Dallying Quotes & Sayings

Kath Two wondered, as she always did, whether the people of the Epic would have said and done some of what they had, had they known that, five thousand years later, billions of people would be watching them on video screens, citing them as examples, and quoting them from memory. Over the first few decades on Cleft, the cameras had died one by one. Depending on how you felt about ubiquitous surveillance, the result had either been a new Dark Age and an incalculable loss to history, or a liberation from digital tyranny. Either way, it signaled the end of the Epic: the painstakingly recorded account of everything that the people of the Cloud Ark had done from Zero onward. After that it had all been oral history for about a thousand years, since there had been no paper to write on and no ink to write on it with. Memory devices were scarce and jury-rigged. Every single chip had been used for critical functions such as robots and life support. — Neal Stephenson

There is no dallying with God . — James Ussher

Order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair - hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. — Gustave Flaubert

Strangers are family you haven't recognize yet — Mitch Albom

Your Highness, we must speak tonight," I whispered. "Alone." Enough was enough. I would not take any part in Princess Cantacuzene's plans, and I would not risk my life dallying with the Montenegrins any longer.
"Indeed?" he said, bringing my hand to his lips. I shuddered, realizing he had a different kind of conversation in mind than I did. — Robin Bridges

A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude. — S. S. Van Dine

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes. — Gustave Flaubert

The problem with procrastination is it's been around since the beginning of time it seems. — Stephen Richards

Two wrongs never equal a right but the hardest time to do right is when someone does you wrong! EL — Evinda Lepins

In Aristotle ... leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work ... leisure is pursued solely for its own sake ... : the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ... gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium - the opposite is negotium, or gainful work.
We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached by St Paul ... during the cessation of work we nurture family, educate, nourish friendships ... in loafing, most of our innovations come ... the routine of daily work has too often served as ... sleep ... a refuge from two crucial states - awakedness to the needs of others, and to the transcendent, which only comes ... loitering, dallying, tarrying, goofing off. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying. — Anton Chekhov

Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information? — John Maynard Keynes

The degree to which we notice the obvious or the subtle, and the angle of light that we see falling upon it, depends upon how closely we look and the time we spend studying. — Fennel Hudson

The time has passed for dilly-dallying. We must demand satisfactory performance. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Louis Brandeis really inspired me to write this book [Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet]. It was a crazy deadline. The editor said I'd miss the hundredth anniversary unless I pumped the thing out in six months, because I'd been delaying and dilly dallying for so long. So he both inspired me to get up early and write. — Jeffrey Rosen

Dallying? Dallying, mind you?" She marched up the last few steps. "As if I would ever min a million years dally with you." She wouldn't. Really, she wouldn't!
His low chuckle behind her put the lie to her words. "Never say never, my lady. A vow like that is sure to come back to bit you in the arse. Which would be a shame, given that you have such a fine one. — Sabrina Jeffries

Arrogance can be deadly. — Becca Fitzpatrick

When I am playing with my cat, who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her? — Michel De Montaigne

And since we don't just forget things because they don't matter but also forget things because they matter too much because each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthine windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint's, it's no wonder that the shards of reality one person will cherish as a biography can seem to someone else who, say, happened to have eaten some ten thousand dinners at the very same kitchen table, to be a willful excursion into mythomania — Philip Roth

How often do you find yourself saying, "In a minute", "I'll get to it" or "Tomorrow's good enough" and every other possible excuse in the book? Compare it with how often you decide it's got to be done, so let's get on and do it! That should tell you just how serious your procrastinating problem really is. — Stephen Richards

If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames. — Antonin Artaud

I have no apartment and no job. I have no steady relationship or even a city to call home. I have no idea what I want to be doing with my life, no idea what my purpose is, and no real sign of a life goal. And yet time has found me. The years I've spent dilly-dallying around at different jobs in different cities show on my face. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Both positive and negative thinking are contagious. — Stephen Richards

Transparency may be the most disruptive and far-reaching innovation to come out of social media. — Paul Gillin

Then it's goodbye, Sangsara for me
Besides, girls aren't as good as they look
And Samadhi is better than you think
When it starts in hitting your head
In with Buzz of glittergold
Heaven's Angels, wailing, saying
We've been waiting for you since morning, Jack
Why were you so long dallying in the sooty room?
This transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part (of Nothingness
I sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop. — Jack Kerouac

The people I love the best, jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows. — Marge Piercy

Scaling down individually is very hard. Imagine that if you go to a place where everybody is dressed nicely, and you are the only one who doesn't dress nicely. Everybody goes on vacations to a great place and you go to the Jersey shore. It's very hard to do these things without an organized mechanism, but it looks to me like there might be some organized mechanisms. — Dan Ariely

He calls books freedoms. And homes too. They preserve all the good words that we so seldom use. Leniency. Kindness. Contradiction. Forbearance. — Nina George

Sergeant Axel Dane ordinarily opened the San Jose recruiting office at eight o'clock, but if he was a little late Corporal Kemp opened it, and Kemp was not likely to complain. Axel was not an unusual case. A hitch in the U.S. Army in the time of peace between the Spanish war and the German war had unfitted him for the cold, unordered life of a civilian. One month between hitches convinced him of that. Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it. The San Jose recruiting station proved he knew his way about. He was dallying with the youngest Ricci girl and she lived in San Jose. Kemp hadn't the time in, but he was learning the basic rule. Get along with the topkick and avoid all officers when possible. — John Steinbeck

Look well on this, my son," said the green-skinned man, "for one day I shall rule a clockwork kingdom of such beings, and you shall be its prince. — Cassandra Clare

Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment. Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be. Not in the flight of ideas but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of living. God's command is enough and your faith in him to sustain you. Then at last freedom will welcome your spirit amid great rejoicing. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My first lyric departed directly from Mingus's title "This Subdues My Passion." If you didn't think the song was already half written after that title, then you had no business dallying with the tune in the first place. I wrote about the way that music tempers the violence within a man. This subdues my passion And it may control my rage It may stem the poison that spills out onto the page — Elvis Costello

Habitual procrastinators will readily testify to all the lost opportunities, missed deadlines, failed relationships and even monetary losses incurred just because of one nasty habit of putting things off until it is often too late. — Stephen Richards

I wanted to do something nobody ever did. This goes hand in hand with my goal of changing swimming. — Michael Phelps