"Fooling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Browning bids the "fooling" stop; for he has touched the point of extreme divergence between the classic spirit and his own. The pallid vision which he repels speaks dumbly of pagan regret for what is past, of pagan hopelessness of the to-come. His religion, as we are again reminded, is ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... it just hangs idle on your hands; it isn't any good for business, and you can't work a telephone with it. Many a time the attention of the missionaries has been called to this defect, and they are always promising they are going to fix it; but no, they go fooling along and fooling along, and nothing is done. Speaking of education, everybody there is educated, from the highest to the lowest; in fact, it is the only country in the world where education is actually universal. And yet every now and then ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... that was settled by the way the world has ground," the young man sighed. "Why should it bother you, my fooling with the forlorn and wretched—the others? Any more than I mind ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Tutonians know their business," said Sam. "They won't stand any fooling. Just see how they have established peace! We have a ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... seated in the boxes, and found a crowded audience in full enjoyment of the quiet waggery of Keeley, who was fooling them to the top of their bent, accoutred from top to toe as Mynheer Punch the Great, while his clever little wife—who, by the way, possesses, I think, more of the "vis comica" than any actress of the day—caused sides to shake and eyes to water by her naive and humorous delineation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 1109, 1124.) There is then in the structure of his words something tragic and something comic, something blustering and something low, an obscurity, a vulgarness, a turgidness, and a strutting, with a nauseous prattling and fooling. And as his style has so great varieties and dissonances in it, so neither doth he give to his persons what is fitting and proper to each,—as state (for instance) to a prince, force to an orator, innocence to a woman, meanness of language to a poor man, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... do not you look upon me as a very ill-used gentleman?' I send my Lieutenant to match Mr. Hobhouse's Major Cartwright: and so 'good morrow to you, good master Lieutenant.' With regard to other things I will write soon, but I have been quarrelling and fooling till I can scribble ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sounds. This mightily frightened us, and not without cause; since we could see nothing, yet heard such various sounds and voices of men, women, children, horses, &c., insomuch that Panurge cried out, Cods-belly, there is no fooling with the devil; we are all beshit, let's fly. There is some ambuscado hereabouts. Friar John, art thou here my love? I pray thee, stay by me, old boy. Hast thou got thy swindging tool? See that it do not stick in thy scabbard; thou never ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... only the nonsense of those rogues upstairs. I'll take the doll back and tell them they must fix it to-night, or I'll complain of them for their fooling at this busy time," she announced, energetically; for she noted the twitching around the corners of Katy's mouth, notwithstanding the child's brave effort ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the balcony, Diemuth pretends that her strength is failing. At his entreaties she loosens and lets down her long hair, but when he tries to grasp it she jerks it back with a cry of pain and rates him harshly.—At last he perceives, that she has been fooling him all the time. He is helplessly caught in the trap and the returning citizens seeing him hanging between {436} heaven and earth deride him, congratulating Diemuth on having caught such a ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... of gunners' craft worthy of veterans in the way that these eighteen-pounders were concealed. The Germans had put some shells in the neighbourhood, but without fooling the old hands. They did not change the location of their battery and their judgment that the shots which came near were chance shots fired at another object was justified. Particularly I should ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... skins, whenever called upon to do so. They were willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is—Who shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Mr. North. Will you cease your fooling, and allow me to proceed? "I," the author of Gebir, "never lamented when I believed it lost." The MS. was mislaid at my grandmother's, and lay undiscovered for four years. "I saw it neglected; and never complained. Southey and Forster have since given it a place whence men of lower ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... crimson ribbon which served her as a girdle. "There is a horrid woman named Trapps, or Grapps, or Crapps, or something, that has fastened herself upon cousin Anna, and is mind-curing her, or Christian-sciencing her, or fooling her in some way; but Mrs. Frostwinch is too well-bred really to have any sympathy with anything so vulgar. She takes to it in desperation; but she really detests ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... out in indignation: "This priest is fooling me! Who would ever give his hand or his eye? Even if anyone would, I could never have the heart to make ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the moving of laughter always the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... no foolery," he said to her, gruffly, when they were out on the road. "I'll have no putting yourself in the wrong to save a man that's given you the go-by. If ye be fooling me, ye can stop it now if you're a daughter of mine." He shook ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his wheelchair, his sharp Scots features set in a sad smile that showed an intent to be affable even though great sorrow weighed heavily upon him. Father Bright noticed it and realized that his own face had the same sort of expression. No one was fooling anyone else, of that the priest was certain—but for anyone to admit it would be the most boorish breach of etiquette. But there was a haggardness, a look of increased age about the Laird's countenance that Father Bright did not like. His priestly intuition ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... much at your service. I'm your friend, if you'll believe me, and I don't doubt you've been hardly used; but there's one thing to be done, and you must do it at once. To be short, stop this fooling; and quit." ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dear head," answered Kut-le. Then he went on, as if half to himself: "There's been an awful lot of fooling on this expedition. Perhaps I ought to have made for the Mexican border the very night I took you." He looked at Rhoda's wide, troubled eyes. "But no, then I would have missed this wonderful desert growth of yours! But now we are going straight over the border where I ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... only fooling, dearie; it's all going to be lovely, and I'm going into that conservatory just as valiantly as the Rough Riders charged up old San Juan! Only, Marmee, don't ask me to wear white—that would be too absurd! Frankly, I'm susceptible ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... fooling away all the forenoon, I shan't get a credit mark for having my bed made early!" ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... stores. This proved impracticable, so we shelled the dumps at long range. My brigade stood by, and watched from a high plateau the bursts and the great smoke-curtains which went up, as once from burning Sodom. The affair furnished Fowke with some excellent fooling. He would stand on a knoll and gnash his teeth, in Old Testament fashion declaiming, 'I will neither wash nor shave till Tekrit has fallen.' It is unnecessary to say that the vow was kept, and overkept; and not by Fowke alone. At other times he was plaintive ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... running into Tulsa," wrote a gadder, "a native was fooling with the roller curtain, when suddenly it flew up with a snap. He looked bewildered, stuck his head out of the window, and finally said to himself, 'Well, I reckon that's the last they'll see of that ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... "Now, quit your fooling," Prescott advised, "or I'll let out a whoop that will bring five more fellows here. Do you know what they would do to you? They'd just about lynch you—-schoolboy fashion. Do you know what a schoolboy ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... myself," he blurted out roughly, "and my family, and all that. It can't be helped—now. We look at things differently. A man either wants to be an attache fooling around Baden, or he doesn't. I don't, that's all. And I go bad in offices. And I won't take money from them—or anybody. This suits me well ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... maiden fair to see, Take care! She can both false and friendly be, Beware, beware! Trust her not, She is fooling thee!" ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... spare Marie," she said with an accent of regret. "Being the eldest she has had a great deal of experience. She is like a mother to the younger ones. She has not been spending her time in fooling around idly and dancing and being out on the river, like so many girls. Rose is not worth half of Marie, and I do not see how I shall ever get the trifler trained to take Marie's place. But there ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... man says?" he exclaimed. "Mr. Ashleigh, you're fooling me! You entered this house with Sanford Quest. You must tell us where ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... revealed—and an Irish Convention composed of nominated representatives was constituted, which had no possibility of agreement except an agreement on the lines of Partition and which was doubtless planned and conceived for the purpose of fooling Ireland and America and keeping the Convention "talking" for nine months until America was wiled ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... But lo! in the morning she came down and ate it all up, saying to her friends, "She wanted to see her aunt before departing." She lived a week longer, and died, as it was supposed, again. It is said that her friends got tired of such fooling, and being determined to end the matter, adopted the white man's mode of covering her up in the ground! Again she rose up and preferred some new request; but thinking the old enchantress had stayed long enough this side the hunting grounds, they forced her down and ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Tidemand again went to housekeeping and stayed at home. Nobody knew what construction might be put on such things; Hanka did not have too many friends. Tidemand laughed at the thought that he was fooling the slanderous tongues so capitally. "She came to see me a couple of days ago; I was in my office. I thought at first it was some bill-collector, some dun or other, who knocked at my door; but it was Hanka. Can you guess what she wanted? She came to give me a hundred crowns! She had probably ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the old man said, "Gordon, I am tired of fooling with you. You are incompetent; you will never ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... smile on her face, "you tell me to prepare the ink for you, but though when you get up, you were full of the idea of writing, you only wrote three characters, when you discarded the pencil, and ran away, fooling me, by making me wait the whole day! Come now at once and exhaust all this ink ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... work or say you will not. There is no time for playing and fooling; no time, sir! do you hear? Who put ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... is helping him in this, whereas St. Auban is but fooling him with ambiguous speeches until they have the lady safe. Then might will assert itself, and St. Auban need but show his fangs to drive the sneaking coward away from the prize he fondly dreams ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... "I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. I believed that because a man cried out 'My God!' when a safe fell on him, it proved that belief ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... them, the oldest laid hers down before her brother. Kahalaomapuana saw it and was much surprised, so she secretly broke hers inside her clothing; but her brother saw her doing it and said, "Kahalaomapuana, no fooling! leave your grass stem as ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... part of the story. I had three others. Perfectly fresh eggs. Well, we put 'em in the boat, and then I went up to the tent to make some coffee, leaving my two heathens down by the beach—the one fooling about with his sting and the other helping him. It never occurred to me that the beggars would take advantage of the peculiar position I was in to pick a quarrel. But I suppose the centipede poison and the kicking I had given him had upset the one—he was always a cantankerous ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... all this fooling, fellows," begged Dick. "We all know that Ted and Hi can fight. What we want to find out is whether there are brains and muscle enough in town to get three football elevens together. Ted, put your hands in your pockets. Hi, you move back. We don't ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... shame of his recent low estimate of the Chinaman. Yip was fooling the Japs—perhaps coached by ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... her arm and pointed to the place. "You said it couldn't travel very fast," he reminded her. "Look down there where you sat fooling with the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit therein, not fooling. The House full, and in all things of mighty content to me. Every body wonders that we have no news from Bredah of the ratification of the peace; and do suspect that there is some ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... or may not be wise; but you will forgive me for venturing to suggest it. It is we who are the proud and erect and patriotic Americans, fearing nobody; but the other fellows are fooling some of the people in making ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Toomey. "Secret of it is, I like them; so by an' by they learn to like me well enough, an' try to please me. I make it worth their while, too. Also, they know I'll stand no fooling. Fear an' love, rightly mixed, boys—plenty of love, an' jest enough fear to keep it from spilin'—that's a mixture'll carry a man ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... Her blue and yellow pestilence (That plague so awful in my time To young and touchy sons of rhyme)— The Quarterly, at three months' date, To catch the Unread One, comes too late; And nonsense, littered in a hurry, Becomes "immortal," spite of Murray. But bless me!—while I thus keep fooling, I hear a voice cry, "Dinner's cooling." That postman too (who, truth to tell, 'Mong men of letters bears the bell,) Keeps ringing, ringing, so infernally That I must stop— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was a contemporary of that Flying Monk of whom I spoke in Chapter X, and he belonged to the same religious order. If, in what I then said about the flying monk, there appears to be some trace of light fooling in regard to this order and its methods, let amends be made by what I have to tell about old Salandra, the discovery of whose book is one of primary importance for the history of English letters. Thus I thought at the time; ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... your uncle makes me tired," Mayne remarked. "If you get what I mean, it's like watching a dead man chase the boys about; you feel it's unnatural to see him on his feet. Well, one has to pay for fooling with a climate like this, and I'm afraid the bill he'll get will break him. Can't you ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... anything less like such a style be imagined? Once genius is granted, heaven-born genius, a mother-wit beyond the dreams of fancy, and then plain humdrum men, ordinary judicial intelligences, will do well to be on their guard against it. 'Beware—beware! he is fooling thee.' Shakespeare's genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, after reading The Tempest, are ready to maintain that its author must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... for it. He could not obtain it in this way, so he began to bite at the box and to pull at it with all his strength. During the fifteen minutes allowed him, he worked at the box in a great variety of ways, fooling with the locks which had been attached to the hasps as well as with the cross bars and continually reaching in at the one or the other end. He was somewhat distracted by the presence of the two observers and attended rather unsatisfactorily to the task in hand. Not once did he touch the poles, ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... they turned back toward the camp under the straggly willows. But this was speedily dissipated by that sovereign tonic for such feelings-namely, work. Much was to be done on the remaining monoplane, and with the exception of brief intervals of "fooling" the young people spent the rest of the day on finishing its equipment. Sunset found the machine ready for flight and the girl aviators and Roy very ready indeed for the supper to which Peter Bell presently summoned them by loud ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... "Keep everlastingly at it! That's my motto. That's what's brought me to where I am to-day. I've retired now—though I still have my irons in the fire—but when I was your age I worked early and late. I didn't waste my time fooling round like young men do. No, sir! My only thought was how to turn everything to advantage. I denied myself everything; lived on two bits a day, I did, and put my savings to work. The cents and the dollars are good and willing little servants if you make them ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... story out of nothing," he exclaimed, impatiently; "and fooling my time here may cost me ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... Daddy!" she protested. "You can't be in earnest. You're only fooling; you're only trying to frighten me. You don't really mean it; oh, please, Daddy, say you don't ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... every day she took him hunting with her and taught him all the things that she had learned about hunting: about how to steal Farmer Brown's chickens without awakening Bowser the Hound, and all about the thousand and one ways of fooling a ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... education, and much crudity of mind, who has inadvertently strayed into the literature of imagination. The earlier books were excellent story-telling, though without any Stevensonian distinction; Kipps was almost a masterpiece; Tono-Bungay a piece of admirable fooling, enriched with some real character-creation, a thing extremely rare in Mr. Wells's books; while Mr. Britling Sees It Through is perhaps more likely to live than any other of his novels, because the subject ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "No fooling now,—feel the end of that gun in your back?" The other made no reply. Inside the door he took a candle from the box against the wall ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fooling of Thoas is full of wit and double meanings. The end of it is rather like the famous scene in Forget- me-not, where the Corsican avenger is induced to turn his back in order to let a lady pass out of the room without being seen and compromised, the lady in question being really ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... colt back to the hotel stable through the moonlight, and woke up the hostler, asleep behind the counter, on a bunk covered with buffalo-robes. The half-grown boy did not wake easily; he conceived of the affair as a joke, and bade Bartley quit his fooling, till the young man took him by his collar, and stood him on his feet. Then he fumbled about the button of the lamp, turned low and smelling rankly, and lit his lantern, which contributed a rival stench to the choking air. He kicked together the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... do nothing. Now common sense is all that is necessary to distinguish what is good and evil, whether it be in life or in books: but then your education must not be that of public teaching and private fooling; you must not counteract the effects of common sense by instilling prejudice, or encouraging weakness; your education may not be carried to the utmost goal: but as far as it does go you must see that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vent to his pent-up feelings. "I can't, I won't stand this any longer," muttered the lieutenant, as he took his six strides forward. At this first sound of his master's voice the dog pricked up the remnants of his ears, and they both turned aft. "She has been now fooling me for six years;" and as he concluded this sentence, Mr Vanslyperken and Snarleyyow had reached the taffrail, and the dog raised his tail to the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... back to camp with me, and bunk in with us to-night," suggested the lad, "We shall want to make an early start in the morning, anyway. I think it will be safer there, too. That pair won't dare come fooling around our camp, knowing they can't trifle with us," added the lad, with a note ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... conditions of men were gathered there—officers and privates in mutual good fellowship. The Second-in-Command of the Reedshires had just given them a ballad, and sung it jolly well too; and the armourer sergeant and one of their own lieutenants were fooling about as they waited to ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... advertised it as a trick," she said, in an injured tone, "as, say, the conjurors do such tricks, but everybody knows they're fooling their audience. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... he commanded. "He played a joke on you, that's all. Serves you right for fooling with him. That is the ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... that persons who sell v.d. preventives as such, with directions, are liable to police prosecution and imprisonment. (Vide Circular 202, Ministry of Health, May 31st, 1921.) This may be mere "politics," but it looks uncommonly like fooling with death.—E.A.R.] ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... "Twelfth Night," who, reserving his sharper jests for Sir Toby, had doubtless enough of the jargon of his calling to captivate the imbecility of his brother knight, who is made to exclaim: "In sooth, thou wast in very gracious fooling last night when thou spokest of Pigrogremitus, and of the vapours passing the equinoctials of Quenbus; 't was very good, i' faith!" It is entertaining to find commentators seeking to discover some meaning in the professional jargon of such a passage ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... pretend he's fooling the public by giving news, eh, Bat? Brydges, if you argue that fashion, you must excuse me ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... don't you think a couple of girls fooling about alone look rather silly? It wouldn't really be ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... you, let's have no more fooling about it, but give me your blessing; I am Launcelot, your boy that was, your son that is, your child ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... as she stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn't here when she broke cargo. If anybody else had bought her but this cursed Missourian, who hasn't got the hayseed out of his hair, I might have found out something from him, and saved myself this kind of fooling, which isn't in my line. If I could get possession of a loft on the main deck, well forward, just over the fore-hold, I could satisfy myself in a few hours, but the loft is rented by that crazy Frenchman who parades Montgomery Street every afternoon, and though old Pike ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... foolin'—quit yer fooling" the strange voice iterated. "I'll larn ye ter be afeared o' the devil. Long legs now ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... where you are!" Her words rang shrilly. "Here—fooling 'round with Isobel and you let the South High beat us by two points! You know you were the only girl we had who could beat Nina Sharpe in the breast stroke. They put in Mary Reed and she was like a rock. And you swam thirty-eight ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... is a man who has lived forty or fifty years; and a chance shot sentence or word lances him, and reveals to him a trait which he has always possessed, but which, until now, he had not the remotest idea that he possessed. For forty or fifty years he has been fooling himself about a matter as plain as the nose ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... immediate effects, but the long-continued administration of such small doses seemed to produce the same results as the use of large doses over a shorter period. There was a tendency to diminish the appetite and to produce a fooling of fulness and uneasiness in the stomach and sometimes actual nausea, also one of fulness in the head manifested as a dull headache which disappeared when the preservative was dropped. The continued administration of large doses, 60 to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to any of the family for some time, from the fact, firstly, that I didn't know where they were, and, secondly, because I have been fooling myself with the idea that I was going to leave New York every day for the last two weeks. I have taken a liking to the abominable place, and every time I get ready to leave I put it off a day or ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gentry, and the rest of that sort of thing. You see, we're trading and trading, my boy, but there's not a kopek of profit in it. Maybe the clerks are going wrong and are carrying off stuff to their folks and mistresses. You ought to give 'em a word of advice. What's the use of fooling around without making any profits? Don't they know the tricks of the trade? It's high time, it ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... I, in fooling about Flanders, fell into a fixed affection for the town of Mechlin or Malines. Our rest there was so restful that we almost felt it as a home, and hardly ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... worked up now. He had thrown down his walking-stick and was plunging at his pockets with his teeth set. "It's that cursed young boy of mine," he hissed; "this comes of his fooling in my pockets. By Gad! perhaps I won't warm him up when I get home. Say, I'll bet that it's in my hip-pocket. You just hold up the tail of my overcoat a ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... it," said Hal; "I was only fooling. Come, we will acquaint McKenzie with his work. And if he comes safely through this, I feel confident he will not ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... last night. His boy's over from New York. Looks like a different man since he quit fooling round here a couple of years ago. Clean cut a young fellow as I've seen for many a day. Got a look out of his eyes like his mother's. Level- headed woman, his mother—no better anywhere. If all the young bloods South had Oliver Horn's ideas we ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to any approaching wagon or machine. Roy and Gilbert climbed into the car and sat upon the seat in the cosy enclosure formed by the curtains. It was quite pleasant in there. Since it was more agreeable to be fooling with the light than to let it shine steadily, Roy amused himself by spelling the word DANGER ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... laughed at him. "I'm not fooling," he said. "I was quite sure Miss Janice would be hungry enough to eat, too; so I found a kind woman who is willing to share her dinner with us. Come on! She and her daughter are all alone. The storm has kept their friends from coming to eat with ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... situation in the struggle of labour against capital. Some day they will have to do this, for the conditions of the conflict will leave them no choice. They will perhaps learn also that the glorification of a man like Bell—whose fooling of their cause is his method of advertisement—means putting powers into one man's hands that no man ought to possess. Nothing could be more absurd than the prolongation of this 'crisis' which has been done so ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... "I am not fooling," he protested. "It would not be difficult to put a tank of water in the machine for you to put your"——He was going to say feet, but he ended his sentence, stumblingly, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... showing signs of awakening after a siesta. Estan himself was pottering about the corral, and Luis, a boy about eighteen years old, was fooling with a colt in a small enclosure that had evidently been intended for a garden and had been permitted to grow up in weeds ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... never going to have done fooling?" cried a tan-colored, wide-hipped peasant to her husband, who was lounging against the wagon pole, sporting a sprig of gentian pinned to his blouse. He was fat and handsome; and his eye proclaimed, as he was making it do heavy work at long range at a cluster ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... very pleasant to lie there in the shadow of the lime that afternoon, and listen to the mild fooling, and Ralph forgot his manners, and almost his errand too, and never offered to move. The grass began to turn golden as the sun slanted to the West, and the birds began to stir after the heat of the day, and to chirp from tree to tree. A hundred ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... blue made her look very young and very sweet, and the eager guests were sadly disappointed in her—that is to say, the ladies were; the men seemed quite content with her as she was. They took the "biscuit-shooter" description to be a piece of fooling on Mrs. Brent's part, and as they had no time after dinner to get the Captain started they remained quite convinced that he, too, had been maligned ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... before you drive me to madness! What passion moves you thus—what mystic fooling? Into what place have I been decoyed at your bidding? Why am I brought hither? Speak, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... for you fellows," he says; "you like it, but I don't. There's nothing for me to do. Scenery is not in my line, and I don't smoke. If I see a rat, you won't stop; and if I go to sleep, you get fooling about with the boat, and slop me overboard. If you ask me, I call the whole thing ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... horse wears on the inside of his self, and the horse was standing not far away, eating grass, and looking at dad. If dad had had his revolver along he would have killed the horse, but the horse seemed to know he had been fooling with an unarmed man. I got dad righted up, and he rode my pony to town, and I had to lead the bucking horse, and he eat some of the cloth ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... of the bandolining by Our Young Ladies, and of Our Missis's lecture on Foreign Refreshmenting, and of Sniff's corkscrew and his servile disposition, it is intentionally fooling, no doubt, but it is—excellent fooling! As was admirably said in the number of Macmillan for January, 1871, by the anonymous writer of a Reminiscence of the Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House,—the remark following immediately after Charles Dickens's version of the Ghost's Song in Henry ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... was no more time for fooling on the quay, for at the great end-window of the library of the convent of the Frari it could be seen that a procession of this body was forming and would presently enter the church, and the fun would begin for those ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... round with horror. "Theodore stay home! Why Mrs.—Molly—Brandeis!" Then she broke into a little relieved laugh. "But you're just fooling, of course." ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... that anyone gifted with even a moderate sense of humour would have been restrained by it from issuing a second proclamation on top of the elaborate fooling of the first. Is it possible to imagine any other community or any other Government in the world in which the ruler could seriously set to work to promulgate two such proclamations, sandwiching as they did those acts which may be regarded as the practical expression—diametrically ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Illinois believed that President McKinley would honor me with an appointment to his cabinet, he thought he was pretty sure to succeed me in the United States Senate. My secret opinion was that the politicians who were running State affairs at that time were fooling him; but it never came to a test, as I did not enter ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... steps to church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we catch of him when he has taken arms, is as the captain of a troop entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And throughout the letters which he addresses to the Speaker from the seat of war, he rarely omits the opportunity of hinting, that the soldiers are worthy of that religious liberty for which they have fought so well. "We pray you, own His people more and more; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... their income seeking health and happiness in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I know—both men and women—who pour their treasures of faith and admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all mankind and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... appeared and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he at once perceived that there was no more fooling to be done with the tall pale girl who stood austerely at her door as though to defend from one man the threshold of that house where she had already been betrayed by another. Intimidated, his cap in his hand, he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... thought would come: "What if this should be my own Juliet! Do not time and place agree with the possibility?" and for a moment life seemed as if it would burst into the very madness of delight, ever and again his common sense drove him to conclude that his imagination was fooling him. He dared not yield to the intoxicating idea. If he did, he would be like a man drinking poison, well knowing that every sip, in itself a delight, brought him a step nearer to agony and death! When she should wake, and he let the light fall upon her face, he knew—so ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... he said. "Good thing you didn't ask him any questions! He'd have taken your head off at one bite. He's right, after all. If a reporter's any good at all, he knows himself what to do. A New York paper isn't fooling around with amateurs, generally. But, under the circumstances, I think Rick might have told you something. Let's see. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... me what my duties were when I came here. And I think he's right. You should be using your brain rather than fooling around with blood stains and ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... We read that of the inhabitants of Arras, when Louis XI. took that city, a great many let themselves be hanged rather than they would say, "God save the King." And amongst that mean-souled race of men, the buffoons, there have been some who would not leave their fooling at the very moment of death. One that the hang man was turning off the ladder cried: "Launch the galley," an ordinary saying of his. Another, whom at the point of death his friends had laid upon a bed of straw before the fire, the physician asking him where ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... him at solitaire, a fooling, piffling game. He played it ninety-seven hours and failed to find it tame. In all the times he dealt the cards no two games were ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... "Stop fooling, you two, and help us think of something," Mollie demanded. "We can't stand here and admire the view ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... "this won't do. That fox is too many for us." And putting his fingers to his mouth, he gave three shrill whistles. "That will call Zab back. It won't do for us to go fooling round on that swamp. It's full of holes, six to eight feet deep, that they call beaver holes. I don't know why; perhaps the beaver made them when they were here. If you get into one of them, it's all up with you, and the snow covers everything up so smooth that we can't tell ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... on," replied Joe Atwood, as he kicked a piece of ice from his path. "Trust me not to overlook anything when it comes to radio. I'm getting to be more and more of a fan with every day that passes. Mother insists that I talk of it in my sleep, but I guess she's only fooling." ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... was not. Allenby began to develop a regrettable lack of control over his once stolid features; Sarah herself was observed to stuff her apron into her mouth and rush from the dining-room on more than one occasion. And under cover of his most energetic fooling Jim Linton watched his father and sister, and fooled the more happily whenever he made ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... older. Lord Fop. Now give me thy hand, old dad; I thought we should understand one another at last. Sir Tun. The fellow's mad!—Here, bind him hand and foot. [They bind him.] Lord Fop. Nay, pr'ythee, knight, leave fooling; thy jest begins to grow dull. Sir Tun. Bind him, I say—he's mad: bread and water, a dark room, and a whip, may bring him to his senses again. Lord Fop. Pr'ythee, Sir Tunbelly, why should ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... night—that you—that you were on the right side of the safety-curtain. You are, aren't you? Oh, please say you are! But I know you are." She held out her hands to him with a quivering gesture of confidence. "If you'll forgive me for—for fooling you," she said, "I'll forgive you—for being fooled. That's a fair offer, isn't it? Don't let's think any more about it!" Her rainbow smile transformed her face, but her eyes sought ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... missile, it was excellent. Let the knave stand up again and I'll bet you a gold noble to a brass nail that you'll not do as well within an inch. Why, the fellow's gone! Will you try on my Lord Cromwell? Nay, this is no time for fooling. What's your business, Thomas Bolle, and who ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... puzzling proposition, Professor," she whispered to herself, "and you came near fooling me very properly. For I imagined you were on your way to Washington, and here you've mixed ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... changed. He wasn't gay and joking all the time like he had been before, neither. I guess the doctor was getting along toward fifty years old. I suppose he thought if he was ever going to get anything out of his gift of the gab he better settle down to something, and quit fooling around, and do it right away. But it looked to me like he might never turn the trick. Fur he was drinking right smart all the time. Drinking made him think a lot, and thinking was making him look old. He was more'n one year older than he had ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... "No. It wouldn't be at all funny to spoil your father's morning coffee. It would be tragic. Put the salt back, rinse out the sugarbowl, and refill it with sugar. And no more April-fooling with your ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... more wayes than certainties, now you believe: What Plough brought you this Harvest, what sale of Timber, Coals, or what Annuities? These feed no Hinds, nor wait the expectation of Quarterdaies, you see it showers in to you, you are an Ass, lie plodding, and lie fooling, about this Blazing Star, and that bo-peep, whining, and fasting, to find the natural reason why a Dog turns twice about before he lie down, what use of these, or what joy in Annuities, where every man's thy study, and thy Tenant, I am ashamed ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... retorted the boat builder. "You youngsters have been fooling enough with the river ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... All this is excellent fooling in its way, a kind of play-acting in literature; but the best parts of the book are the descriptions of the Taj itself, which are extremely elaborate, and the various translations from Sa'di with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... But these Courts of Love went further. They laid down rules for love; they allowed married women to receive the homage of lovers, and even nicely directed all the symptoms they were to exhibit of reciprocation. But it is quite possible that this was all solemn fooling, and meant no harm. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... think, because they've never been trained to think. This explosive emotion is the preparation for fanaticism. We only wait the coming of the fanatic—the madman who may lift a torch and hurl it into this magazine. The South is asleep. And when we don't sleep, we dance. There's no use fooling ourselves. We're dancing on ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... I have been fooling around for several years with persimmons. I have particular reference to the Kawakmi which is supposed to be a hybrid of Munson. I have never had any fruit from that particular tree. I wrote to Munson's ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... before," said Whittington angrily, "quit fooling, and come to the point. You can't play the innocent with me. You know a great deal more than you're willing ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their youth, ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... last his vision narrowed. His eyes came down to the great gash at his feet where red earth and tufts of grass mingled, where the daisies had grown on that June day, where she had sat, proud and aloof, and watched him fooling with the white petals. Very vividly he recalled that summer afternoon, her scorn of him, her bitter hostility—and the horror he had surprised in her dark eyes when the hawk had struck. He laughed oddly to himself, his teeth clenched upon his lower lip. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... friends!" cried Sir Gervaise, who was so delighted at the prospect of a general engagement, that he felt a boyish pleasure in this fooling; "and now to business, seriously. Mr. Bunting, I would have the signal for sailing shown. Let each ship fire a recall-gun for her boats. Half an hour later, show the bunting to unmoor; and send my boat ashore as soon as you begin to heave on the capstan. So, good-morning, my fine fellow, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... near my line, but of course I'm fooling; and your Admiral sounds like a shublime gent. Stick to him like wax - he'll do. My Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand sea-miles off the lie of the original or your Admiral Guinea; and besides, I have no more about him yet but one mention ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I warn ye not to trifle; I have no time to waste in April fooling, and he who makes offers in sport will have to ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. Low humourist this leader seems; perchance Pitched from his University career, Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould Human those Gods were: deathless too: On high they not as meditatives paced: Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh: Descending, they would touch the lowest here: And she, that lighted ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only fooling," Winifred declared bravely. "I mean when she said that I made up the story about the candy. Because it was just ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... Aunty, I'm not fooling. Quick, or it will land on your head"; and she turned round and looked right at the snake and it looked at her, and Aunty May gave a scream, and jumped away, and the snake dropped down on the floor and commenced to ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... me. I was only fooling the other day. Course I hadn't ought to have got gay. But a fellow makes a break once ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... of Benicia, on the Carquinez Straits, my headquarters. In a cluster of fishermen's arks, moored in the tules on the water-front, dwelt a congenial crowd of drinkers and vagabonds, and I joined them. I had longer spells ashore, between fooling with salmon fishing and making raids up and down bay and rivers as a deputy fish patrolman, and I drank more and learned more about drinking. I held my own with any one, drink for drink; and often drank more than my share to ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... care to see much of your Mrs. Dundas," an old squire once said, talking of her. "I never knew but one woman who had the same coaxing, fooling ways with her, and, begorra, sir, she was a demon ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... ready to feed your hoss the spur and join us, because when we come, we'll come fast. Don't make no mistake. If you ride too slow we'll have to ride slow, too, and slow ridin' means gunplay on both sides, and gunplay means dead men, because the evenin' is a pile worse nor the dark for fooling a man's aim. You'll see me and Sinclair scoot along that there road, with the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... woman. Temple stood humping and agitating his shoulders like a cat before it springs. Both the girls tried to stop us. The one I liked best seized my watch, and said, 'Leave this to me to take care of,' and I had no time to wrestle for it. I had a glimpse of her face that let me think she was not fooling me, the watch-chain flew off my neck, Temple and I clove through the crowd of gapers. We got into the heat, which was in a minute scorching. Three men were under the window; they had sung out to the old woman above to drop a blanket—she tossed them a water-jug. She was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fool enough to monkey with Uncle Sam, so I didn't attempt to open the letters. It's a bad game, fooling with the government. They always get you. Anyway, I had found out all I wanted, so I let him drop 'em in the office. I took the first train to Richmond and hung around Brainard's place for a day and a half, playing a little but watchin' the boss most of the time. The second day, your ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... DORANTE: You're fooling yourself, Madame, to imagine so many difficulties, and the experience you had with one marriage doesn't ...
— The Middle Class Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere |
