"Dilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so called because in his nature he resembled a flower, and loved to do only what was beautiful and agreeable, and took no delight in labor of any kind. But, while Daffy-down-dilly was yet a little boy, his mother sent him away from his pleasant home, and put him under the care of a very strict schoolmaster, who went by the name of Mr. Toil. Those who knew him best, affirmed that this Mr. Toil was a very worthy character, and that he had done more good, both to ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... into those of the reader; or what part of the profit each hand must retain, as a motive for transmitting it to the next, We will call our primary agent in London, Mr. Cadell, who receives our books from us, gives them room in his warehouse, and issues them on demand; by him they are sold to Mr. Dilly, a wholesale bookseller, who sends them into the country; and the last seller is the country bookseller. Here are three profits to be paid between the printer and the reader, or, in the style of commerce, between ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... no dilly-dallying. The most serious kind of business impended, and all were forced to prepare for it. In a twinkling, as it seemed, the hurry, bustle, and confusion suddenly ceased. Everything settled down into quiet, and the defenders, with their loaded rifles, calmly awaited the assault ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... Carteret.(22) "So," says he, "my Lord came up to me, and asked me," etc. "No," said I, "my Lord never did, nor ever can come up to you." We all pun here sometimes. Lord Carteret set down Prior t'other day in his chariot; and Prior thanked him for his CHARITY; that was fit for Dilly.(23) I do not remember I heard one good one from the Ministry; which is really a shame. Henley is gone to the country for Christmas. The puppy comes here without his wife,(24) and keeps no house, and would have me dine with him at eating-houses; but I have only done it once, and will do it ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... has joined the ranks of aristocratic owners. Here is a chance for the dilly-dallying professors of humbug to distinguish themselves. What can be expected from a stable which always runs its trials at one o'clock in the morning, with nobody but Mr. JEREMY to look on? No doubt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... first and look it up? But if this has been the practice, lady Feng can't be looked upon as being such a dreadful creature. One could very well call her lenient and kind. Yet don't you yet hurry to go and hunt them up and bring them to me to see? If we dilly-dally another day, they won't run you people down for your coarse-mindedness, but we will seem to have been driven to our ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... job quite as well; but, again to my good luck, the carpenter was as Rare a pottlepot as he; and they two took to boiling rum in a calabash and drinking of it, and smoking of Tobacco, and playing at Skimming Dish Hob, Spie the Market, Shove-halfpenny, Brag, Put, and Dilly Dally, and other games that reminded them of the old country, for days and nights together so that the old Negro woman that belonged to the carpenter, seeing them gambling and drinking in the morning just as she had left them drinking and gambling the overnight, stared with ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... was nothing to me anyway, and I could always plead that I was her servant and an Englishman, and didn't care a damn for this particular Emperor or any other. None the less, if she hadn't smiled upon me as she did at that particular moment—smiled like a daffy-down-dilly in April, and squeezed my hand as soft as June roses, which the same appeared to be done by accident, I might have left it alone, after all. As it was, I had set off at seven o'clock on the following evening, and at a quarter past nine I was ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... high frolic by—thus the lowly are seen, As perched on the roof of yon bulky machine, The Kensington dilly—and Tom Smith or Billy Smoke doubtful ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... bunch of the fellows going," said Mr. Batch, standing at the window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels and breaking into ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... DILLY. (An abbreviation of the word DILIGENCE.) A public voiture or stage, commonly a post chaise, carrying three persons; the name is taken from the public stage vehicles in France and Flanders. The dillies first began to run in England about ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... harm ye,' he said. 'Only I reckon what 'tis a special turn o' Providence, meetin' wi' ye oop here. I reckon what ye'll hev t' give me a square answer noo. Ye canna dilly-dally everlastingly.' ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... food since leaving the blacks' camp upon a supply of dried fish and prepared bulrush root, which Moira had brought with her in her dilly-bag, but we were now compelled to seek fresh means for our support. Moira collected a quantity of shellfish, for the cooking of which I made a fire of some dried wood. Moira showed the greatest astonishment and some alarm at my flint and steel, which I now used for the first time in ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... to check before," he said, "but that's about as predictable as anything the planets can tell you. We can expect a flare, and probably a dilly." ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... gloomy, and undone I take in the "Dilly" my place; By Zurich and Basel to London I rush, as if running a race. My quest and my troubles are over; As I drive through the desolate street To my Club in Pall Mall, I discover ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... think he will,' said she; 'with your good leave, talk of what you know something about. Tell him I want him. Why does the minx dilly-dally so?' ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Fourth's Plate. On the Cup Day he likewise beat the Derby favourite, Rat-Trap, over the Old Mile. At Stockbridge, in a sweepstakes of 100 sovs. each, with thirteen subscribers, he frightened all the field away with the exception of Wisdom, whom he beat cleverly, and then he remained at Dilly's, at Littleton, to be prepared for the St. Leger. Having stood his work well, John Day brought over The Drummer and Chapeau d'Espagne from Stockbridge to try him on Winchester race-course. Both Mr. Greville and Lord George Bentinck had ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the scientific name of the creature, but the fact that it looked like a silicon armadillo had given it the popular name of "silly dilly." Apart from its desire for oxygen it ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... Dilly?" said her grandfather, in the same slow, mellow, jubilant tone with which he had propounded his discovery, and not withdrawing his fond smile from the heavens; "'s the log tew reoundin' for ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... but not so much as Piccadilly. A flowery way, he was sure, with real grass in it like the Resident's garden. Besides, the "dilly" suggested "daffy-down dilly come up to town in a yellow petticoat ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... covers, but also with a white-draperied tent-bedstead, with bed-pillows and coverings white and soft as swan's down. In the glow of the coal fire in the inner room sat and waited a pretty mulatto girl, Delia, or Dilly, the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... as told you already! When the time came and I asked her if she liked me, she said she liked no man half so well: and that being as it should be, the next thing was to put up the banns. There wasn't time that holiday: like a fool, I had been dilly-dallying too long, though I believe now I might have asked her a month before. So the wedding was held in the April following, my father going out to the Gunnel for a couple of days, so that Old John might be ashore to give his daughter away. The most I mind of ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dream that she was chatting with her brother by the quiet hearth in St. Martin's Street, that she was the centre of an admiring assemblage at Mrs. Crewe's, that Burke was calling her the first woman of the age, or that Dilly was giving her a cheque for two ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... days has my baby to play? Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Little King Boggen he built a fine hall. As I went to Bonner. Little Jack Horner. Miss Jane had a bag and a mouse was in it. The Queen of Hearts. Goosey, goosey, gander, where dost thou wander? See saw, Margery Daw. Daffy-down-dilly is now come to town. Cock, cock, cock, cock. The lion and the unicorn. Old King Cole. Mistress Mary, quite contrary. Bonny lass, pretty lass. Handy-spandy, Jacky dandy. Ding-dong-bell, the cat's in the well. This pig went to ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... 'DILLY JONES' is one of those unfortunate wights 'just whose luck' it is never to succeed in any thing they undertake. In a state of 'mellow' mental abstraction, while lamenting that the trade of one's early ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... hope of life here is now over; and really, during the last ten days I have been so hunted from corner to corner, so plagued with polite invitations, similar to those given by a farmer's wife to her ducks, 'Dilly, dilly, dilly, come and be killed!' that my patriotism has been prodigiously cooled, and I no longer recoil from thoughts of self-banishment. 'The earth,' my dear Ned, as a Greek sage has very well observed,—'the earth is the same everywhere!' and if ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dr. Johnson to hear, 'Dr. Johnson should make me a present of his Lives of the Poets, as I am a poor patriot, who cannot afford to buy them.' Johnson seemed to take no notice of this hint; but in a little while, he called to Mr. Dilly, 'Pray, Sir, be so good as to send a set of my Lives to Mr. Wilkes, with my compliments.' This was accordingly done; and Mr. Wilkes paid Dr. Johnson a visit, was courteously received, and sat with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... leaders at the North were willing to allow us the right, while none denied it. The leading journal at the North said: "Let the erring sisters depart in peace." But all of our overtures were rejected by the administration at Washington, and a policy of evasion, or dilly-dallying, was kept up by those in authority at the North. All the while active preparations were going on to coerce the State by force of arms. During this time other States seceded and joined South Carolina, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... was as though he dismissed it. "My compliments to her mother and remember that I have your word. Don't dilly-dally. Good God, sir, can't you realise that any day now you may be drafted? You've no time to lose. If I were your age, I'd enlist to-morrow. Don't stand on one ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... "Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed," Drew repeated to himself that tag from some childhood rhyme or story as he waited at the mouth of the gorge to play his own part in the action to come. A small force of mounted men, scouts, and volunteers from various commands were ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... never get over this silly dread of worn-out political abuse and grapple fairly with the truth? Are we really so much afraid of being falsely called abolitionists and negro-lovers that we can not act and think like men! Here we are frightened at names, dilly-dallying and quarreling over idle words, when a tremendous crisis calls for acts. But this can not last forever. Something must be done right speedily for the myriad of blacks whom we shall soon have on our hands. Barracooning contrabands by thousands may do for the present, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... season, on the Eureka, who was the first every morning, between four and five to sing out 'Great works?' Who was the last dilly-dallying at the cradle after sunset? I appeal to my fellow-diggers, and ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... through the country, and that he was glad of the prospect of a way being opened by which white men might visit him, and allow him to purchase ornaments at pleasure. Manenko now threatened in sport to go on, and I soon afterward perceived that what now seemed to me the dilly-dallying way of this lady was the proper mode of making acquaintance with the Balonda; and much of the favor with which I was received in different places was owing to my sending forward messengers to state the object of our coming before entering each town and village. When we came in sight ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... ducks in soft water, and eclipse the familiar and too legal drake. For a while they revel in the change of scene, the luxury of unsalted mud and scarcely rippled water, and the sweetness and culture of tame dilly-ducks, to whom their brilliant bravery, as well as an air of romance and billowy peril, commends them too seductively. The responsible sire of the pond is grieved, sinks his unappreciated bill into his back, and vainly reflects ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to the Piraeus and see if any merchantman has come in from Ephesus. It worries me to have my son dilly-dallying there so long ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... and the reciprocating properties of the fields of the grid suit itself made a dilly of a combination. Before, the closed-plenum mesh kept Lonnie from leaving traces. Now, anything once embraced within the palpitating fields of the grid moved with and how the suit moved; not in accord with the natural laws of the surrounding continuum. That neat new attribute took care ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... west end of the dormitory. I stepped inside to see how it was, and finding it squarely facing the setting sun, I thought I would melt. In spite of autumn having already set in, the hot spell still lingered, quite in keeping with the dilly-dally atmosphere of the country. I ordered the same kind of meal as served for the students, and finished my supper. The meal was unspeakably poor. It was a wonder they could subsist on such miserable ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... very glad to have a roof to her mouth—I mean to her head,' he hurriedly corrected. 'But, Mother, she isn't poor. She has an amber necklace. Besides, she gave Dilly sixpence the other day for not being frightened of a cow. If she can afford to give a little girl sixpence for every animal she ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... any act of folly or of desperation. If I could hope to contend successfully against him, it would be necessary for me to be as foolish and as desperate. I must go in for a headlong game. It was to be a regular steeple-chase. No dilly-dallying—no shuffling—no coquetting—no wooing—but bold, instant, and immediate action. And why not? Our intercourse on the ice had been less than a day, but those hours were protracted singly to the duration of years, and we ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Sonnets and other Poems, published by Dilly. To Mr. Bowles's poetry I have always thought the following remarks from Maximus Tyrius peculiarly applicable:—'I am not now treating of that poetry which is estimated by the pleasure it affords ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom of her military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down and starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing, and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm! storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm! And that is my sort! Jargeau? ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there were no minutes in which I could dictate as many words as that, even if I wanted to, and that there would be many minutes in which I should not dictate any words at all, she said she was afraid that if she fell into a dilly-dally, poky way of working it would impair her skill, and it might be difficult, when she left my employment, to regain her previous expertness. She was quite willing, however, to engage with me, and thought that if I would try to dictate ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... been an old soldier, but more still to have been a doctor. There is no time to dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore, and jumped on board ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rally him upon whatever last affair seemed to be engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and pre-Victorian blague word "petticoat" had been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in others, as "skirt." The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even when university rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his ardent love for the new lady in shouts ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... Mrs. Bennett's father, Mr. J.P. Dilly, took us out about six miles and left us to hunt and camp for a few days. We were quite successful, and killed five nice, fat deer, which we dressed and took to Mineral Point, selling them rapidly to the Cornish miners for twenty-five cents ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... uttered these words, she put on a serious look, and gave orders that he should be taken out and administered twenty blows with the bamboo. When the servants perceived that lady Feng was in an angry mood, they did not venture to dilly-dally, but dragged him out, and gave him the full number of blows; which done, they came in to report that ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... rich and contented, will only succeed in producing a South Africa which is poor and discontented. Those, too, who wish well for South Africa and are at the same time sympathizers of the present Government, let them also strive to induce the Ministry to cease its policy of dilly-dallying and of equivocation at the expense of the coloured tax-payers. So that the Dutch throughout South Africa, as did the Dutch of Cape Colony, under the able leadership of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, may pursue a fresh course — the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje |
