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Idly   /ˈaɪdli/   Listen
Idly

adverb
1.
In an idle manner.  Synonym: lazily.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Idly" Quotes from Famous Books



... telegraph me at once if anything occurred. I felt quite sure that the mayor of Morganton was as eager for information and as watchful as could have been myself. The paper told me nothing new. It dropped idly from my hand; and ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne

... Burgoyne nor any one else could dissipate the ragged regiments that invested Boston, nor baffle the plans of the great soldier who commanded them. For nearly a year the world saw with wonder the spectacle of an English army confined in Boston, and an English fleet riding idly in the Charles River. Then the end came. Washington, closing in, offered Lord Howe, the English general then in command, the choice of evacuation or bombardment. The English general chose the former. The royal troops withdrew from Boston, taking with them ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... girl, shaking her head at her betrothed, who interposed with a happy conscious face; "I was looking at a grand train that wound along the road, and thinking how pleasant it would be to dress on a Sunday like the lady of the castle, and recline idly behind four prancing horses instead of trudging ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... lawland lads think they are fine, But O they're vain and idly gawdy; How much unlike that graceful mien And manly look of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... childless parents were sitting together in the hut, silent; neither of us had a mind to speak, even if the tears had let us. We were looking idly into the fire. Just then something made a noise at the door. It opened, and a beautiful little maid, of three or four years' old stood there gaily dressed, and smiling in our faces. We were struck dumb with surprise, and at first hardly knew if she were a little human being, or only an ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... So I went idly on for a fortnight, in a sort of lazy lotus-land, never thinking of the future, but as happy and as much at home as if I'd lived all my life with Jack and Elsie. I hated even to think I would soon be well; for then I'd have to go and ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... sixteen years of age sat in one of the cages, with scarcely a rag to cover him, idly pulling through his fingers a bit of cord. This had been his employment for months, the keeper said. He was perfectly quiet, except the cord was taken from him; but then he would be quite frantic. The ends of ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... to travel to Genoa in time for the chance of meeting her there, or of receiving a letter from her telling of some other destination—all which must have implied a miraculous foreknowledge in her, and in Deronda a bird-like facility in flying about and perching idly. Still he was there, and though Grandcourt would not make a fool of himself by fabrications that others might call preposterous, he was not, for all that, disposed to admit fully that Deronda's presence was, so far as Gwendolen was concerned, a mere accident. It was a disgusting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... nugget was found eight or nine leagues from the settlement of San Domingo, by an Indian girl, who, while resting from her labours, idly turned up the soil with an instrument she held, and thus brought to light the wonderful treasure. The Governor appropriated it for the King, paying its value to the two owners of the mine. The jubilant Spaniards used the nugget, which was shaped like a broad, flat dish, to serve up ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... in the little library, after luncheon, enjoying a coal fire. The sisters, both with sewing, were in big armchairs. Sandy, idly turning the pages of a new magazine, sat at her mother's feet. The first heavy rain of the season battered ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris

... and over all the mountains wave the fiery tresses of that hidden sun which is the soul of the earth and parent of they soul. But we think of these things no longer. Like the prodigal we have wandered far from our home, but no more return. We idly pass or wait as strangers in ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... common to the Jewish race survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm, now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face, while he seemed to tolerate rather ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Indian Colonel ripening for pension on the shelf of General Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore, with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless pennants streaming in ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... glance would range at once to a dead pine standing sole on a naked and splintered shoulder of the mountain which he knew as "Old Baldy." There he was almost sure to see the great bird sitting, motionless and majestic, staring at the sun. Floating idly and smoking, resting after his long battle with the rapids, he would watch, till the immensity and the solitude would creep in upon his spirit and oppress him. Then, at last, a shrill yelp, far off and faint, but sinister, would come ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... I now regret having so idly neglected your kind offers while at home of instructing me in flower-painting; you often told me the time would come when I should have cause to regret neglecting the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... should you risk your life in a fight with the swords, when my arrow has answered all purposes? What should I have said if I had gone back without you? What satisfaction would it have been to me to avenge your fall? What would they have said to me when I told them that I looked on idly while you engaged in such a struggle? Valour is valour, and we all know that my lord is the bravest among us; but the life of the cousin of our general is too valuable to be risked for nought when we are embarked upon ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... breakwater of boulders and the point on which the lighthouse stands. The air was extraordinarily close and oppressive. Even Priscilla seemed affected by it. She lay against the side of the boat with her hands trailing idly in the water. Frank sat with the useless tiller in his hand and watched the boom swing slowly across as the boat swayed this way or that with the current. Miss Rutherford, her face glistening with heat, had gone to sleep in a most ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... broad and high two-horse cabs of the city, standing outside in a row. He did not take one; he merely looked at them as he looked at everything: the narrow gables and pointed turrets that greeted him across the nearest roofs, the fair-haired, idly awkward people round about him, with their broad yet rapid speech—and a nervous laughter rose up in him that was secretly allied to sobbing.—He went on foot, quite slowly, with the incessant pressure of the moist wind on his face, over the bridge on ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... Lying there thus, idly, as though in a half-sleep, I felt Tommy licking my face, and throwing my arm about the poor little frightened beast, I watched the great world-balance as it retreated on its eternal journey. At one time its vast projecting rim had overshadowed us and almost seemed to touch the cliff of rock ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... idly fingering his cylinder; he gazed at me as I sat docile on my bunk. "Did you think George Prince was a leader of this? A mere boy. I engaged him a year ago—his knowledge of ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... of the shock of shattering spears, Of screaming shell and shard, Snatched from the smoke that blinds and sears, They come with bodies scarred, And count the hours that idly toll, Restless until their hurts be healed, And they may fare, made strong and whole, To face ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... this afternoon, Duncan and Nicol were pulling away to one of the small, quiet bays, and Rob was idly looking around him, when he saw something on the surface of the sea at some distance off that excited a sudden interest. It was what the fishermen call "broken water,"—a seething produced by a ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... world was off its axis. Her House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her life that was building, it ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... how she will miss it—the compliments of the trumpeters, the admiration of the crowd, the gilded progress of the car. I see an old woman alone in a decrepit old caravan, with cobwebs on the knocker, with a blistered ensign flapping idly over the door. Would you like to be that deserted person? Ah, Chloe! To be good, to be simple, to be modest, to be loved, be thy lot. Be thankful thou art not taller, nor stronger, nor richer, nor wiser than ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with wine, and quickly! (Exit DANIEL.) Wait a little, old man! I shall find you out! I will fix my eye upon you so keenly that your stricken conscience shall betray itself through your mask! He shall die! He is but a sorry bungler who leaves his work half finished, and then looks on idly, trusting to chance for what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... idly on window-panes, as Gertrude was doing just now, for fear that the little noise will be ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... idly try To show her sheaepe a-riden by, The rushes brown-bloom'd stems did ply, As if they bow'd to her by will. The rings o' water, wi' a sock, Did break upon the mossy rock, An' gi'e my beaeten heart a shock, Above ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... one-fourth, the rest being in dense forest. The three soon had their lines in water, and they waited full of anticipation, but they waited in vain until long after night had come. Not one of the three received a bite. The lines floated idly. ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... accurately, and there the thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's—it was a great failure. Had they all been lying idly on the river brink or strolling in Thoreau's blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... that could further the cause of peace and freedom in the world. Much is at stake here, and the Nation and the world are watching to see if we go forward together in the national interest or if we let partisanship weaken us. And let there be no mistake about American policy: We will not sit idly by if our interests or our friends in the Middle East are threatened, nor will we yield ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr. Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud stranger within the gates—"house-guest," as the society column prefers it—for ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the transition is brief and natural to another. At this very moment Halbert Davis was sauntering idly and discontentedly through the streets of the village. He was the son of a rich man, or of one whom most persons, his own family included, supposed to be rich; but this consciousness, though it made him proud, by no means made him happy. He had that morning at the breakfast table asked his father ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... "Words! you do not mean them. Nor do I, either," she added, hastily. After that neither spoke for a while. Gethryn, half stretched on the big rug, idly twisting bits of it into curls, felt very comfortable, without troubling to ask himself what would come next. Presently ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... the colloquy ended, and John walked down his own garden, opened the wicket that led to his gardener's cottage, and saw Joseph idly picking out a weed here and there, while he watched the bees, some of whom, deluded by the sunshine, had come forth, and were feebly hanging about the opening ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... I sat drumming idly on the table, and wondering what was best to be done. The most simple plan was to give Pillot the note, but then I had faithfully promised Le Tellier that it should not go out of my possession. I was in a hobble. This Courcy was evidently an old campaigner, ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... Amy, with some of the others, strolled off in the opposite direction. The water remained smooth, and some of the men idly skipped stones. One of them dipped in his hand. "Cold?" he exclaimed; "I ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... emotion, however passionate, however sweet; no mere sentiment, however pure, however deep. The tiniest little rivulet that drives a mill is better than a Niagara that rushes and foams and tumbles idly. And there is much so-called love to Jesus Christ that goes masquerading up and down the world, from which the paint is stripped by the sharp application of the words of my text. Character and conduct are the true demonstrations of Christian love, and it is only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... I had wandered idly along the gentle rise of ground until we could quite overlook the little treeless town with this Lincoln College and the jagged portion of the State House wing gleaming ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... track of his friend, although he anticipated a dangerous and exciting search through the dense, dark forest that rose on the swelling hills before him. He was agreeably disappointed. A grizzled old fisherman stood on the river quay idly watching his boat as it bobbed up and down on the rushing tide. Dan gave him a brotherly greeting, then halted for a few minutes' rest and conversation. At first the traveller talked of "tides" as though they were his chief interest in life. The fisherman had an opportunity of learning ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... fishing, and as he stood there idly dipping down the pole he hesitated as to what he should do, ending by beginning to go vigorously in the direction of ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... leave her, or I see she's dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow didn't count, but that after marriage, life began in earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won't do; I must begin. Of course, it's not her fault. She's not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into such ways, and she'll get used to them too.... Of course she's not to blame," ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... somewhat light-headed—for he had been traveling for two days and the strain was beginning to tell on him, although the doctors had at last pronounced him able to make the journey home for a month's furlough—he leaned his head against the cool green plush back-rest and stared idly through half-closed eyelids down the long vista of the Pullman aisle. Then his pulses gave a leap and the blood began to pound in his ears and he thought he was back in the base hospital again and the fever was playing tricks on him. For down in the shadowy end of the aisle there moved a figure ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution, but, compounding all the materials of fun, sarcasm, irony, and invective, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of Richmond Hill; and whilst the authors were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst and poured down the whole of its contents on the garrets of Grub Street. Then issued a scene of (ludicrous) woe, the like of which no ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Jones; and his pistol snapped idly, and snapped again, as his eye caught a motion—a something—two hundred yards up among the bowlders on the hill. He whirled round. The enemy was behind them also. There was no retreat. "Yourn's no good!" yelled Jones, fiercely, for Cumnor was getting out his little, foolish ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... exactness, and its mystery had ceased to be interesting. Last of all she opened a plain envelope with typewritten directions. The enclosure, also typewritten, gave a first impression of an announcement of a special sale, or request for assistance from some charitable organization. Idly she glanced at it, flipped it over, and found it to be unsigned. A word or two caught her attention. She ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... possible men whom he might beat up at their homes as he went westward. While he thus meditated—and while blackness settled down upon his soul, for of none could he think available for his purpose—he looked idly at the list of hotel arrivals in the morning paper that chanced to lie beside him; and suddenly he arose with a great shout of joy, for in this list he beheld the ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... the only one available. That it brings out the risk of action only brings out its superiority to a theory which cannot get started at all until it is supplied with absolute certainty, and meantime can only idly rail ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray

... not expected to go to the cemetery so he trudged back through the same slush to the street car. A fish-market doorway proved a haven during a long wait. He lounged idly against the doorway as if he were an unemployed person casting about for new fields of endeavour instead of the rushed young Midas whose office ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... leisure and authority, would have proved ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly employed: yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... upon him would not be a fact, and whether or not he was born great we don't know, but one thing is certain, and that is, he has acquired greatness. And when I say so, I wish it to be distinctly understood that I am not talking idly or glibly, but with all the sincerity of my heart. With the same sincerity that has characterised all my actions since I was first called to the Bar, and made of me what I am to-day. With the same sincerity that characterises every ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien

... that John Brown's spirit stops? That Lovejoy was but idly slain? Or do you think those precious drops From Lincoln's heart were ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... she lay back on a wicker chaise-longue, basking contentedly in the golden warmth while she awaited Lady Susan's return from Evian. From below came the drowsy crooning of the lake, as the water lapped idly against the stones that edged it—a lake of a blue so deep as ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity.... Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were selected, and with them he continued to live idly, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity. When at length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived, ... stripped of his gaudy apparel, one of the royal barges transported ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... compared with what he had expected, he felt oppressed as with the want of air. He sought vainly about the window for latch or hinge to open it, and as he did so glanced along the castle wall painted yellow by the declining sun. He noticed idly that some one was putting out upon the sill of a window on a lower stage what might have been a green kerchief had not the richness of its fabric and design suggested more a pennon or banneret. It was carefully placed by a woman's hands—the woman herself ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... secrets!" The young girl laughed idly. "But you and I, for instance, mother—we have no secrets from each other, have we? Well? Why should any two people who love each other have secrets? And if they have none, why, then, they know all that there is ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... its list of new-made officers, but my name appeared not among them. In New Orleans—that most patriotic of republican cities—epaulettes gleamed upon every shoulder, whilst I, with the anguish of a Tantalus, was compelled to look idly and enviously on. Despatches came in daily from the seat of war, filled with newly-glorious names; and steamers from the same quarter brought fresh batches of heroes—some legless, some armless, and others with a bullet-hole through the cheek, and perhaps the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... destroy—but keep them not; I hate, I dread those living witnesses Of varying self, of good or ill forgot, Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses. Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead, Those visions of the past, that idly blot The present with regret for blessings fled: This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head, This flickering heart is full of chance and change; I would not have you watch my weaknesses, Nor how my foolish likings roam and range, Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day Hastened in hot-bed ripeness ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... go back home or sit down on the sand and wait, Georgina stood looking idly about her. And while she hesitated, Manuel and Joseph and Rosa came straggling along the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... slips by, a rook emerges from yonder mass of foliage, and idly floats across, and is hidden in another tree. A whitethroat rises from a bush and nervously discourses, gesticulating with wings and tail, for a few moments. But this is not possible for long; the immense magnetism of London, as I have said before, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... his poise and equanimity I was distinctly conscious that Montani's dark eyes were intent upon the idly swaying fan. I thought at first it was her hands that interested him as they unfailingly interested me, but when, from time to time, she put down the fan his gaze still followed it. And yet there was nothing novel in the delicate combination of ivory and ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... would he allow of the fashion of calling the day of rest 'the Sabbath.' 'We keep not holy,' said he, 'the seventh-day Sabbath of the people of Israel, but the first day made holy for us by the resurrection of our Lord;' and I saying idly to him, out of the poet Shakespeare, ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... he touched his horse with his heel. His eyes were always fixed upon the tower, as if they feared to look at the desert any more. She understood that when he had said "I will try to give you nothing more to bear for me," he had not spoken idly. He had waked up from the egoism of his despair. He had been able to see more clearly into her heart, to feel more rightly what she was feeling than he had before. As she watched him watching the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... you so slow in blooming, little one? You are too old to be rocked in your green cradle longer, and should be out among your sister flowers," said Thistle, as he lay idly in the shadow of ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... The Street, leading from the Rock to the Fort, and of these the highest on the northerly side was that of Captain Standish, built so near to the Fort indeed, that John Alden, if so idly minded to amuse himself, could easily salute each gun of the little battery with a pebble upon its nose. He was in fact thus occupied on this especial evening, while the captain sitting upon a bench beside the cottage door smoked a pipe wondrously carved from a block of chalcedony by some ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... his comrade's departure. Yielding at last to an eager longing for that comrade, he had stolen away late in the afternoon, traversed with endless misgivings the lonely stretch of wood road and reached the cabin only to find it empty. The door, on its leathern hinges, swung idly open. The one room had been stripped of its few poor furnishings. After looking in the rickety shed, whence darted two wild and hawklike chickens, the child had seated himself on the hacked threshold, and sobbed passionately with a ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... deceased friend is sacred; and I disdain to bottom it so superficially. I have visited the sign in question, which yet swings exalted in the village of Langdirdum; and I am ready to depone upon the oath that what has been idly mistaken or misrepresented as being the fifth leg of the horse, is, in fact, the tail of that quadruped, and, considered with reference to the posture in which he is delineated, forms a circumstance introduced and managed ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... is a born optimist," I commented idly. "Life is one long, glorious lark to him. I believe he would be happy if he knew raw, red mutiny were going to ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... we reached Salisbury Square, I gave Gus a lecture about spending his Sundays idly; and read out one of Blair's sermons before we went to bed. As I turned over in bed, I could not help thinking about the luck the pin had brought me; and it was not over yet, as you will ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... before this my cigarette case had fallen, to the ground by us. She had picked it up, and was even now turning it idly ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... Mere Jupillon—sound asleep with her spectacles on her nose—and holding the dogs rolled in a ball in the skirt of her dress; and while the lamp, almost dying, burned pale upon the counter, she would sit idly there, letting her glance lose itself at the back of the shop, and gradually grow dim, with her ideas, as her eyes rested vaguely upon a triumphal arch of snail shells joined together with old moss, beneath which stood a little copper ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the morning of a Thursday, that I sat pondering in my mind the ques-ti-on what to do with the butter and the veg-et-ables. Here was butter, and here was green corn and lima-beans and trophy tomats, far more than I ere could use. And here was a horse, idly cropping the fol-i-age in the field, for as my employer had advis-ed and order-ed I had put the steed to grass. And here was a wagon, none too new, which had it the top taken off, or even the curtains roll-ed up, would do for a li-cen-ced vender. With the truck and butter, and mayhap ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... spirit he grew tired of his tailoring, and wished to follow some other path that would lead to honour and fame. But he did not know what to do at first to gain fame and fortune, so for a time he was fonder of basking idly in the sun than in plying the needle and scissors. One warm day as he was enjoying his ease, he was annoyed by the flies alighting on his bare ankles. He brought his hand down on them with force and killed a goodly number of them. On ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... bag had been stowed away under safe trees till our return. This was of course immensely annoying, and I rang the changes on the few words of abuse which invention or knowledge supplied, as we sat damp and shivering on the verge of the slope, idly sending down pieces of broken columns which brought forth tantalising sounds from the subterranean regions. At length Renaud was moved to shame, and declared that he would cut his way down, rope or no rope; but this seemed so horribly hazardous a proceeding under all ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... aptitude at learning, as to the diligence and industry with which he applied himself to them. When other boys were staring out of the window, watching the birds and squirrels sporting among the tree-tops; or sitting idly with their hands in their pockets, opening and shutting their jack-knives, or counting their marbles, or munching apples or corn-dodgers behind their books, or, naughtier still, shooting paper bullets at Hobby's wooden leg; our George was studying with all his might, closing his ears to ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... standing by the left bank of the Thames, and sheltered from its waters by a mound of earth, is an old but comfortable boathouse. A few roughly-hewn steps lead from the mound to the water's edge, where some six or seven boats rock idly on the surface. Over the door of this tottering mansion hangs a wooden board, with the words "Timothy Gainsad" inscribed in large letters upon a black ground. A gush of light and warmth issuing from the door guides the weary traveller to a haven worthy of his choicest desires. Well ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe

... the regiment was not engaged on Monday. We remained all that day at the place where we bivouacked Sunday night. The ends of the staffs of our regimental flags were driven in the ground, the banners flapping idly in the breeze, while the men sat or lay around with their guns in their hands or lying by them, their cartridge-boxes buckled on, and all ready to fall in line at the tap of the drum. But for some reason that I ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... desiderat: "He that desireth to have the office of a bishop, or a prelate, that man desireth a good work." Then if it be a good work, it is work; ye can make but a work of it. It is God's work, God's plough, and that plough God would have still going. Such then as loiter and live idly, are not good prelates, or ministers. And of such as do not preach and teach, nor do their duties, God saith by his prophet Jeremy, Maledictus qui facit opus Dei fraudulenter; "Cursed be the man ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... pour out into the spacious verandah, which was formed by a succession of arches all hanging with evergreens. There they formed little groups round the small tables, lit up by the orange glow streaming out from the windows of the hotel, some taking coffee, some smoking, all chatting idly. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... it convenient, and perhaps the reader will allow me, to break into a more personal account of what followed. It drove us all mad to watch idly in camp the horrible shelling that was directed on the captured position, and at about four o'clock I rode with Captain R. Brooke, 7th Hussars, to Spion Kop, to find out what the true situation was. We passed through the ambulance village, and leaving ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... sixty marks that the townsmen offered for their lord's assent. A moment more and the assent was won, "given pleasantly too," the monks commented bitterly, as "murmuring and grunting," to use their own emphatic phrase, they led Sampson to the chapter-house. But murmurings and gruntings broke idly against the old abbot's imperious will. "Let the brethren murmur," he flashed out when one of his friends told him there was discontent in the cloister at his dealings with the townsmen; "let them blame me, and say among themselves ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... mirror. It stood gloomily in the half-light of the shop, which, like all suburban drapers' shops, had the air of a crowded and airless cavern full of stale adornments. Sally did not see the mirror at first, but while the shop girl went to fetch the gloves, she was looking idly round when she caught sight of a slim young lady in black. The young lady was very trim, dressed all in black, with slim ankles and pretty hands, and a big black hat—and it was herself! Herself, looking like ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... what I've been waiting for you to lead up to. The truth is—" Bennington hesitated. His hand, idly trailing over the desk, came into contact with something smooth and soft. It was a pair of white kid gloves, a woman's. Absently he drew them through his hand. He was only half conscious of his action, and he did not observe Warrington's sudden agitation. "The truth is, I've gone and done it. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... idly spent. Boyton visited the most celebrated watering resorts of America and enjoyed a well earned good time. As the autumn leaves began to fall, he was seized with an irresistible desire to feel himself again afloat, so he turned ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Where the paint was not splashed or patterned over them, their faces could be liked very well. Lips were not over full, the nose slightly beaked, the forehead fairly high, the eyes good. They did not jabber nor move idly but kept measure and a pleasant dignity. They seemed gentle and happy. So were they when we ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... thought how base and dull our ideas had been upon earth of God and His care of men. We had thought of Him dimly as sweeping into His place of torment and despair all poisoned and diseased lives, all lives that had clung to the body and to the pleasures of the body, all who had sinned idly, or wilfully, or proudly; and I saw now that He used men far more wisely and lovingly than thus. Into this lowest place indeed passed all sad, and diseased, and unhappy spirits: and instead of being tormented ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... around her for a few minutes before the events of their frantic struggle came back to her. Her eyes strayed to the figure before the fireplace. Idly she noted the lustrous, wavy black hair and deep brown eyes protected by unusually heavy lashes. It was clearly the face of a thinker, a dreamer, yet there was something sensual about the mouth, potentially voluptuous, abandoned, and suggestive of tremendous passion that slumbered close beneath ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... would have given hundreds of pounds. It was a charming morning, one of those that comes to us sometimes in an English April when the air is soft like that of Italy and the smell of the earth rises like that of incense, and little clouds float idly across a sky of tender blue. Standing thus he looked out upon the park where the elms already showed a tinge of green and the ash-buds were coal black. Only the walnuts and the great oaks, some of them pollards of a thousand years of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... and I brought to light the fiery symbols[42] that were aforetime wrapt in darkness. Such indeed were these boons; and the gains to mankind that were hidden under ground, brass, iron, silver, and gold—who could assert that he had discovered before me? No one, I well know, who does not mean to idly babble. And in one brief sentence learn the whole at once—All arts among the human ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... many improvements in this park, and took much pleasure in riding, sporting, and idly strolling here. He might often be seen with half a dozen dogs at his heels, lounging along by the banks of the ponds, feeding the ducks with his own delicate royal hands. The foolish people were greatly moved and delighted at this, thinking that a king, who could ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... an hour passes while they are thus invisible. The French officers who have observed the scene from the lodging of NAPOLEON walk about idly, and ever and anon go curiously to the windows, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... passed through that great change called death? By a great effort he opened his eyes, and was bewildered. He was in a strange room. By an open window sat a young girl. She had been reading, but the book was now lying idly in her lap, and she was looking apparently into vacancy. The rays of the setting sun streamed in through the windows, and touched hair and face and clothes with its golden beams. Calhoun thought he had never seen a being so lovely; her beauty was such as he fancied could be found only ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... second of the three young men—the one looking out of the window, drumming idly on the glass, and continually tossing back his head to clear the long black hair from his brow, over which it hung in an incurable cowlick—was a short, compact, nervous person, twenty-five years old. Mr. Overtop had been educated for the law, but, finding the profession uncomfortably ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... war-lords is useless, when it is our desires and ambitions which set the war-lords in motion. Let all those who indulge and luxuriate in ill-gotten wealth to-day (and, indeed, their name is Legion), as well as all those who meanly and idly groan because their wealth is taken from them, think long and deeply on these things. Truth and simplicity of life are not mere fads; they are something more than abstractions and private affairs, something more than social ornaments. They are ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... Lestocq's friend, and share his dreams," said the princess. "But let us not now speak of impossibilities, nor idly jest, while I am deeply touched by the generous friendship of your sovereign. That I accept his offer, may prove to him and you how much I love and respect him; for we willingly incur obligations only to those who are so highly estimated that we gratefully subordinate ourselves to them. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... society in that in the begetting of children it does not exercise the judgment which it exercises in breeding its horses and its dogs! Marriage is something more than the mere pulsating to romance, the thrilling to vague-sweet strains, the singing idly in empty days, the sating of self with ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... cheerless, sullen, and glum, His hand hanging idly by, His voice is an echo of woe, His ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... I leaned back, idly twisting the stem of my glass, looking over the sea of merry people who made a picture that quickened interest. For I am particularly fond of sitting apart and watching an assemblage of handsomely groomed men and women laughing, talking and making love. I like ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... the summer stars that long ago Sang thro' the old oak-forests of our isle, An ocean-music that thou ne'er couldst know Storms Heaven—O, keep us steadfast all the while; Not idly swayed by tides that ebb and flow, But strong to embrace the whole vast symphony Wherein no note (no bird, no leaf) can fall Beyond His care, to enfold it all as though Thy single harp were ours, its unity In battle like one sword, And ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes

... Pitt, in protecting the royal rights in the Regency, had established his power on the King's recovery. The Whigs had lost all hope of possession, and they turned in their despair to the work of faction. Their cry was now Parliamentary Reform. No cry was ever more insincere, more idly raised, carried on in a more utter defiance of principle, or consummated more in the spirit of a juggler, who, while he is bewildering the vulgar eye with his tricks, is only thinking of the pocket. The Reform Bill ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... The horseman idly watched the engineer make his final measurements, then when Bryant had lifted his tripod over the wire and told his assistant Dave they would call it a day and stop, he dismounted and sat down for a smoke with the man on whom he had served ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... find ourselves astray In some wood's-pasture of the Long Ago— Or idly dream again upon a day Of rest ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... knowledge enisled in a trackless ocean of ignorance. Thus for Browning, in differing moods and contexts, the mind of man becomes now a transparent pane, opening directly upon the truth as God sees it, now a coloured lens, presenting truth in blurred refraction, now an opaque mirror idly bodying forth ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... November, 1882, and the Manitoba winter had just set in. I was tilting back in my chair for a few lazy moments after breakfast, idly alternating my gaze from the one window-pane of our shanty, through which was framed a bit of the prairie and the end of our cowshed, to the old rhyme of the 'Franckelyn's dogge' pinned on the logs near by. But the dreamy mixture of rhyme and view was quickly dispelled by the sight of a large ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the train started and waved her handkerchief in vain, betook herself indignantly to her carriage. Quite unaware of any remissness on her part, Elsie settled herself comfortably—Mrs. Bennet had disposed of her luggage—folded her hands in her lap, and gazed idly out the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... its multiplicity and disorder of romantic things. Therein were cables, windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows and ladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brass mountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk of that shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubber dipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest with the vessel's name upon the top, the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... dimly, the drenched lawn, and the trees beyond, under which two or three sentinels, wrapped closely in heavy coats, walked to and fro. He gazed at them idly, and then a shadow passed between him and them. He thought at first that it was a blurring of the glass by some stronger gust of rain, but the next moment his experience told him that it could not be so. He had ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... proportioned. His head, for his body, seemed large. His somewhat pronounced jaw indicated firmness and decision. His hands and feet were small, and his movements deliberate and unimpassioned. He then, as always, talked readily, but never idly or solely to ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... of Hesse-Hombourg—amidst books and Windsor furniture, and a hundred fond reminiscences of her English home. The poor old father is represented in a purple gown, his snowy beard falling over his breast—the star of his famous Order still idly shining on it. He was not only sightless: he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... it, Mr. Smart," said my secretary darkly. We were in the study and my pad of paper was lying idly on my knees. For half an hour I had been trying to think of a handy sentence with which to open the story; the kind of sentence that catches the unwary reader's attention at a glance ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... they worked in silence. As Gregory stripped the iron chaulks from the deck and removed the stays, he noticed that Bandrist leaned idly against the rail with his blue eyes following the movements of Dickie Lang with great interest. Once, before Gregory could surmise his purpose, he sprang to the girl's side and assisted her with a piece of shaft and the ease with which he ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... business. I've done what I was paid to do, and you've got to work things out in your own way. If you want to drink yourself maudlin, that's your privilege. I can move out, but while I'm here in this house I'm not going to sit idly by while you make a fool ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... his way to the slit and looked through. Beyond he made out the printing room of the counterfeiting plant. Only one man was present, the big-boned fellow known as Number Four. He was seated on the corner of a rude table, idly tearing some paper into ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... and sowing broadcast the seeds of art, literature, and emancipation. Perhaps he knew not how often he was betrayed into tokens of admiration, sufficient to inflame such a disposition as he had to deal with, and if he were aware of his influence, and her adoration, it idly flattered and amused him, without thought of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the scrutiny, Kate sat idly talking of the skirt that was finished. The clicking of the needles sounded as music in her ears, and she abandoned herself to all sorts of soft and floating reveries. Not for years had she known what it was to take her fill of rest; and her thoughts swayed, now on one side and then on ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... the aromatic leaves, all four paws in air, and hoarsely purring his delight. When, at last, he went on up the slope, he carried with him through the gathering shadows the pungent, sweet aroma of the herb. In a fierce gaiety of spirit he would now and then leap into the air to strike idly at some bird flitting high above his reach. Or he would jump and clutch kittenishly with both paws at a fluttering, overhanging leaf, or pounce upon an imaginary quiet mouse ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... God's watching eye; Trust him to the hand that made him. Mortal love weeps idly by; God alone has power to aid him. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow! What cares he? He cannot ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... was taken out, and occasionally Deede Dawson would come into the garden and chat with him idly for a few minutes on indifferent subjects. When it was fine he would often bring out a little travelling set of chessmen and board and proceed to amuse himself, working ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... returned his affection; yet led no happy life, for they were almost always miserably poor, and seldom in a state of quiet and safety. All the world knows what was his imprudence; if ever he possessed a score of pounds, nothing could keep him from lavishing it idly, or make him think of tomorrow. Sometimes they were living in decent lodgings with tolerable comfort; sometimes in a wretched garret without necessaries; not to speak of the spunging- houses and hiding-places where ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... two. The report of small arms frequent, Sharp and savage indeed; that cannot all be for nothing: So we watch and wonder; but guessing is tiresome, very. Weary of wondering, watching, and guessing, and gossipping idly, Down I go, and pass through the quiet streets with the knots of National Guards patrolling and flags hanging out at the windows, English, American, Danish,—and, after offering to help an Irish family moving en ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... half-hour of pause after lunch. The children played idly with the fox-terrier and lounged on the steps of the side-porch, strong and brown, living cups filled to the brim with life. Neale had pushed his chair back from the table, lighted his pipe, and sat meditating. Presently he put out his hand and laid it on Marise's, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... marveled at a young person who spent her languid existence idly lounging in a rocking-chair, eating candy, and reading novels, whilst her mother bustled about, provoking by her activity an occasional remonstrance from her indolent daughter. "Do, ma, keep still," she would say, with amiable wonder at ma's notable ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any scene at present. The water at the back of the house could be heard, idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. Their presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly, produced by their rubbing against each ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... rail of the cart, strove to fix her mind, to bring her brain to work upon Jim's words. But they seemed to spin past her with the hedgerows and the rushing wind in her ears. A terrible blow had fallen. Why could she not feel it? Why did she sit idly wondering, when even a dumb creature like Actress seemed to understand and put ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was fain to wait where she was, in the dark, at the risk of hurting herself against the furniture. Then it struck her that Dolores must be dressing in the dark, for no light had come from the door as it was opened and shut. She remembered the blind sister then, and she wondered idly whether those who lived continually with the blind learned from them to move easily in the dark and to do everything without a light. The question did not interest her much, but while she was thinking of it the door opened again. A skirt and a bodice are soon changed. In a moment ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... waltz and quadrille, Idly they laughed, like other girls, Who over the fire, when all is still, Comb out their braids ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... was no need to wake the invalid," he thinks, "though it was not my fault. . . .They imagine I did it wantonly, idly. They don't know that I'm bound in duty . . . if they don't believe it, I can bring the station-master to them." A station. The train stops five minutes. Before the third bell, Podtyagin enters the same ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... expected; and, calling the crew, he orders sail to be taken in, and preparation made for the approaching breeze. But there are times when no such warning is given, when the atmospheric is perfectly still, the sea calm as glass, and the vessel floats motionless with her sails hanging idly from the yards, as ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... the Basin of Minas Somewhat apart from the vil|lage, and nearer the Basin of Minas. But a celestial bright|ness—a more etherial beauty. And the retreating sun the sign of the scorpion enters. In-doors, warmed by the wide-|mouthed fireplace idly the farmer, Four times the sun had ris|en and set; and now on ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... not idly to be parted with. Here was a rare chance to get guides. When, however, we approached them on the point, they all proved so conscientious about going home first, that the attempt failed. But they gave us some important information on the state of ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... party went over, holding on to the creepers, and supporting themselves by the trees, when they saw a still larger quantity of fallen leaves on the surface of the water, and the stream itself, still more limpid, gently and idly meandering along on its circuitous course. By the bank of the pond were two rows of weeping willows, which, intermingling with peach and apricot trees, screened the heavens from view, and kept off the rays of the sun from this spot, which was in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... &c (run out) 295; run to waste; ebb; melt away, run dry, dry up. Adj. wasted &c v.; at a low ebb. wasteful &c (prodigal) 818; penny wise and pound foolish. Phr. magno conatu magnas nugas [Lat.]; le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle [Fr.]; idly busy rolls their world ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... laxly. When the servant finally brought back the milk-pail and placed it beside him, he gave no word of thanks. The sunbonnet shifted to include the mulatto girl within its full vision, as the latter stood leaning her weight on one side-bent foot, idly wiping her hands upon ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... did not go out every day; sometimes the gentleman and lady were engaged, and the donkeys remained idly in the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various

... been idly turning over some volumes on the table. At last he came to a Prayer-book of considerable size and elegance of binding. Carelessly looking at the fly-leaf, he saw that it was a present to Wenna Rosewarne, "with the very dearest love of her sister Mabyn." He passed his hand over ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... this, one of the hired hands on the ranch was going to his cabin in the dusk; and swinging his hand idly to catch the tops of tall grass by the side of the path, he suddenly touched something warm and soft. Instantly he grasped a handful of the substance. At the same moment some sort of an animal bounded off in the dark. Holding fast to the material in his ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... sat on a stone wall in the sunshine—thinking and dreaming, and it was growing late when she started back to the house. At the stile, she turned for a moment to look at the old Buford home across the fields. As she looked, she saw the pike-gate open and a woman's figure enter, and she kept her eyes idly upon it as she walked on toward the house. The woman came slowly and hesitatingly toward the yard. When she drew nearer, Margaret could see that she wore homespun, home-made shoes, and a poke-bonnet. On her hands were yarn half-mits, and, as ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... on deck to take the sun. His second officer, Journegan, a heavily built man with mutton-chop whiskers of a colorless hue, was incapable of the smallest attempt at navigation, so he stood idly by while his superior let the sun rise until it had reached its ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... provision cans, and other suburban debris. Yet it was the site of 'Lige Curtis's cabin, long since erased and forgotten. The bed of the old creek had receded; the last tules had been cleared away; the channel and embarcadero were half a mile from the bank and log whereon the pioneer of Tasajara had idly sunned himself. ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it, making it appear double, single, treble, then ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... an instant to the problem that has puzzled so many minds; and as he watched the dragon-fly, a couple of swallows skimmed by him, darted over the wall, and were gone. Then, flopping idly along in its clumsy flight, came a white butterfly, and directly after a bee—one of the great, dark, golden-banded fellows, ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... not answer at once, but she idly picked a rose from the bush and put it to her lips ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... to the lodger's bookcase. There were about a hundred volumes, only a handful of them connected with medical study. Seeing a volume of his own Munden took it down and idly turned the pages; it surprised him to discover a great many marginal notes in pencil, and an examination of these showed him that Shergold must have gone carefully through the book with an eye to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... almost, in the shapely chin, and the lips—tantalizing—they looked so innocent. In another few moments he would be kissing those lips; in another few moments he would be feeling the warmth of that hand that lay idly over the railing. He wondered if he were really wise. Was he being carried away by the first flush of triumph which his success had brought him? There was time ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... And white-winged boats at sunset drew To anchor in the crimsoning blue. The boats lie on the grassy plain, Nor tug nor fret at anchor chain; Their errand done, their impulse spent, Chained by an alien element, With sails unset they idly lie, Though morning beckons brave and nigh; Like wounded birds, their flight denied, They lie, and long ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge



Words linked to "Idly" :   idle



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