"Willy-nilly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a half-hour's call, Fred managed to introduce the dangerous topic at least a half-dozen times, and each time I was compelled to choke him off by ramming some other subject down his throat willy-nilly. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... Come!" she said, impatient, unbolting the heavy door; and, willy-nilly, I followed, meeting the pack all sulking on the stairs, who rose to seize me as I came ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... we have beautified - we've done it willy-nilly - And all that isn't Belgrave Square is Strand and Piccadilly. (They haven't any slummeries in England.) We have solved the labour question with discrimination polished, So poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished - (They are going to abolish ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... "Willy-nilly, you must take part in a terrible battle; book against book, man against man, party against party; make war you must, and that systematically, or you will be abandoned by your own party. And they are mean contests; struggles which ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... boisterously forcing you to take part in games and dances about which you know nothing. A week-end guest ought to be ignored, allowed to rummage about alone among the books, live stock and cold food in the ice-box whenever he feels like it, and not rushed willy-nilly (something good could be done using the famous Willy-Nilly correspondence as a base, but not here), into whatever the family itself may consider ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... down resignedly into a lonely old age. Let a little child come tilting by, or a little child's foolish belongings intrude themselves upon her vision, and old, odd longings creep out of secret crannies and haunt her, willy-nilly. It is the latent motherhood within her that has been denied its own. It was the secret of the soft wistfulness in Cornelia's eyes. So she sat until the minister came home. It was the sound of his big step on the walk that roused ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... that took him from her. But as he reached the next corner his shoulders snapped back into defiant straightness, he thrust his hands into the side pockets of his top-coat, and strode away, feeling that he had shaken off a burden of "niceness." He had, willy-nilly, recovered his freedom. He could go anywhere, now; mingle with any sort of people; be common and comfortable. He didn't have to take dancing lessons or fear the results of losing his job, or of being robbed of his interests in the Touricar. He glanced ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... would follow, no matter the colour of their eyes, no matter the complexions, no matter the thin, pale faces, or the fat, rosy faces. These things were all one to Hollyhock. She would compel these girls; they would follow her willy-nilly where she wished and where she dared to go. She knew well that she was not clever in book-learning, but she also knew well that she had the great gift of leadership; she would be the leader here. She rejoiced in the fact that all the ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... him by himself in a kind of retreat among some poplars a little way off, where he could see without being seen. Ambrose dragged him back willy-nilly, adjuring ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Lincoln was plunged willy-nilly into the society he shunned at home, on entering the legislature at Springfield. A newspaper there published the account—from her side—of a young lady's difference with a noted politician, General James Shields. He married a ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... possession of them and hustled them, willy-nilly, into the car, despite their vehement protestations that they must say "good-byes" to "lots ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... established for the training of aestheticising literary historians, does not enter into the question at all: the fact remains that the university is not in a position to control the young academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen what happens, willy-nilly—and this is the cutting answer to the immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves as the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... make them: they grow; they come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such. I did not want to write Erewhon, I wanted to go on painting and found it an abominable nuisance being dragged willy-nilly into writing it. So with all my books—the subjects were never of my own choosing; they pressed themselves upon me with more force than I could resist. If I had not liked the subjects I should have kicked, and nothing would ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... become very dangerous when strongly marked out as distinctly separated,—the Classes and the Masses. The comfortable wedge of Trade, which,—calling itself the Middle-class,—had up to the present kept things firm, now split asunder likewise,—the wealthy plutocrats clinging willy-nilly to the Classes, to whom they did not legitimately belong; and the men of moderate income throwing in their lot with the Masses, whose wrongs they sympathetically felt somewhat resembled their own. For taxation had ground them down to that particularly fine powder, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his breath was what it should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... gallows on the third Thursday of each month for Bonaparte's expiation; ordered his secretary to send Bonaparte a type-written notice that his presence on each occasion was expected, and gave orders to the police to see that he was there willy-nilly. Naturally Bonaparte resisted, and appealed to the courts. Blackstone sustained his appeal, and Nicholas overruled him. The first Thursday came, and the police went for the Emperor, but he was surrounded by a good half of the men who had fought under ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... thus far he had been thwarted. All his wealth went for nothing. The whim of this girl he had chosen was more powerful in this matter than was gold—the gold he loved. But Lablache was not the man to sit down and admit of defeat; he meant to marry Joaquina Allandale willy-nilly. Love was impossible to such a man as he. He had conceived an absorbing passion for her, it is true, but love—as it is generally understood—no. He was not a young man—the victim of a passion, fierce but transient. He was matured in all respects—in mind and body. His passion ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... this Universe, and Why not knowing Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing; And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I know not ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... those whose ears are attuned to the rhythm of history, all contributes to the same work, evil no less than good. Those of impulsive temperament, carried away by the flood, move along blood-stained roads, and are none the less moving, willy-nilly, whither fraternal reason beckons. Were we compelled to depend upon men's common sense, upon their goodwill, upon their moral courage, upon their kindliness, there would be ample reason for despairing of the future. ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... silly. His neighbouring, willy-nilly, Must smirch the Bee, the Lily, Or stain the snow-white flag. Wielder of mere stage-dagger, Loud lord of empty swagger, In peril's hour a lagger. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... convinced himself—he wished to do so—that the obscure power that moved him had an exact meaning, and that its meaning was in accordance with his will. His free instinct, risen from the unconscious depths, was willy-nilly forced to plod on under the yoke of reason with perfectly clear ideas which had nothing at all in common with it. And work so produced was no more than a lying juxtaposition of one of those great subjects that Christophe's mind ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... men when they are in power are gripped by the greatness of its Destiny: it lifts them out of themselves: the torch is passed on from hand to hand among them: one after another they resume the holy war against darkness. They are drawn onward by the genius of the people: willy-nilly they fulfil the law of the God whom they deny, Gesta Dei per Francos.... O my beloved country, I will never lose my faith in thee! And though in thy trials thou didst perish, yet would I find in that only a reason the more for my proud belief, even to the bitter end, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... but poverty. And this man could not be poor even if he wanted to, for there were no grounds for divorce. His wife loved him dearly, and her income of five thousand dollars a month came along with startling regularity, willy-nilly. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... wishing to delay the journey. He had not sufficient command of his features to hide his chagrin at the failure of his several attempts. He sulked all afternoon. Garth sat with his weapon across his knees; and his steady gaze never wandered far from the steersman. Willy-nilly, Hooliam was compelled to hold the Loseis to her course; and by four o'clock, the wind holding light and steady, they had covered about thirty miles ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Celtomania; a sort of "spiritual consumption," he calls his possession in one place, as a certain other type of sinner "got religion" in the old shouting days. That is, Mr. Moore wrought himself up partly in the spirit of the Playboy, and was wrought up to some degree willy-nilly until he could write his speech of February, 1900, on "Literature and the Irish Language," and, finally, a little later, could return happily to the country that until then he could ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... staggered with weakness. "Lord love you, Martin," said he, snatching me in his iron grip, "Lord love you, what would you be at? Here's Surgeon Penruddock and his two mates with their hands full enough, as it is, God knoweth, and you sick o' your wound—" So saying, Adam bundled me back into bed, willy-nilly. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... to say she had never been told that it was left to her to do so. When first her aunt had come Kitty had handed over to her the reins of government, willy-nilly, and she had not thought it her duty to take them up again in Mrs. Pike's absence; but it is to be feared that in any case she would not have prepared a feast of welcome for Anna. And the result was that they would arrive tired and hungry after their long, hot journey, and probably ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... The priests, willy-nilly, now permitted Ulrich to be laid on the leathern sack between them, and while first Sutor, and then Stubenrauch, shrunk away to mutter prayers over a rosary for the senseless lad's restoration to consciousness, and to avoid coming in contact ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... remember; yet, in spite of it, I have sometimes found myself on a Saturday, after a week's work, without a loaf of bread in the cupboard. I doubt, ma'am, if any one who has not experienced it can wholly understand the power of mere hunger to degrade a man; to what lengths he can be urged, willy-nilly, as it were, by the instinct to satisfy it. There were Sabbaths, ma'am, when to attend divine worship seemed a mockery; the craving drove me away from all congregations of Christian men and out into the fields, where—I tell it with shame, ma'am—I have stolen ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... temperament. Fatalists believe that your life is arranged for you beforehand from without; willy-nilly, you MUST act so. I only believe that in this jostling world your life is mostly determined by your own character, in its interaction with the characters of those who surround you. Temperament works itself out. It is your own acts and ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... but it took only a second after they had caught their breaths to pile, willy-nilly, into the cars, where they huddled until ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... of terror, and some with ready laughs at nothing, the few other roisters in the tavern at that hour. 'Twas not the best time of day for the meeting of those choice spirits for the discussion of the other spirits which be raised, willy-nilly, from the grape and the grain, for the enhancing of the joy of life, and defiance of its miseries; but the Barrys and Captain Jaynes and the parson were nothing particular as ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... or at two in the afternoon, "Tally-ho at eleven-thirty" (or two-thirty, as the case might be). "All aboard!" Gathering all the reins in his hands and perching himself in the high seat above, with perhaps one of his guests beside him, all the rest crowded willy-nilly on the seats within and on top, he would carry us off, careening about the countryside most madly, several of his hostlers acting as liveried footmen or outriders and one of them perched up behind on the little seat, the technical name of which I have forgotten, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Yankee Inspector you seem to suppose is A buckler and barrier against trichinosis; Bat trichinae pass without passports. Bacilli And microbes that Yankee might miss willy-nilly, Which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... the less, the one course open to him was to submit as little ungraciously as he was able. No moral force would be able to dislodge his guest; and Ramsdell could not well be summoned, to pluck forth the rector's lady and escort her, willy-nilly, to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... he replied with an abrupt growl. I was compelled, willy-nilly, to have recourse to ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... kindly, tolerant, almost parental eye. Poor little organisms growing on the tree of life—they would burn out and fade soon enough. He did not know the ballad of the roses of yesteryear, but if he had it would have appealed to him. He did not care to rifle them, willy-nilly; but should their temperaments or tastes incline them in his direction, they would not suffer vastly in their lives because of him. The fact was, the man was essentially generous ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser |
