows. I'm going to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... him. "Your dignity is very precious to you, Joel," he mocked. "But as for me—I am not proud. You'd not have me sit aft and twiddle my thumbs and hold yarn for little Priss.... And I ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... something neat. As it is, I have to tinker at my things in little sittings; and the rent, or the butcher, or something, is always calling me off to rattle up a pot-boiler. And then comes a back- set of my health, and I have to twiddle my ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it! That's whatever! She says that if I'm a gentleman, I'll not try to see her again. Glad I ain't a gentleman! Glad I'm a man—and I allow a man is a good deal bigger than a gentleman! I s'pose a gentleman would sit down and twiddle his fingers, and do nothing. Well, I ain't built that way! Not on your life! I'm going to see her again, whether she wants to see me or not. I'll see her, if I have to fight my way into ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish |
