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More "Dilatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... always hasty, either excited by some external occasion or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call or gather in one excursion was all that he sought and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in 1818, left him a valuable estate in France, and seventeen thousand dollars, deposited with a merchant in Richmond, Virginia; but Audubon was so dilatory in proving his identity and his legal right to this cash, that the merchant finally died insolvent, and the legatee never received a cent of it. The French estate he transferred in after ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... involved in whatever his purpose might be, for he looked from one tank to another with a pondering, dilatory gaze. At last he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and drew forth a long, slim, yellowish-green lizard, with a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil head. The reptile squirmed and doubled itself backward around ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to have thought that so long as Washington remained in New York he might be bagged at leisure. In no other way can his dilatory proceedings be accounted for. Sixteen days passed without any demonstration on his part whatever. Meantime, however, the steady extension of his lines toward Hell Gate had operated such a change of opinion in the American camp that the decision to hold ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... sympathy for the Italian cause was shown by these gentlemen or the few French and German travellers who, with three or four Neapolitans, formed the quarterdeck society; and our Corsican captain took no pains to hide his contempt at the dilatory proceedings of the Italian fleet at Ancona. We know that the Prussian minister, M. d'Usedom, has been recently making strenuous remonstrances at Ferrara against the slowness with which the Italian naval ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Himalayan black bear, with fine side whiskers, and it really seemed to me absolutely certain that the other animals in the group appreciated and enjoyed the fun that comedian made. He pretended to be awkward, and frequently fell off his tub. He was purposely dilatory, and was often the last one to finish. The other animals seemed to be fascinated by his mishaps, and they sat on their tubs and watched him with what looked like genuine amusement. I remember another circle of seated animals who ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... an ardent but unstable lover, whose passions are apt to be as shortlived as they are violent. Story-telling and long-winded discussions give him keen enjoyment, for he is garrulous, metaphysical, and argumentative. In money matters careless and extravagant, dilatory and venal in affairs; fond, especially in the peasant class, of singing, dancing, and carousing; but his irresponsible gaiety and heedlessness of consequences balanced by a fatalistic courage and endurance ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the king. Hamlet's resolve is instant, and the act simultaneous with the resolve. The weak man is sure to be found wanting when immediate action is necessary; Hamlet never is. Doubtless those who blame him as dilatory, here blame him as precipitate, for they judge according ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... commencement of his progress towards the church, our enthusiast found himself placed among the hindermost of the members of the advancing throng, he soon contrived so thoroughly to outstrip his dilatory and discursive neighbours as to gain, with little delay, the steps of the sacred building. Here, in common with many others, he was compelled to stop, while those nearest the basilica squeezed their way through its stately doors. In such ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... gateway of Jenin. There are a few palm-trees lending a little grace to the disconsolate village, and the Turkish captain of the military post, a grizzled veteran of Plevna, invites us into the guard-room to drink coffee with him, while we wait for a dilatory telegraph operator to send a message. Then we push out upon the green sea to a brown island: the village of Zer'in, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... and owing to the dilatory proclamation of Martial Law by the Cape Government, always reluctant to take action which might wound the susceptibilities of the Dutch population, it had assumed a formidable aspect. Buller was uneasy, and although at first ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... and a small canteen were to accompany us; but the muleteer for these was even more dilatory in his preparations than is usual with his professional brethren—and that is saying much; no doubt he entertained a dread of visiting the Dead Sea at points out of the beaten track for travellers; considerable time was also occupied in getting ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... cook the food, prepare the rubber, carry the same to the markets, fetch the daily supply of water from the stream, cultivate the plantation, etc., etc. Perhaps I should say it is impossible for the dilatory African woman, for I once had an Irish charwoman, who drank, who would have done the whole week's work of an African village in an afternoon, and then been quite fresh enough to knock some of the nonsense out of her husband's head with that of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... however, in public affairs as he certainly was, it required only a moment's consideration to convince him of the improbability of an expectation so contrary to all he had heard of etiquette, as well as the dilatory proceedings in a court suit, and he answered the good-natured hostess with a sigh, that he doubted whether the king would even look on the paper addressed to him, far less take it ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... past two years had demonstrated the dilatory and unsatisfactory consequences of our indirect transaction of business through the foreign office in London, in which the views and wishes of the government of the Dominion of Canada were practically predominant, but were only to find expression ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... government might be as absolutely destroyed as the southern Confederates would have destroyed it if they had succeeded; that the rules were intended to be construed with reason and judgment; that the minority had certain rights to interpose dilatory motions in order to delay and weary out the will of the majority, but when it went beyond that limit it entered upon dangerous ground; that the simple question was whether the Senate should elect its officers by a majority vote or whether ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Paris, as the Cardinal designed, we should be engaged in a civil war, whereof he alone, with the city of Paris, must bear the heavy load; that it would be equally scandalous and dangerous for his Royal Highness either to leave the Princes in chains, after having treated with them, or, by his dilatory proceedings, suffer Mazarin to have all the honour of setting them at liberty, and that he ought by all means to go to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... their wishes, was just about what they wanted. While they voted against the bill,—merely to be in accord with their party associates,—they insisted that there should be no filibustering or other dilatory methods adopted to defeat it. After a hard and stubborn fight, and after several days of exciting debate, the bill was finally passed by a strict party vote. A few days later it passed the Senate without amendment, was signed by the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... for a fair in the neighbourhood, he desired her to go to the field for his horse. She said she would; but being rather dilatory, he said to her humorously, 'dos, dos, dos,' i.e., 'go, go, go,' and he slightly touched her arm three times with ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. It was notorious that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar Council, and he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he was ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a personal affront. At the same time the lady in Kensington Square told him that her husband was coming home from India on leave, and was a man, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... nor, had he known, would he have cared. For his own part he remained where he was, awaiting the visit which the captain of the Vengeur would make, to report his arrival. After more than two hours of waiting, it began to strike him that the said captain was somewhat dilatory, and he began to meditate a reprimand for such a neglect of ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... than his great corpulence usually permitted the jovial man to move, he ascended to the deck, calling: "Great, greater, the greatest of news I bring, as the heaviest but by no means the most dilatory of messengers of good fortune from the city of cities. Prick up your ears, my friend, and summon all your strength, for there are instances of the fatal effect of especially lavish gifts from the blind and yet often sure aim of the goddess of Fortune. The Demeter, in whom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... educated himself in solitude, was reticent in society, serious and discreet in his personal life and conduct toward others, he was free and unconstrained in his letters, in which he often reveals himself, without hesitation, just as he felt. We see him worried, troubled, confused, doubting and dilatory, but also cheerful, alert, bold, daring, and unrestrained to the degree of cynicism; altogether, however, as a man of tempered character and confident in himself; who, although the outer conditions offered to his imagination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... possible, to consider amendments. Thus matters drifted until January, 1788, when Egbert Benson, now a member of the Legislature, offered a resolution for holding a state convention to consider the federal document. Dilatory motions blocked its way, and its friends began to despair of better things; but Benson persisted, until, at last, after great bitterness, the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... public encouragements, to erect temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses. He bestowed commendations upon those who were prompt in complying with his intentions, and reprimanded such as were dilatory; thus promoting a spirit of emulation which had all the force of necessity. He was also attentive to provide a liberal education for the sons of their chieftains, preferring the natural genius of the Britons to the attainments of the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... long-desired Army, Navy and commercial fleet. There could be considered, as factors tending to the preservation of peace, only the pacific sentiment of the majority of the people working in alliance with the dilatory policy of the President, who still nourished a hope that some favorable turn or other in events, or perhaps the advent of peace, would give him a chance to avoid ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... royalty to which he was accredited." Washington then nominated Thomas Pinckney, at that time minister in London, as minister plenipotentiary in Spain. When Pinckney arrived on the scene he was met with the dilatory methods then characteristic of Spanish diplomacy, and finally he had to bring matters to an issue by demanding his passports. His determination so impressed the Spanish Government that it finally consented to a treaty, October 27, 1795, which fixed the southern ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... hundred men in one and "his years were anything from sixteen to eighty," says Lloyd Osbourne in his "Memoirs." But when a letter came from San Francisco saying Fanny Osbourne was sick, all of that dilatory, procrastinating, gently trifling quality went out of his soul and he was possessed by one idea—he must go ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... attached to our demand must be attributed to our long experience of the dilatory ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the expiration of the time, but are prevented by the plea of an agreement to the contrary, or something similar, ought to postpone their action till the time specified has elapsed; and it is on this account that such exceptions are called dilatory. If a plaintiff brought his action before the time had expired, and was met by the exception, this would debar him from all success in those proceedings, and formerly he was unable to sue again, owing to his having rashly brought the matter into court, whereby he consumed ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... province of Canada no time was lost in placing the new constitution before parliament. A dilatory course would have been unwise. The omens were favourable. Such opposition as had developed was confined to Lower Canada. The Houses met in January 1865, and the governor-general used this language ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... last began to give way. His heart was sinking. His messenger had been even more dilatory than he was prepared to expect. Why did not Pete come? Was it possible that George had forgotten to tell of ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... ask your forgiveness a thousand times; and I own and bemoan that I have been too dilatory in the performance of my promise, but if you could only see how I am importuned to attend private concerts, causing me great loss of time, and the mass of work with which I am burdened, you would indeed, dear ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... created a dictator to meet attacks of the Volscians and other neighbouring hostile nations, should fail to do so when the Gauls were marching upon Rome. Moreover, the army which the Romans got together was but a weak one, since they used no signal effort to make it strong; nay, were so dilatory in arming that they were barely in time to meet the enemy at the river Allia, though no more than ten miles distant from Rome. Here, again, the Roman tribunes pitched their camp without observing any of the usual precautions, attending neither to the choice of ground, nor to surround themselves ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of this character, which is the trifling or dilatory character. Such persons are always creating difficulties, and unable or unwilling to remove them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb, and are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character is imbecility, rather ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... introduction to a hermit's life! Four weeks' torture, tossing, and sickness! Oh, these bleak winds and bitter northern skies, and impassable roads, and dilatory country surgeons! And oh, this dearth of the human physiognomy! and, worse than all, the terrible intimation of Kenneth that I need not expect to be out of doors ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... thee!" he cried. "Dilatory dog that thou art! Hadst thou delayed another minute, I would have called down some ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... painted Francesco Maria's character and conduct in dark colours. At the same time this Duke of Urbino passed for one of the first generals of the age. The greatest stain upon his memory is his behaviour in the year 1527, when, by dilatory conduct of the campaign in Lombardy, he suffered the passage of Frundsberg's army unopposed, and afterwards hesitated to relieve Rome from the horrors of the sack. He was the last Italian Condottiere of the antique type; and the vices which Machiavelli exposed in that bad system of mercenary warfare ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... coming into the fortune was of Phoebe, and the opportunities it laid open to him where she was concerned. His uncle had been dilatory in the matter of dying, but his nephew did not have it in his kindly heart to hold it up against the old gentleman. Still, if he had passed on a fortnight earlier, the decree might have been anticipated by a ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... proposals for extending or altering his relations with the Indian government. An invitation from the viceroy to meet him in India, with the hope that these points might be settled in conference, was put aside by dilatory excuses, until at last the project was abandoned, and finally the amir agreed to receive at Kabul a diplomatic mission. The mission, whose chief was Sir Louis Dane, foreign secretary to the Indian government, reached Kabul early in December ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... like cattle." It is here obviously the admission and not the scandal that should have weight. When Mr. Giles Holloway was leaving Tappanuli and settling his accounts with the natives he expostulated with a Batta man who had been dilatory in his payment. "I would," says the man, "have been here sooner, but my pangulu (superior officer) was detected in familiarity with my wife. He was condemned, and I stayed to eat share of him; the ceremony took us up three ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... travelling in Italy at this time, and did not often write to her—a fact that distressed her very much, I know; but she used to shake off her sorrow in a bright hopeful way that was peculiar to her, always making excuses for the dilatory correspondent. She loved him intensely, and keenly felt this separation from him; but the doctors had recommended him rest and change of air and scene, she told me, and she was glad to think he ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... June an army of two thousand men was collected at Dayton, in Ohio, placed under the command of an imbecile old officer of the Revolution, and directed by Detroit against the Canadian Peninsula. The dilatory march, absurd movements, and traitorous surrender of Hull's army to a British force of three hundred regulars and four hundred militia, are but too well known. Another American army of about ten thousand men was afterwards raised in the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... girl lost interest in the party under discussion; at least she asked no more questions and, dilatory as usual when not definitely directed, Armstrong dropped the lead. For a minute they sat so, gazing out into the night, silent. Under stimulus of a new thought, point blank, whimsical, came a ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... been a great deal of bitter discussion between Longstreet, Fitz Lee, Early, Wilcox, and others as to whether Lee did or did not order an attack to take place at 9 A.M., and as to whether Longstreet was dilatory, and to blame for not making it. When a battle is lost there is always an inquest, and a natural desire on the part of each general to lay the blame on somebody else's shoulders. Longstreet waited until noon for Law's brigade to come up, and afterward there ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... Palmerston looked upon these incidents, slight as they were in themselves, as indicative of a plot on the part of the French Minister against the English, and especially as the Greek Government was so dilatory in satisfying the English claims. "This was enough. The outrage on Don Pacifico's bedstead remained the head and front of Greek offending, but Lord Palmerston included all the other slight blunders and delays of justice in one sweeping indictment; made ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... to see me released; and was well acquainted with bailiffs. 'If you are expeditious,' said he to George, 'you will have a guinea for your industry. If you are dilatory, not a farthing ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... lads," said Cameron, impatiently, to several dilatory members of the band. "Night will ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... 1, 1886, wrote that the Apaches then were riding in many small bands, but were kept on the move constantly by the vigorous measures of General Miles, and he assumes that the Apache question would have been settled had his predecessor, General Crook, been less dilatory. The writer expressed his conclusion that in military skill, strategy and ability the Indians far excelled their opponents, and details that fifty or sixty Apaches the year before had killed more than 75 white settlers, all the while pursued by seventeen companies of United States troops, ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... "Owing to the dilatory habits and hesitation of the Austrian prince, the junction was not effected for some time, and then, in spite of the entreaties of the two English generals, he could not be persuaded to make a movement towards Madrid. Peterborough, ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... respectability for her child and kept Christine in the country far away in Paris, meaning to provide a good dowry in due course. At forty-two she had not got the dowry together, nor even begun to get it together, and she was ill. Feckless, dilatory and extravagant, she saw as in a vision her own shortcomings and how they might involve disaster for Christine. Christine, she perceived, was a girl imperfectly educated—for in the affair of Christine's education the mother had not aimed high enough—indolent, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... be exaggerated by design, in other over-rated through error, and which, therefore, it would have been both ungracious and unjust to have insisted on; or a settlement by a mixed commission, to which the French negotiators were very averse, and which experience in other cases had shewn to be dilatory and often ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... reaches us as to the odd nesting-places of wrens and robins. A curious feature is the number of cases where letter-boxes have been chosen, thus preventing the delivery of letters, and in consequence explaining why so many letters have not been answered. Even the biggest dilatory correspondent is not ashamed to take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... Despite the dilatory and absent-minded procedure of the young man, by the time Prudence came out to call him in to the breakfast of fried pork and johnny-cake, the chores were done, and afterwards he had only to concern himself with his toilet. He stood a long time gazing ruefully at his coat, so sadly threadbare ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... trembling anxiety, the consideration of their own and the public danger. A silent consternation prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy. He represented to them that the choice of cautious, dilatory measures had been long since out of their power; that Maximin, implacable by nature, and exasperated by injuries, was advancing towards Italy, at the head of the military force of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was either ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... up, though it was, of many of the ablest men in the country, had inherited the dilatory methods of the old, and did not pass an act establishing the Treasury Department until the 2d of September. Hamilton's appointment to this most important portfolio at the disposal of the President was looked upon as a matter of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... snail's pace here. I find delay in all things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to pass, on his dilatory plan of procedure, the same results that a Yankee would ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... perspiration exuded from the steeds, from their necks and chest to the ground. But he himself leaped to the ground from his all-shining chariot, and rested his scourge against the yoke; nor was gallant Sthenelus dilatory, but he eagerly seized the prize, and gave the woman to his magnanimous companions to escort, and the handled tripod to bear away; whilst he himself ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... many a-day. Then, to-morrow, I shall advertise in the papers, that the committee having received applications for ten times the amount of stock, have been compelled, unwillingly, to close the lists. That will be a slap in the face to the dilatory gentlemen, and send ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... effective in the Franco-Prussian conflict and, if I am not mistaken, in the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, also. This made of the individual soldier a host in himself. The old muzzle-loader, with its ramrod and dilatory "motions," ought to have been obsolete long before Grant left the West to lead the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness to Appomattox. The Michigan cavalry brigade, armed as it was with repeating carbines, was never whipped when it had a chance to use them. In arming ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... his veto on the last day permitted by the Constitution, and it was generally believed that his motive for the postponement was to give the minority in one branch or the other the power to defeat the bill either by dilatory motions or by "talking against time." Mr. Le Blond and Mr. Finck or Ohio, and Mr. Boyer of Pennsylvania, frankly indicated their intention to employ all means within their power to compass this end. A system of parliamentary ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... may perceive These Cardinals trifle with me; I abhor This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome. My learn'd and well-beloved servant, Cranmer, Prithee, return. With thy approach, I know, My comfort comes along.—Break up the court! ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... had a silly vision of two distressed dumplings, like dilatory chorus girls, mad with the nightmare feeling of not being dressed in time, hearing their cue called in a heartless voice from the inexorable sky, desperately applying the last dab of flour to their imperfect complexions. But the witch found no fault with them when they ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... in his hand, stalked through the film of people who now swirled about him, eager to see the dead. There was no call for the law to make its appearance, and the representatives of the law were wisely dilatory in The Corner. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... on, he was several times conscious of a wish to quicken the passing of its moments, and when Sir Henry Grebe, the penultimate patient, proved to be an elderly malade imaginaire of dilatory habit, involved speech, and determined misery, he was obliged firmly to check a rising desire to write a hasty bread-pill prescription and fling him in the direction of Marlborough House. The half-hour ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... specially organized tribunal, a sort of "chambre ardente,"[3109] elected by the sections, that is to say, by a Jacobin minority. These improvised judges must give judgment on conviction, without appeal; there must be no preliminary examinations, no interval of time between arrest and execution, no dilatory and protective formalities. And above all, the Assembly must be expeditious in passing the decree; "otherwise," it is informed by a delegate from the Commune,[3110] "the tocsin will be rung at midnight and the general alarm sounded; for the people are tired of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the north, he beheld a beautiful young woman of slender and majestic form, standing on the plains. She appeared in the same place for several days, but what most attracted his admiration, was her bright and flowing locks of yellow hair. Ever dilatory, however, he contented himself with gazing. At length he saw, or fancied he saw, her head enveloped in a pure white mass like snow. This excited his jealousy toward his brother Kabibonokka, and he threw out a succession of short and rapid sighs—when lo! the air was filled with light filaments ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... by the king for an attack on England have attempted nothing except against my subjects; but, by St. George, if some redress be not seen to, I will take the matter into my own hands without waiting for your motions, tardy and dilatory as ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Nor was the company dilatory in returning her notice, since from the time of her entrance into the room, she had been ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... in the grand style, Oriental, dilatory, ponderous, savouring of times when battles were affairs of private arrangement between monarchs and hedged about by all the punctilios ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... forgave the despoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended to fight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and the action of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory and ineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. In the existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift and crushing might well be expected by all ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... at Vaniman. The young man turned to Wagg, seeking support in that crisis, believing that the affair could be held on the basis of two against two in the interests of further dilatory tactics. Wagg had been showing indignant protest against the demands of the interlopers. But his corrugated face was smoothed suddenly. He had evidently decided to cash in on the new basis. "That's ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... Eyre Coote was forced to make for the seashore, and, though hotly followed by Hyder, reached Cuddalore. A French fleet off the coast, however, prevented provisions being sent to him, and, even after the French had retired, the Madras government were so dilatory in forwarding supplies that the army was reduced ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... might pose as their saviour and be saluted 'father' and 'patron.' There, indeed, was our Minucius at fault, as what honest, poor man is not, when confronted by the wiles of those bred to craft and trickery! See, too, how the consuls have followed the same dilatory measures, and can you doubt that it is all by agreement with these traitor nobles? Know well, now, that this war will have no ending until a man of the people ends it—a real plebeian; a new man. See you not that both consuls, by tarrying with the army, have set up an interregnum, that the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... them—and were received by Don John with stately courtesy: They had, however, come, determined to carry matters with a high and firm hand, being no longer disposed to brook his imperious demeanour, nor to tolerate his dilatory policy. It is not surprising, therefore, that the courtesy soon changed to bitterness, and that attack and recrimination usurped the place of the dignified but empty formalities which had characterized the interviews ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... needle-like beak, and the instant it was accomplished rushed in to secure her spoils in their first freshness. She never appeared to have patience to wait for anything, and sometimes even tried to hurry up dilatory buds. She did succeed, as such vehemence must, in breaking in the back way, as it were, through a hole in the corolla tube, and rifling the bud before it had a chance to become a blossom. I could not decide ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... sad; and, in a tone of unaccustomed despondency, uttered a prayer for our speedy arrival among the Alps, accompanied with an expression of vain regret that we were not already there. "In that case," I observed, "we can quicken our march; why adhere to a plan whose dilatory proceeding you ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... toward him. "Now, after this proof of my generosity, the town will hasten to pay its war-tax, will it not?" Then seeing the dark cloud which gathered on Gotzkowsky's brow, he continued with more vehemence, "You are very dilatory in paying. Be careful how you ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... He left Franklin Pierce, who was then candidate for the presidency, in Concord, New Hampshire, and embarked at Portsmouth in a small schooner which was then the only mode of conveyance,—-and often a very dilatory one. On the way two of his fellow passengers became sea-sick, and another "sat in the stern looking very white." On arriving at Appledore he was met in the doorway by Mr. Laighton of whom he gives rather a realistic description; adding, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... a passion at the admonition, heaped abuse upon me, swore that it was I who thwarted him, I who opposed the fulfilment of Don John's desires and fostered the dilatory ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Curione said to Caesar, delay is injurious to anyone who is fully prepared for action. I remember also to have read somewhere that such waste of time in diplomacy and palavering is the favourite resource of feeble and timid minds, who regard the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as an evidence of the most admirable ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... I am a dilatory but productive author. By the time I am forty I shall have hundreds of volumes, so that I can open a bookshop with nothing but my own works. To have a lot of books and to have nothing else is ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... their natural desire of gain, may have this additional incitement to it, that they expect to be suddenly deprived of that pleasure which they take in it." And, as a further attestation to what I say of the dilatory nature of Tiberius, I appeal to this his practice itself; for although he was emperor twenty-two years, he sent in all but two procurators to govern the nation of the Jews, Gratus, and his successor in the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... a dilatory dog: we had said that we would leave at five a.m., and at six he was washing his teeth in the little stream which acted as the village sewer. As we were waiting our green-coated friend got away on his saddle horse, with his wife walking at its tail; ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... variation, and, after a diligent comparison of the evidence, concludes it probable that the splendid superstructure of business being originally built upon a narrow basis, has lately been found to totter; but between dilatory payment and bankruptcy there is a great distance; many merchants have supported themselves by expedients for a time, without any final injury to their creditors; and what is lost by one adventure may be recovered by another. He believes that a young lady pleased with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... that the first help came from Evan Shelby; Col. Russell, at Baton's Station proving dilatory. In the Campbell MSS. are some late letters written by sons of the Captain Campbell who took part in the Island Flats fight, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the wisdom of it is very questionable. It gave Rosecrans ground to assume that the official dispatches were only the formal expression of the ideas of the President and Secretary whilst the General-in-Chief did not join in the condemnation of his dilatory mode of conducting the campaign. To say to Rosecrans, as Halleck did on July 24th, "Whether well founded or without any foundation, the dissatisfaction really exists, and I deem it my duty as a friend to represent it to you truly and ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... he observed, "workmen are often dilatory, and we cannot always depend upon their doing what ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... vexed to find, by the letter which I have had the pleasure to receive to-day, that I am expected to be at C(astle) H(oward) on Saturday, when I do not set out till Sunday, so that, as I told Lord C. in my last, which he should receive to-day, I shall not be there till Wednesday. I am dilatory and procrastinating in my nature, but am not apt to defer what, when done, will make me so happy as I shall be at C(astle) H., and should not have been so now, if I had been more early apprised of your wish to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... proposals, though Antonio Perez entreated him to be cautious. At this date, 1576, Perez was really the friend of Escovedo. But Escovedo would not be advised; he wrote an impatient memorial to the King, denouncing his stitchless policy (descosido), his dilatory, shambling, idealess proceedings. So, at least, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell asserts in his Don John of Austria: 'the word used by Escovedo was descosido, "unstitched."' But Mr. Froude says that Philip used the expression, later, in reference to another ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... and encouragement, another Red Sea was before them, and behind them a Pharaoh's host. All the women of Windsor were not engaged in this expedition. Some were milking cows, and some were putting dear little children to sleep; some were preparing late suppers for dilatory husbands, and not a few were gathered together in knots, discussing the impropriety and scandal of such a ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of Pechili. Emperor Taouk-Wang sent for troops from the interior. Mandarin Lin, who had entered into negotiations with the British, was degraded and was succeeded by Viceroy Keshen of Peiho. Keshen received Lord Palmerston's formal demands upon China and forwarded them to Pekin. By dilatory tactics he succeeded in gaining a ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... and looked at the villas mournfully. He had had full warning of Mr. Flack's intentions, and might have bought the plot before building commenced: but he was apathetic and dilatory. He had known Summer Street for so many years that he could not imagine it being spoilt. Not till Mrs. Flack had laid the foundation stone, and the apparition of red and cream brick began to rise did he take alarm. He called on Mr. Flack, the local builder,—a most reasonable and respectful man—who ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... of their ascent to Meldon that had kept it stored away in the unconscious fold of association from which it now emerged; for in itself it had no mark of the portentous. At the moment there could have been nothing more natural than that Ned should dash himself from the roof in the pursuit of dilatory tradesmen. It was the period when they were always on the watch for one or the other of the specialists employed about the place; always lying in wait for them, and dashing out at them with questions, reproaches, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... The earthquake of 1867 rendered the Taman Sarie uninhabitable, choked the lake in which it stood, and destroyed the subaqueous tunnel which ensured the absolute seclusion of Sultan and harem. The famous Marshal Daendels, weary of waiting for an interview with a dilatory Sultan, yielded to natural impatience, and hearing the sound of distant music from the watery depths, dashed through the thicket of tamarinds which concealed the entrance to the water pavilion, and, dragging the Sultan from the place of dreams, scattered bedayas and gamelon players ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... without any false assumption of modesty those chaste sepulchres enclosing his feet—"hopin' 'twould fetch a rain! said I didn't care ef I did spot my new felts ef 'twould only fetch a rain! One thing," he continued, scanning the dilatory sky with a look that was keen without being severe; "she'll rain arfter the moon fulls, ef ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... rather to provide against future injuries than to depend on satisfaction here, till they have taught the Spaniards their own interest in the West Indies by more efficient means than friendship."[360] The aggrieved merchants and shipowners, often only too well acquainted with the dilatory Spanish forms of procedure, saw that redress at Havana was hopeless, and petitioned Charles II. for letters of reprisal.[361] Sir Leoline Jenkins, Judge of the Admiralty, however, in a report to the king gave his opinion that although ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... the valet to buy black gloves, and a silk hat, sized seven and a quarter, and to bring up a copy of Who's Who. He hoped the valet would be dilatory in executing these commands. But the valet seemed to fulfill them by magic. Time flew so fast that (in a way of speaking) you could hardly see the fingers as they whirled round the clock. And almost before he knew where he was, two commissionaires ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... Difference (dispute) malpaco. Difficulty malfacileco. Diffusion vastigo. Dig fosi. Digest digesti. Digit fingro, cifero. Dignify indigi. Dignitary rangulo. Dignity indeco. Dignity (rank) rango. Dilapidate ruinigi. Dilate plilargxigi. Dilatory prokrastema. Diligence diligento. Diligent diligenta. Dim dubeluma. Diminish (length) mallongigi. Diminish (price) rabati. Diminutive malgranda—eta. Din bruegado. Dine (midday) meztagmangxi. Dine (evening) vespermangxi. Dining-room mangxocxambro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... those Galilee fishermen who were called to be fishers of men. How he read the Book and pored over it, even at times, I suspect, nodding over it, and laying it down only to take up his rod, over which, unless the trout were very dilatory and the journey very fatiguing, he ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... persons of note, were thrown into prison: murders were daily committed from private animosity, under pretence of faction: and the populace, not satiated with their fury, and deeming the course of public justice too dilatory, broke into the prisons, and put to death the count of Armagnac, and all the other nobility who were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... made self-government successful to profit by this advantage. A public body may be so tied by its own rules that it can act but slowly. Thus the hot desire of to-day may be moderated by the cool reflection of to-morrow. To this end are arranged the three readings of bills and the various other dilatory devices of most parliaments and congresses. But when great constitutional changes are to be attempted, such measures as these are insufficient. Great changes should be introduced one by one, separately debated and fought over. Elections should be repeated during the process; much time should be allowed ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... villains should perform their customary services in as far as these had not been commuted, yet the farmer could not enforce this of himself, and the lord of the manor was probably languid or careless or dilatory in doing so. The other payments and burdens of serfdom were not so lucrative, and as the ranks of the old villain class were depleted by the extinction of families, and fewer inhabitants were bound to attend the manor courts, they ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... Friend,—I will spare you my apologies for not writing, they are so many. You have been very generous, I very promising and dilatory. I desired to send you an Account of the sales of the History, thinking that the details might be more intelligible to you than to me, and might give you some insight into literary and social, as well as bibliopolical relations. But many details of this account will not ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Horsball's nature to be civil to a rich hunting country gentleman; and it was the fact also that Ralph had ever been popular with the world of the Moonbeam,—even at times when the spasmodic, and at length dilatory, mode of his payment must have become matter for thought to the master of the establishment. There was no doubt about the payments now, and Ralph's popularity was increased fourfold. Mrs. Horsball got out from some secluded ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... engagement and approaching marriage to M. La Touche might arouse him to the knowledge of how much he loved her. "How blessings brighten as they take their flight!" and jealousy is infallible to bring dilatory lovers to the point. No question of the right or wrong of the matter troubled the second Miss ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... each other in Virginia, there has been a steady and complete change of public opinion, and the performance of this year was received with almost universal contempt, and with indignant censure of a dilatory police. ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... that had elapsed, even Mr Apjohn himself had lost something of his confidence. If any further step was to be taken, why did not the young lady's father himself come and take it? Why had he been so dilatory in a matter which was of so much greater importance to himself than to any one else? But now the two attorneys were together, and it was necessary that they should decide ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... Professeur d'Arabe vulgaire a l'Ecole des langues orientales vivantes; an Arabist, whose name is favourably quoted in the French Colonies of Northern Africa M. Zotenberg kindly lent me his own transcription of Alaeddin before sending it to print; and I can only regret that the dilatory proceedings of the Imprimerie Nationale, an establishment supported by the State, and therefore ignoring the trammels of private industry, have prevented my revising the version now submitted to the public. This volume then begins with the two Gallandian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... it may seem, in many clubs, has absolutely no excuse for its existence, except that it was the first to be introduced and has the reputation of being universally used in foreign countries. It requires scoring above and below the line, which is a most cumbersome and dilatory proposition. Keeping tally by this method involves, at the end of a rubber, long mathematical problems, which, as the scorer is then in a hurry, frequently result in serious, and at ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... was dilatory in the extreme. It was embarrassed with French intrigues, great carelessness at home, and greater reluctance on the part of England. The wearied Minister wrote to Mrs. Adams on the 30th of May, 1783: "Our son is at the Hague, pursuing his studies ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Church of the Capuchins, which we lived opposite, I was dilatory, though in my mediaeval days it had been one of the first places to which I hurried. In those days everybody said you must be sure and go to the Capuchins', because Guide's "St. Michael and the Enemy" was there, and still more ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... her incurable desire to make others happy, and an instinctive sympathy with love-affairs, all contributed; moreover, Felix had said something about Derek's having been concerned in something rash. If darling Nedda were there it would occupy his mind and help to make him careful. Never dilatory in forming resolutions, she decided to take the girl over with her on the morrow. Kirsteen had a dear little spare room, and Nedda should take her bag. It would be a nice surprise for them all. Accordingly, next morning, not wanting to give any trouble, she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge and distinctness of imagery ... To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted to memory what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by guess what a few hours before they had known ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... alternative was left to him but to abandon the ground. So, pretending to wonder why his allies did not send forward the succors which they had promised in their letters, and saying that, since they were so dilatory and remiss, he must go himself and bring them, but promising that he would immediately return, he set sail from Tarentum, and, crossing the sea, went home to his own kingdom. He arrived safely in Epirus after an absence ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... enough my dilatory disposition. I have written to you mentally at least once a day, and I hope you have mentally received the results—that is to say, have assured yourself of my goodwill to you, and I had nothing ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... d'Angouleme, and backed by the promise of high office on its realization. A marriage is easy to arrange in France; not so the execution of the marriage-contract, which is rendered as wearisome by delays as the still more dilatory proceedings of the law; and therefore it was deemed advisable, in order to pass this dismal period, to despatch the Count de Cambis to Holland for the purchase of horses for the royal stable. Arrived at The Hague, he was seized with an attack of smallpox, which laid him prostrate on the low flock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... to a close and Congress still was dilatory. Morse hated to abandon his cherished dream of government ownership, and, while carrying on negotiations with private parties in order to protect himself, he still hoped that Congress would at last see the light. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... has been reverently and gravely dealt with reads like a metaphysical discussion in the dark ages. The names formerly used were superb. Complaint, demurrer, confession and avoidance, traverse, replication, dilatory pleas, peremptory pleas, rejoinder, rebutter, ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... popular than handsome Jack Scott, and as he walked from his house in Carey Street to the Temple, with his wife on his arm, he returned the greetings of the barristers, who, besides liking him for a good fellow, thought it prudent to be on good terms with a man sure to achieve eminence. Dilatory in his early as well as his later years, Scott left his house that morning half an hour late. Already it was known to the mob that the Templars were assembling in their college, and a cry of "The Temple! kill the lawyers!" had been raised in Whitefriars and Essex Street. Before they reached the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... I am sensible that this is a very scrap of a letter; but unless the Kings of England and France will take more care to supply our correspondence, and not be so dilatory, is it my fault that I am so concise? Sure, if they knew how much postage they lost, by not supplying us with materials for letters, they would not mind flinging away eight or ten ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Dilatory tactics on the part of the Madrid Government delayed the actual transfer of the territory more than two years. After having twice refused, Jackson at length accepted the governorship of Florida, and in the early summer of 1821 he set out, by way of New Orleans, for his new post. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... patients were commonly treated at one time. They drew near to each other, touching hands, arms, knees, or feet. The handsomest, youngest, and most robust magnetizers held also an iron rod with which they touched the dilatory or stubborn patients. The rods and ropes had all undergone a 'preparation' and in a very short space of time the patients felt the magnetic influence. The women, being the most easily affected, ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... tacking across broad England like an unweatherly vessel on a wind; approaching our destination, not openly, but by a sort of flying sap. And at length, I can scarce tell how, we were set down by a dilatory butt-end of local train on the untenanted ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... either of diet or the doctor, I am for knowing," said the purser, "not what doctor, but what sort of diet, is most dilatory in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... whiskers, and it really seemed to me absolutely certain that the other animals in the group appreciated and enjoyed the fun that comedian made. He pretended to be awkward, and frequently fell off his tub. He was purposely dilatory, and was often the last one to finish. The other animals seemed to be fascinated by his mishaps, and they sat on their tubs and watched him with what looked like genuine amusement. I remember another ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... destinations. The newspapers not only printed long accounts of Jaggers's triumphal progress from New York to Chicago and back again, but used the success of his undertaking as a text for many editorials against the dilatory methods of our foreign-mail service. Jaggers left London on March 11, 1899, and was back again on the 29th, having travelled nearly eighty-four hundred miles in eighteen days. On his return he was received literally by a crowd of thousands, ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... The bands, too, would vary in proportion to the renown of their chiefs. An energetic man, who, at the head of a handful, had performed some daring feats, would find himself a week afterwards the leader of many hundreds, while a chief who was slow and dilatory would find his band melt ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the wailing of mourners, she struck her tent and took up her abode near a high school. There she observed with joy that he learned the manners and acquired the tastes of a student. Perceiving, however, that he was in danger of becoming lazy and dilatory, she cut the warp of her web and said, "My son, this is what you are doing ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... down the steps of the club-house, while Dad and I looked at him, so slowly that his dilatory rate of progression conveyed the impression that he was either a martyr to corns or suffering from a recent attack of the gout; feeling his way carefully with one foot first before bringing along its fellow, prior to adventuring ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... however, in mending the purely social strands so long relaxed or severed. The various registers and blue-books recorded his residence under "dilatory domiciles"; he did not subscribe to the opera, preferring to chance it in case harmony-hunger attacked him; pre-Yuletide functions he dodged, considering that his sister's days in January and attendance at other ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... they waylay and seize travellers in order to ber-bantei or cut them up like cattle." It is here obviously the admission and not the scandal that should have weight. When Mr. Giles Holloway was leaving Tappanuli and settling his accounts with the natives he expostulated with a Batta man who had been dilatory in his payment. "I would," says the man, "have been here sooner, but my pangulu (superior officer) was detected in familiarity with my wife. He was condemned, and I stayed to eat share of him; the ceremony took us up three days, and it was only last night that we finished him." Mr. Miller was ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to George. "Miss Humfray's extraordinary remark has projected this dilatory reception of your news. I beg you ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... to walk very slowly. The man stopped and looked in at the windows of many of the stores, and close behind him every time stood Hugh; he was at a loss to account for this behavior on the part of the man he was following, as his dilatory tactics were in sharp contrast to the way in ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... plundered a vast extent of country, and advanced within three hundred stades—less than forty English miles—of Rome itself. After the battle many of the Lucanians and Samnites came up; these allies he reproached for their dilatory movements, but was evidently well pleased at having conquered the great Roman army with no other forces but his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... unpleasant all this is to read, this outbreak at two localities that have never done me any personal harm except a little mud-splashing. But this is a thing that has to be said now, because we are approaching a crisis when dilatory ways, muddle, and waste may utterly ruin us. This is the way things have been done in England, this is our habit of procedure, and if they are done in this way after the war this Empire is going ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... coming. He has business, I believe," said Lady Mary, a little coldly. "There has been a dispute over some Crown lands, which march with ours. Officials are often very dilatory and difficult to deal with. Probably, however, you know more about it than I do. I am going alone. I have just been giving the necessary orders. I shall take a servant with me, as well as my maid, for I am such an inexperienced traveller—though it seems absurd, at my age—that I ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... very patient on the subject that the preparations went on slowly. Some who hoped to have their diligence quickened in a manner usual on such occasions, affected delays, but were surprised to find that no complaint ensued. They grew still more dilatory, but the only consequence that arose from it was a decent solicitation to dispatch, without any of those more effectual means being used, which impatient love or ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... be dilatory, and rise early. If you would rather not, pray do not come on Sunday; but at all events write, though not at present, for if you can come we can discuss all ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Gibbs took her annual week's holiday just then, and had plenty of time to note her cousin's behaviour; and the way in which Toni swallowed her breakfast and clad herself for the start was a revelation to one who knew her former dilatory nature. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... silly vision of two distressed dumplings, like dilatory chorus girls, mad with the nightmare feeling of not being dressed in time, hearing their cue called in a heartless voice from the inexorable sky, desperately applying the last dab of flour to their imperfect complexions. But the witch found no ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... wealth, and the dominion to be acquired in the new world. By no one of these states, was this desire carried into action more promptly than by England, Henry VII. had received communications from Columbus, during the tedious and uncertain negotiations of that great man, at the dilatory court of Ferdinand, which prepared him for the important discoveries afterwards made, and inclined him to countenance the propositions of his own subjects for engaging in similar adventures. On the 5th of March 1495, he granted a commission to John Cabot, an enterprising Venetian ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Cunctator, who finds it so easy to become renowned—who remains in Vienna and reaps the harvest which belongs rightly to you, General Loudon. You act, while he hesitates—you are full of energy and ever ready for the strife; Daun is dilatory, and while he is resolving whether to strike or ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... masterful tone adopted by the Directory. It was perhaps unfortunate that Lord Malmesbury was selected as the English negotiator, for his behaviour in the previous year had been construed by the French as dilatory and insincere. But the Directors may on better evidence be charged with postponing a settlement until they had struck down their foes within France. Bonaparte's letters at this time show that he hoped for the conclusion of a peace with England, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of the island were constructed by the home authorities in a very dilatory manner. Ponce's house in Caparra had been fortified in a way so ineffective that Las Casas said of it that the Indians might knock it down butting their heads against it. This so-called fort soon fell in ruins after the transfer of the capital to its ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... make the best of his time, and thus to intensify the activity of his mental energies. To compass the abolition of slavery had been the passion of his life. He had hailed the Civil War as the great opportunity. He had never been quite satisfied with Lincoln, whose policy seemed to him too dilatory. He demanded quick, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... hope we shall again, and forever," said the general, "and it is about that I would speak. You are in error in supposing that your friends do not sympathize with you, or that their answers are dilatory or evasive. There is much astir; the old spirit is not extinct, but the difficulties are greater than in former days when we had only the Austrians to encounter, and we cannot ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Italy at this time, and did not often write to her—a fact that distressed her very much, I know; but she used to shake off her sorrow in a bright hopeful way that was peculiar to her, always making excuses for the dilatory correspondent. She loved him intensely, and keenly felt this separation from him; but the doctors had recommended him rest and change of air and scene, she told me, and she was glad to think he ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... prominent Democratic leaders from Missouri. John B. Henderson in the Senate and John W. Noell in the House labored earnestly to secure the compensation for their State, but the bill was finally defeated in the House. By factious resistance, by dilatory motions and hostile points of order, the Democratic members from Missouri were able to force the bill from its position of parliamentary advantage, and to prevent its consideration within the period in which a ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of Kildrummie Castle been conscious that the at first dilatory and then uncertain measures of their foes originated in the fact that the Earls of Hereford and Lancaster were not themselves yet on the field, and that they had with them a vast addition to their forces, they would not ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... industrious to correct. Many inconviences encompass a man in years; either because he seeks [eagerly] for gain, and abstains from what he has gotten, and is afraid to make use of it; or because he transacts every thing in a timorous and dispassionate manner, dilatory, slow in hope, remiss, and greedy of futurity. Peevish, querulous, a panegyrist of former times when he was a boy, a chastiser and censurer of his juniors. Our advancing years bring many advantages ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... veto on the last day permitted by the Constitution, and it was generally believed that his motive for the postponement was to give the minority in one branch or the other the power to defeat the bill either by dilatory motions or by "talking against time." Mr. Le Blond and Mr. Finck or Ohio, and Mr. Boyer of Pennsylvania, frankly indicated their intention to employ all means within their power to compass this end. A system of parliamentary delay was thus foreshadowed, but was prevented ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall. The dilatory process of convening the legislature, or one of its branches, for the purpose of obtaining its sanction to the measure, would frequently be the occasion of letting slip the golden opportunity. The loss of a week, a day, an ...
— The Federalist Papers
... have none till they are able to pay for it by their labour. The time that the Negroes work in the West Indies, is from day-break till noon; then again from two o'clock till dark (during which time, they are attended by overseers, who severely scourge those who appear to them dilatory); and before they are suffered to go to their quarters, they have still something to do, as collecting herbage for the horses, gathering fuel for the boilers, &c. so that it is often past twelve before they can get home, when they have scarce time to grind and boil ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... full bloom.... We lay very quiet in our ditch, waiting their motions, till the sun was an hour or two high. We heard a cannonade at the city, but our attention was drawn to our own guests. But they being a little dilatory in their operations, I stepped into an old warehouse which, stood close by me, with the door open, inviting me in, and sat down upon a stool; the floor was strewed with papers which had in some former period been used in ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... in spite of its monotony, humanity is perennially interesting to itself. Therefore among the strenuous, the hurrying, and the anxious-eyed, one girl loitered on dilatory foot from wide ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to the office of the Chief of Gen. Schenck's staff, to whose mercies I was consigned. Colonel Cheesebrough was civil enough; but, in his turn, professed himself unable to deal with my case, and referred it to the General. Caesar was not less dilatory than Felix. I never saw the potentate before whose nod Baltimore trembles (he was unwell, I believe, or unusually sulky), but I underwent a lengthened interrogatory at the mouth of a very young and girlish-looking aide-de-camp. In the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Woodruff, who had come to Weston on horseback, rode over separately. Mr Elliot was a man of good common sense, though his opinions were not quite so weighty as his person, which declined to rise in one scale when fifteen stone was in the other. He was a just man also, though perhaps he was less dilatory in attending to the wishes of a member of one of the great county families than he might be in the case of a mere nobody. If a rich man and a poor one had a dispute, he considered that the presumption was in favour of the former, but he did not allow this prejudice to influence ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... was the crack sprinter of his town—somewhere in the South—was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress. One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks in arrears ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... drank tea with her by the light of shaded candles, and talked of George Meredith and Walter Pater. It was notorious that any fool could pass the examinations of the Bar Council, and he pursued his studies in a dilatory fashion. When he was ploughed for his final he looked upon it as a personal affront. At the same time the lady in Kensington Square told him that her husband was coming home from India on leave, and was a man, though ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... dawdling, dilatory, gradual, lingering, slack, delaying, drowsy, inactive, moderate, sluggish, deliberate, dull, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted to memory, what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by guess what ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... belonged; and which, indeed, a few years since might have been inscribed there with much justice. "Festina lente," Mr. Die would say to all those who came to him in any sort of hurry. And then when men accused him of being dilatory by premeditation, he would say no, he had always recommended despatch. "Festina," he would say; "festina" by all means; but "festina lente." The doctrine had at any rate thriven with the teacher, for Mr. Die had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... went on to relate that the girl, finding her shepherd dilatory, turned her attention to another swain, and at last ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... NIECE,—My sister and myself are quite annoyed to seem so dilatory in fixing our time for visiting you; however, we hope (D. V.) to be with you on Saturday, the sixth of July. I hope your little olive branches are both quite well, and also your sister; we shall be glad to renew and make fresh acquaintance amongst the young ones. I suppose ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... I have had some experience dealing with corporations. And I record my deliberate conviction here that of all corporations church corporations are financially the worst; the most loose and dilatory and unconsciously dishonest. I record it as my deliberate conviction, having had some opportunities for knowing, that in the Calvinistic church, of the others I don't pretend to know anything, on the average not one ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... forgiveness a thousand times; and I own and bemoan that I have been too dilatory in the performance of my promise, but if you could only see how I am importuned to attend private concerts, causing me great loss of time, and the mass of work with which I am burdened, you would indeed, dear lady, feel the utmost ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... attack, often of a very personal character, which transfers the discussion to a new and quite different field. His chief weapons in the petty war which I am obliged to wage with him, as often as the interests which we represent diverge, are: (1) Passive resistance, i.e., a dilatory treatment of the affair, by which he forces upon me the role of a tiresome dun, and not infrequently, by reason of the nature of the affair, that of a paltry dun. (2) In case of attack, the fait accompli, in the shape of apparently ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Rodd. He's a dilatory old impostor. I don't believe he means for me to go at all. By the way, did you have the men up and give them that big ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... things; at least, so it appears to me, who have too strong a development of the American organ of 'go-ahead-ativeness' to feel easy under its tantalizing effects. A Frenchman ought to have as many lives as a cat to bring to pass, on his dilatory plan of procedure, the same results that a Yankee would accomplish ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... all contributed; moreover, Felix had said something about Derek's having been concerned in something rash. If darling Nedda were there it would occupy his mind and help to make him careful. Never dilatory in forming resolutions, she decided to take the girl over with her on the morrow. Kirsteen had a dear little spare room, and Nedda should take her bag. It would be a nice surprise for them all. Accordingly, next morning, not wanting to give any trouble, she sent Thomas down to the Red Lion, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... being where he was, the death of Polonius was necessary now to the death of the king. Hamlet's resolve is instant, and the act simultaneous with the resolve. The weak man is sure to be found wanting when immediate action is necessary; Hamlet never is. Doubtless those who blame him as dilatory, here blame him as precipitate, for they judge according to appearance ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... reader may object, Well, what about Uncle Toby? From what void did he spring? Iden, to our mind, is almost as masterly a conception, as broadly human a figure as Uncle Toby. And Mrs. Iden, where will you find this type of nervous, irritable wife, full of spiteful disillusioned love for her dilatory husband better painted than by Jefferies? But Mrs. Iden is a type, not an individual, the reader may say. Excellent reader! and what about the Widow Wadman? She is no less and no more of an individual ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... days after the fall of Plevna, so that she could not hope that the Russians would show any special tenderness towards her national aspirations. It is difficult to see what Serbia could have hoped to gain from the elder brother, if she had been less dilatory; she gained from this intervention no vast gratitude from the younger brother. Men may still be found in Bulgarian frontier villages who were prominent there during the Serbian army's regime. Some of the officers ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... strength. But once he gets the notion that his "boss" is afraid of, or for, him or his feelings or his health, he loses interest in working for that man. So a little effort to lighten or expedite his work, a little leniency in excusing the dilatory finishing of a job, a little easing-up under stress of weather, are taken as so many indications of a desire to conciliate. And conciliation means weakness every time. Your lumber-jack likes to be met front to front, one strong man to another. As you value your authority, the love of ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... office of good traditions: highly respectable, very old-fashioned, slow moving, not to say dilatory, but tenacious of its dignity as regards other departments, and obstinately wedded to its own way of conducting the business of ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the past two years had demonstrated the dilatory and unsatisfactory consequences of our indirect transaction of business through the foreign office in London, in which the views and wishes of the government of the Dominion of Canada were practically predominant, but were only to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the quartermaster had fulfilled all the long and dilatory formalities without which no French soldier can be married, he was passionately in love with Juana di Mancini, and Juana had had time to think of her ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... witnesses, confronting of them together, declarations, denunciations, libels, certificates, royal missives, letters of appeal, letters of attorney, instruments of compulsion, delineatories, anticipatories, evocations, messages, dimissions, issues, exceptions, dilatory pleas, demurs, compositions, injunctions, reliefs, reports, returns, confessions, acknowledgments, exploits, executions, and other such-like confects and spiceries, both at the one and the other side, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... quieted down in San Francisco, he returned and took up his work again. Artemus Ward, whom he had met in Virginia City, wrote him for something to use in his (Ward's) new book. Clemens sent the frog story, but he had been dilatory in preparing it, and when it reached New York, Carleton, the publisher, had Ward's book about ready for the press. It did not seem worth while to Carleton to include the frog story, and handed it over to Henry Clapp, editor of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... silent consternation prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy. He represented to them that the choice of cautious, dilatory measures had been long since out of their power; that Maximin, implacable by nature, and exasperated by injuries, was advancing towards Italy, at the head of the military force of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was either to meet him bravely in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... with Warren's dilatory movements in the battle of White Oak Road and in his failure to reach Sheridan in time, that I was very much afraid that at the last moment he would fail Sheridan. He was a man of fine intelligence, great earnestness, quick perception, and could make his dispositions ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... angry at the fellow for being so dilatory and fastidious at such a time. The strange youth then spread his coat over the blanket, laid his right hand on it, and his left on bridle and mane, and with a leap from the ground threw himself astride the horse,—a display of agility which took ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... indeed, more often presupposes than begets good spirits in such temperaments as his. He declares, it is true, that he "sports much with my Uncle Toby" in the volume which he is now "fabricating for the laughing part of the world;" but if so he must have sported only after a very desultory and dilatory fashion. On the whole one cannot escape a very strong impression that Sterne was heartily bored by his sojourn in Toulouse, and that he eagerly longed for the day of his return to "the dalliance and the wit, the flattery and the strife," which he had left behind him in the two ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... say—of the Countess, was not nearly so soon ended as that of Count Robert, who occupied his time, as husbands of every period are apt to do, in little sub-acid complaints between jest and earnest, upon the dilatory nature of ladies, and the time which they lose in doffing and donning their garments. But when the Countess Brenhilda came forth in the pride of loveliness, from the inner chamber where she had attired herself, her husband, who was still ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the proceeding has been reverently and gravely dealt with reads like a metaphysical discussion in the dark ages. The names formerly used were superb. Complaint, demurrer, confession and avoidance, traverse, replication, dilatory pleas, peremptory ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... he had heard nothing, and seen nothing, and knew nothing, and could recollect nothing, and say nothing, about the business in hand; and nothing but nothing could be got out of him by a single member of the bench, though all took him in hand by turns. He was finally sent down. By this time, so dilatory had been the proceedings, the sun was sinking in the west. My companion, weary of the prosecutor's long story, had withdrawn to the inn to order dinner. As the second witness was about to give his testimony, a note was handed to the old burgermeister, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... accounts of us; but the same demon who had inspired them with the design of staying in the Lewis, hinder'd them from accepting this proposition. We were all in the dark what could be the meaning of these dilatory proceedings, which was discover'd to be the effects of the measures they had already taken, for before the Earl Marischal's arrival, they (not knowing but that he might have a commission superior to the Marquess of Tullibardine's) had wrote letters in a ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... drive Anderson and his troops out. Anderson promptly telegraphed to Washington for supplies and re-enforcements, and expressed his intention of staying as long as the walls stood. The Government was dilatory, but finally concluded to re-enforce the fort, and to that end secured the steamer "Star of the West," and began the work of provisioning her for the voyage. It was decided that she should carry no guns: that would look too much like war; and accordingly, on the 8th of January, this helpless ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you long ago; I should have blabbed nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the great Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor of Germany. Moreover he was a personal friend of Henry, to whom he had been indebted for his elevation to the papal throne. His course, therefore, was non-committal and dilatory and vacillating, although he doubtless was on the side of the prelate who exalted ecclesiastical authority. But he was obliged from policy to be prudent and conciliatory. He patiently heard both sides, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... down from London only last night, sir. Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat dilatory." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... too sore for him to stand still at and do nothing."[159] It was "against his duty towards God and the world to tolerate them." The imperialist cardinals, impatient before, clamoured that the evil had been caused by the dilatory timidity with which the case had been handled from the first.[160] The consistory sate day after day with closed doors;[161] and even such members of it had before inclined to the English side, joined in the common indignation. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the habit of getting to school any time in the morning, though usually late, are generally behind time all the way through life. They make the men and women who are late at meeting, late to meet their business engagements, late everywhere—a tardy, dilatory, inefficient class of persons, wherever they are found. It is good to be obliged to plan and do by car-time. The man who is obliged to keep his watch by railroad time, and then make all things bend to the same, is more likely to form the habit of being punctual, than he who ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... from room to room tying and untying brown paper parcels in his most methodical and most dilatory manner. His sisters stood watching him ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... fixed his eyes on Gwent's hard, lantern-jawed face with a fiery intensity—"Remember, it's not child's play! Whoever takes what I can give, holds the mastery of the world! I offer it to the United States—but I would have preferred to offer it to Great Britain, being as I am, an Englishman. But the dilatory British men of science have snubbed me once—and I do not intend them to have the chance of doing it again. Briefly—I offer the United States the power to end wars, and all thought or possibility of war for ever. No Treaty of Versailles or any other treaty ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... their saviour and be saluted 'father' and 'patron.' There, indeed, was our Minucius at fault, as what honest, poor man is not, when confronted by the wiles of those bred to craft and trickery! See, too, how the consuls have followed the same dilatory measures, and can you doubt that it is all by agreement with these traitor nobles? Know well, now, that this war will have no ending until a man of the people ends it—a real plebeian; a new man. See you not that both consuls, by tarrying with ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... mother face to face for the first time since he had left his home. He hurried on his clothes, however, without a moment's delay, and went out directly—now walking at the top of his speed, now running, in his anxiety not to appear dilatory or careless in paying obedience to the summons that ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... a distance on contrary sides, it is impossible to approach one but by receding from the other; by long deliberation and dilatory projects, they may be both lost, but can never be both gained. It is, therefore, necessary to compare them, and, when we have determined the preference, to withdraw our eyes and our thoughts at once from that which reason directs ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... had seemed to be dilatory before, and the generally received opinion in the camp had been that the defending party, to save risk, was to ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the East, where his early life had been spent, a splendid girl awaited his dilatory letters and set herself patiently to endure the months of separation until he should have attained a home and a living and be ready for ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... said quietly, and retired to a desk in the back part of the bank, where he opened a huge book, turned over some leaves rapidly, and ran his finger down a page. His dilatory action seemed to increase the young woman's panic. Her pallor increased, and she swayed slightly, as if in danger of falling, but brought her right hand to the assistance of the left, and so steadied herself against the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... men, of whom, however, he seems to have over-rated the number, would, in his opinion, be more eager than others to recover the ground they had lost, by an extraordinary show of zeal and attachment to the crown. But if Monmouth was inclined to dilatory counsels, far different were the views and designs of other exiles, who had been obliged to leave their country on account of their having engaged, if not with him personally, at least in the same cause with him, and who were naturally enough his advisers. Among these were Lord Grey ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... in the Church of the Osservanza at San Miniato, containing two lifesize figures in oils—S. John the Baptist and S. Anthony of Padua. But as for the panel that was to stand between them, Giovanni Antonio, being dilatory by nature and leisurely over his work, lingered over it so long that he who had given the commission died: wherefore that panel, which was to contain a Christ lying dead in the lap ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... chair in which Evan had been sitting; it was hard to move the table around which they had been so happy; even that little trace of last night could not be kept. Evan's cup, Evan's plate, the bit of bread he had left on it, Diana's fingers were dilatory and unwilling in dealing with them. But then she roused herself and dallied no longer. Table and cups and eatables were safely removed; the kitchen brushed up, and the table set for breakfast: the fire made in the outer ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... inauguration of the popular movement for the extension of the franchise to women (which may be dated from the day in which our late noble leader, JOHN STUART MILL, addressed the House of Commons on this subject, in May, 1867), feel that our lives are passing away while wearily awaiting the dilatory educational development ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... encountered off the banks of Newfoundland, and more chilling and disagreeable to the human frame. It did not disperse the whole day. What with the difficulty that attended our landing, and the long delay consequent upon the very dilatory movements of the Custom-House officers, the night had fairly closed in—it did not add much to the darkness—before I was en route to an hotel. A Scotch fellow-passenger, who had maintained a sullen reserve ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had set in for church. It was a proper, dilatory tide. Every silk-hat glistened, every shoe was blacked, the flowers on the women's hats were as fresh as the daffodils against the house fronts. Few met face to face, now and then a faster walker would catch up with acquaintances and join them or, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... declare the law: but the court will not do so unless a determination of such point as shall arise make it necessary to the determination of a controversy, and hence a case must be presented in which there can be no rational doubt. All this would subject the aggrieved parties to much dilatory, expensive and needless litigation, which your memorialist prays your honorable body to dispense with by appropriate legislation, as there can be no purpose in special arguments "ad inconvenienti," enlarging or contracting the import of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... avoided, on the other hand, as for the most part quite impracticable, are all movements of a dilatory nature for the formation of fronts of attack, as well as long movements of manoeuvres and considerable changes of front when ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... your last letter shortly before leaving home for this place. Owing to this cause and to having been more unwell than usual I have been very dilatory in writing to you. When I last heard, about six or eight weeks ago, from Mr. Murray, one hundred copies of your book had been sold, and I daresay five hundred may now be sold. (680/1. "Facts and Arguments ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... they become irritable, liable to cold, to rheumatic affections, and nervous depression. They find themselves weary when they rise in the morning. Unfitted for close application to business, they become dilatory and careless, often lapsing into entire lack of energy, and not seldom into the love of intoxicating stimulants. Numbers of husbands and wives entering upon these experiences lose the charm of health, the cheerfulness ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Sir Ralph," he observed, "workmen are often dilatory, and we cannot always depend upon their ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Apaches then were riding in many small bands, but were kept on the move constantly by the vigorous measures of General Miles, and he assumes that the Apache question would have been settled had his predecessor, General Crook, been less dilatory. The writer expressed his conclusion that in military skill, strategy and ability the Indians far excelled their opponents, and details that fifty or sixty Apaches the year before had killed more than 75 white settlers, all the while pursued ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... neglected to avail himself of the intelligence; suffering several days to elapse before he made any inquiry as to the nature of the communication which had thus been volunteered. Fortunately for the Queen-mother, one of her own adherents was less dilatory; and having ascertained that the confidential lackey of Rucellai had arrived in Paris, he caused him to be found, and took possession of the letters before they could be transferred to the hands of her enemy. As, however, he in his turn delayed to forward them to Marie de Medicis, she became ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... I had been dilatory in accepting your kind offer of coming hither, I proposed it as soon as I returned. As we are so burnt, and as my workmen have disappointed me, I am not quite sorry that I had not the pleasure of seeing you this week. Next week I am obliged to be in town on business. If you ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Antonio Perez entreated him to be cautious. At this date, 1576, Perez was really the friend of Escovedo. But Escovedo would not be advised; he wrote an impatient memorial to the King, denouncing his stitchless policy (descosido), his dilatory, shambling, idealess proceedings. So, at least, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell asserts in his Don John of Austria: 'the word used by Escovedo was descosido, "unstitched."' But Mr. Froude says ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Arms"—of the doctor's house. "There is dear old Jack in the porch," said Bessie; and Miss Buff, with a kind, sympathetic nod, turned off to the church gate and left her. Jack marched down the path and Willie followed. Then Mrs. Carnegie appeared, hustling dilatory Tom before her, and leading by the hand Polly, a little white-frocked girl of nine. As they issued into the road Bessie stepped more quickly forward. The boys stared at the elegant young lady in mourning, and even her mother gazed for one moment ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the original. He who construed Csar's mode of passing into Gaul summa diligentia, "on the top of the diligence,'' must have been of an imaginative turn of mind. Probably the time will soon come when this will need explanation, for a public will arise which knows not the dilatory "diligence.'' ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... will like the end; I think it is rather strong meat. I have got into such a deliberate, dilatory, expansive turn, that the effort to compress this last yarn was unwelcome; but the longest yarn has to come to an end some time. Please look it over for carelessnesses, and tell me if it had any effect upon your jaded editorial mind. I'll see if ever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to put himself in the way of honour, nor to go where others are the chief men; and to be remiss and dilatory, except in the case of some great honour or work; and to be concerned in few things, and those great and famous. It is a property of him also to be open, both in his dislikes and his likings, because concealment is a consequent of fear. Likewise to be careful for reality ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar rifle. It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard's grave." With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again upon the road. The lights of the "Summit House" presently dropped here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees. Another stretch through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... spite of both active Yankee and dilatory Dutchmen, the operation was completed, and the little Sumter once more ready for sea. Even now, however, she was not to get away without a parting arrow from her indefatigable enemy. On the morning of her proposed departure the captain's negro ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... strike "three causeless blows." Of course he disobeys. According to the "Cambro-Briton" version it happened that one day, preparing for a fair, he desired his wife to go to the field for his horse. Finding her dilatory in doing so, he tapped her arm thrice with his glove, saying, half in jest: "Go, go, go!" The blows were slight, but they were blows; and, the terms of the marriage contract being broken, the dame departed—she and her ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... preceding Sunday his Holiness was carried in an open chair from St. Peter's to St. Mary's, attended by the Sacred College, in cavalcade; and, after Mass, distributed several dowries for the marriage of poor and distressed virgins. The proceedings of that Court are very dilatory concerning the recognition of King Charles, notwithstanding the pressing instances of the Marquis de Prie, who has declared, that if this affair be not wholly concluded by the 15th instant, he will retire from that Court, and order the Imperial troops to return ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... his blows were like, having been the involuntary recipient of some of them. Some, do I say? I had received more than a dilatory donkey on the road ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... situation had gone to Hitt. And through them the editor had daily striven to awaken a nation's conscience. Ames read the articles, and through the columns of the Budget sought to modify them to the extent of shifting the responsibility to the shoulders of the mill hands themselves, and to a dilatory Congress that was criminally negligent in so framing a cotton tariff as to make such industrial suffering possible. Nor did he omit to foully vilify the Express and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... over the scrubby bushes and surrounded by a dusty halo, the dilatory pachyderm bore down upon us, and, after the mahout had been interviewed in unmeasured terms by my host, went rolling slowly to the station to pick up ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... on coming into the fortune was of Phoebe, and the opportunities it laid open to him where she was concerned. His uncle had been dilatory in the matter of dying, but his nephew did not have it in his kindly heart to hold it up against the old gentleman. Still, if he had passed on a fortnight earlier, the decree might have been anticipated by a few days and Phoebe at least saved for him. Seeing that the poor old ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... would seem as if Persano, the Italian commander in chief, could easily have executed his savage-sounding orders to "sweep the enemy from the Adriatic, and to attack and blockade them wherever found." He was dilatory, however, in assembling his fleet, negligent in practice and gun drill, and passive in his whole policy to a degree absolutely ruinous to morale. War was declared June 20, and had long been foreseen; yet it was ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... own private property. His lack of initiative in this matter aroused a certain amount of impatience among the sentimentally-minded women-folk of his home circle; his mother, his sisters, an aunt-in-residence, and two or three intimate matronly friends regarded his dilatory approach to the married state with a disapproval that was far from being inarticulate. His most innocent flirtations were watched with the straining eagerness which a group of unexercised terriers concentrates on the slightest movements of a human being who ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... delayed to comply with our proposals, and our armament was made necessary by unsatisfactory answers and dilatory debates. The delay certainly increased our expenses, and, it is not unlikely, that the increase of our expenses put an end ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of his own people, and their total want of fidelity; the bribes from the Sultan of Sambas; the false representations of numerous Borneo Pangerans who asserted the immense profit to be derived from the country; the dilatory movements of the Chinese; some doubts of my good faith; and, above all, the natural tenacity of power, all conspired to involve the rajah in the utmost perplexity, and would, but for counterbalancing circumstances, have turned the scale ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... village artisans the Chamar is considered by the cultivators to be faithless and dilatory in his dealings with them; and they vent their spleen in sayings such as the following:—"The Kori, the Chamar and the Ahir, these are the three biggest liars that ever were known. For if you ask the Chamar whether he has mended your shoes he says, 'I am at the last stitch,' when ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... look-out. If you had been born a Dumas—I am speaking of fecundity, if you please, and of nothing else—if you had been born a Dumas, and could rattle off a romance in a fortnight, you might be excused for not keeping tally of your productions. Pitiful, dilatory worker that you are, if you cannot remember them, how can you expect the world (good Heavens!) ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... where Ludovic was concerned. She was not at all shy of referring to him and his dilatory courtship. Indeed, it ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of their long-desired Army, Navy and commercial fleet. There could be considered, as factors tending to the preservation of peace, only the pacific sentiment of the majority of the people working in alliance with the dilatory policy of the President, who still nourished a hope that some favorable turn or other in events, or perhaps the advent of peace, would give him a chance to avoid breaking of ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... is apt to be sure. Her action in educational matters is often provokingly dilatory, but she holds what she gains and thus continues to progress. She does not take a step forward until she is sure of her ground, but then she stands firm. Her actions are the results of deliberate thought based on adequate data gathered from actual experiments and not ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... officials to be absorbed on their death by the Imperial Treasury, it of course appeared easier to await the natural inheritance of Ali's treasures than to attempt to seize them by a war which would certainly absorb part of them. Therefore, while Pacho Bey's zeal was commended, he obtained only dilatory answers, followed at length by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... George III. forgave the despoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended to fight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and the action of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory and ineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. In the existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift and crushing might well be expected by all who ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the Flaminian circus, in the presence of an immense concourse of plebeians and persons of every rank. The plebeian tribune accused, not only Marcellus, but the nobility generally. "It was owing," he said, "to their dishonesty and dilatory conduct, that Hannibal occupied Italy, as though it were his province, for now ten years; that he had passed more of his life there than at Carthage. That the Roman people were enjoying the fruits of the prolonged command of ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... by the Mim's [Footnote: His pet name for my mother.] letter, which lies before me, and which must, the Mim says so, go in this morning's mail. But my limited time does not diminish my affection for you, Annie, nor prevent my thinking of you and wishing for you. I long to see you through the dilatory nights. At dawn when I rise, and all day, my thoughts revert to you in expressions that you cannot hear or I repeat. I hope you will always appear to me as you are now painted on my heart, and that you will endeavour to improve and so conduct yourself as to make you happy and me joyful all ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... discreet in his personal life and conduct toward others, he was free and unconstrained in his letters, in which he often reveals himself, without hesitation, just as he felt. We see him worried, troubled, confused, doubting and dilatory, but also cheerful, alert, bold, daring, and unrestrained to the degree of cynicism; altogether, however, as a man of tempered character and confident in himself; who, although the outer conditions offered to his imagination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... incited them, by private instigations and public encouragements, to erect temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses. He bestowed commendations upon those who were prompt in complying with his intentions, and reprimanded such as were dilatory; thus promoting a spirit of emulation which had all the force of necessity. He was also attentive to provide a liberal education for the sons of their chieftains, preferring the natural genius of the Britons to the attainments of the Gauls; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... much rope. I know as well as you do that willing information is worth ten times as much as when it is forced. You have made love to the girl, you have been playing the fool for six weeks with her, and we are no nearer than when we started." He sneered openly. "Since when have we become so dilatory, my friend? You seem to have lost your form ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... day wore on, he was several times conscious of a wish to quicken the passing of its moments, and when Sir Henry Grebe, the penultimate patient, proved to be an elderly malade imaginaire of dilatory habit, involved speech, and determined misery, he was obliged firmly to check a rising desire to write a hasty bread-pill prescription and fling him in the direction of Marlborough House. The half-hour chimed, and still Sir Henry explained the strange symptoms by which he was beset—the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... great attention to the ship, however, the pilot, who was of the dilatory school, succeeded about 3 P.M. in getting us round that awkward but very necessary buoy, which makes so many foul winds of fair ones, when the ship's bead was laid to the eastward, with square yards. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you go?" of The Army, wherever its songs are heard, has ever been more than a kindly invitation. It has been an urging to which millions of undecided souls will for ever owe their deliverance from the dilatory and hindering influences around them, into an earnest start ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... successful to profit by this advantage. A public body may be so tied by its own rules that it can act but slowly. Thus the hot desire of to-day may be moderated by the cool reflection of to-morrow. To this end are arranged the three readings of bills and the various other dilatory devices of most parliaments and congresses. But when great constitutional changes are to be attempted, such measures as these are insufficient. Great changes should be introduced one by one, separately debated and fought over. Elections ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... We had 47, the opponents 42 votes. Eight votes were still to be cast. Two more for us and the day would have been ours. The legally appointed moment for closing the ballot-box had come. All looked at the clock and called for the dilatory voters. Then there was a trampling of feet in the corridor. A group of eight persons pushed noisily into the hall, at their head the vulgar wine-merchant Piepenbrink, the same one who at the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... psychological. Bowed down with shame at reverse where only triumph had been anticipated, the exultation over victory where disaster had been more naturally awaited produced a wild reaction. The effect was decisive. Inefficient and dilatory as was much of the subsequent administration of the navy, there was never any further question of its continuance. And yet, from the ship which thus played the most determining part in the history of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Franco-Prussian conflict and, if I am not mistaken, in the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866, also. This made of the individual soldier a host in himself. The old muzzle-loader, with its ramrod and dilatory "motions," ought to have been obsolete long before Grant left the West to lead the Army of the Potomac from the Wilderness to Appomattox. The Michigan cavalry brigade, armed as it was with repeating carbines, was never whipped when it had a chance to use them. In arming ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... his great corpulence usually permitted the jovial man to move, he ascended to the deck, calling: "Great, greater, the greatest of news I bring, as the heaviest but by no means the most dilatory of messengers of good fortune from the city of cities. Prick up your ears, my friend, and summon all your strength, for there are instances of the fatal effect of especially lavish gifts from the blind and yet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... rest of his life. But it was not so. It was in Mr. Horsball's nature to be civil to a rich hunting country gentleman; and it was the fact also that Ralph had ever been popular with the world of the Moonbeam,—even at times when the spasmodic, and at length dilatory, mode of his payment must have become matter for thought to the master of the establishment. There was no doubt about the payments now, and Ralph's popularity was increased fourfold. Mrs. Horsball got out ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... information reaches us as to the odd nesting-places of wrens and robins. A curious feature is the number of cases where letter-boxes have been chosen, thus preventing the delivery of letters, and in consequence explaining why so many letters have not been answered. Even the biggest dilatory correspondent is not ashamed to take advantage of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... by Mrs. Goudie as the higgler, or itinerant poulterer and greengrocer, who served the house in Mr. Bates' time. He was a thin middle-aged man, with light watery eyes, a straggling beard, and an astoundingly dilatory manner. He used to pull his pony and cart into the hedge or bank by the roadside, and leave them there an unconscionable time, while he pottered about the back doors of his customers, offering the articles ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... France must be our Pole Star & our Connection must be formd with hers. Holland whose Policy is always to be at Peace may be open to Negociation & the sooner we tempt her the better. Spain must joyn with France. But she is dilatory. I wish she would recollect how much she was injured by it the last War, when she sufferd the common Enemy to beat France & her self in Detail. The Spirit of Chatham is indeed extinguishd in Britain. His decisive ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... it be not a pleasure, it is difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. Mere size, it seems to me, cannot be a fault. The fault must lie in some disproportion. If some of Scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not think that it can be shown that the large and elaborate plan on ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... though it was, of many of the ablest men in the country, had inherited the dilatory methods of the old, and did not pass an act establishing the Treasury Department until the 2d of September. Hamilton's appointment to this most important portfolio at the disposal of the President was looked ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... me released; and was well acquainted with bailiffs. 'If you are expeditious,' said he to George, 'you will have a guinea for your industry. If you are dilatory, not a farthing more than ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Grange in December news came that his mother was worse, and her recovery despaired of; and, by consent of his hostess, he hurried off to Scotsbrig,—"mournful leave given me by the Lady A., mournful encouragement to be speedy, not dilatory,"—and arrived in time to hear her last words. "Here is Tom come to bid you good-night, mother," said John. "As I turned to go, she said, 'I'm muckle obleeged to you.'" She spoke no more, but passed from sleep after sleep of coma ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... and was trying to decide whether some green sprouts were chickweed or the dilatory balsams when a sudden uproar in the next garden made her stop to listen, while Miss Henny said in a tone of great satisfaction, as the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... to the great Imperial drive thought of Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press, in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... dignity, not by choosing their episodic chapters merely, but by forcing their own original and commanding thought upon all their matter. This is the case, whether the form be that of the comprehensive, large, secure, and elaborate Njla; of Laxdla, with its dilatory introduction changing to the eagerness and quickness of the story of Gudrun; of Grettir and Gisli, giving shape in their several ways to the traditional accumulation of a hero's adventures; or, not less remarkable, the precision of Hrafnkels Saga and Bandamanna,[49] ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... whensoever thou askest, and never call it importunity. Pray in thy bed at midnight, and God will not say, I will hear thee to-morrow upon thy knees, at thy bedside; pray upon thy knees there then, and God will not say, I will hear thee on Sunday at church; God is no dilatory God, no froward God; prayer is never unseasonable, God is never asleep, nor absent. But, O my God, can I do this, and fear thee; come to thee and speak to thee, in all places, at all hours, and fear thee? Dare I ask this question? There is more boldness in ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
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