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More "Reluctant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alongside of the Monitor, her captain and executive officer went upon the deck and, clinging to the life-lines with the waves washing over them, called to the crew to come down from the turret and get into the boats, which they were reluctant to do at first. Some were able to jump into the boats, and some landed in the water and were hauled in. Seeing an old quartermaster with a large bundle under his arm, the executive officer, thinking that it was his clothes-bag, ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... the fascination of your lace frock and pretty new sash and shoes; when you could just toddle, you practised your arts upon other children in the square, poor little lambkins sporting among the daisies; and nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, proceeding from the lambs to reluctant dragoons, you tried your arts upon Captain Paget Tomkins, who behaved so ill, and went to India without—without making those proposals which of course you never expected. Your intimacy was with Emma. It ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to find that the Winnebagoes were lukewarm as to his enterprise, and also reluctant to let him plant a crop, fearing to get into trouble with the government. He then pushed on to confer with the Pottawatomi, who had a village at Sycamore Creek about forty miles farther on. Here he found similar conditions; also he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... You do yourself no good by it, and perhaps a great deal of harm. We will do what we can for you. Never mind about the rent. You will stay on quietly here, and allow me to assist you with this trifle." He pressed two twenty-mark pieces into the half-reluctant hand so unused to accepting alms. "And Herr Stubbe will give you the same sum every month till you are able ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... complain that nothing is done; and so, to gratify them, an immediate assault is resolved upon. Lord Wharncliffe said to me yesterday morning that the real obstacle to the Tories coming into office was the Queen. This was the only difficulty; but her antipathy to Peel rendered him exceedingly reluctant to take office, and there were many among the party who felt scruples in forcing an obnoxious Ministry upon her. This is, in fact, the real Tory principle, but I doubt many of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... was to have been carried off after her party, nor whither she was to have been taken. But now,—now she must arrange it herself, and have a scheme of her own, or else the thing must fail absolutely. Even she was almost reluctant to speak out plainly to her nephew on such a subject. What if he should be false to her, and tell of her? But when a woman has made such schemes, nothing distresses her so sadly as their failure. She would risk all rather than that Mr Palliser ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Singleton, but the bruises of his comrade's body. In vain Lawton declared himself fit for any duty that man could perform, or plainly intimated that his men would never follow Tom Mason to a charge with the alacrity and confidence with which they followed himself; his commander was firm, and the reluctant captain was compelled to comply with as good a grace as he could assume. Before parting, Dunwoodie repeated his caution to keep a watchful eye on the inmates of the cottage; and especially enjoined him, if any movements of a particularly ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... satin-bordered cloth garments of the steward, but in a plain burgher dress. He told the musician and Peter, that he remained in Leyden principally because he could not bear to leave the sick maid, Denise, in the lurch; but other matters also detained him, especially, though he was reluctant to acknowledge it, the feeling, strengthened by long years of service, that he belonged to the Hoogstraten house. The dead woman's attorney had said that his account books were in good order, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... arise as to the selection of a word when forty or fifty men might at the same time label any article with as many different names, and, it is reasonable to suppose, that they would be reluctant to adopt any other expression but that of their own creation. In such a crux the strongest man of the community would be likely to clout the others to an admission that his terminology ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... were equally reluctant to hire their slaves to such corporations or contractors except in times of special depression, for construction camps from their lack of sanitation, discipline, domesticity and stability were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... brook. The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the wine-press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller's song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... likely to come in question, and who will most undoubtedly state explicitly the real sentiments which are entertained here. For these reasons, I have thought myself not at liberty to refuse, and have given a reluctant consent. ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... among young girls, is not uncommon in Brazil. The opposition of friends can prevent it, until they are twenty five years old; but after that time they are considered competent to decide for themselves. A writer describes the initiation of a young lady, whose wealthy parents were extremely reluctant to have her take the vow. She held a lighted torch in her hand, in imitation of the prudent virgins; and when the priest chanted, "Your spouse approaches; come forth and meet him," she approached the altar singing, "I follow with my whole ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... was never more at his ease than in a crowd of new faces, and never exhausted and worn out in what he had to say to fresh listeners. Gathering men about him at one time; turning them to account, assigning them tasks, pressing the willing, shaming the indolent or the reluctant, at another; travelling about with the rapidity and system of an officer inspecting his positions, he infused into the diocese a spirit and zeal which nothing but such labour and sympathy could give, and bound it together by the bands of a ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the original conception of the consequences of the wrath. To have inserted the battle at the ships, in which Sarpedon breaks down the wall of the Greeks, immediately after the occurrences of the first book, would have been too abrupt altogether. Zeus, after his reluctant promise to Thetis, must not be expected so suddenly to exhibit such fell determination. And after the long series of books describing the valorous deeds of Aias, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Menelaos, the powerful ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... this?—Why do you agree to be vanquished by one another in a pretended argument?' He then prohibits all the ordinary definitions of justice; to which Socrates replies that he cannot tell how many twelve is, if he is forbidden to say 2 x 6, or 3 x 4, or 6 x 2, or 4 x 3. At first Thrasymachus is reluctant to argue; but at length, with a promise of payment on the part of the company and of praise from Socrates, he is induced to open the game. 'Listen,' he says, 'my answer is that might is right, justice the interest of the stronger: now praise me.' Let me understand you ...
— The Republic • Plato
... reluctant to adopt a conclusion as I have been to take Benjamin out of school," continued Mr. Franklin. "Yet, there has been one thought that reconciled me in part to the necessity, and that is, that there is less encouragement to a young man in the Church ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... fair e'en now, When not a leaf is on the bough. Tweed loves them well, and turns again, As loth to leave the sweet domain, And holds his mirror to her face, And clips her with a close embrace: Gladly as he, we seek the dome, And as reluctant turn us home. How just that, at this time of glee, My thoughts should, Heber, turn to thee! For many a merry hour we've known, And heard the chimes of midnight's tone. Cease, then, my friend! a moment cease, And leave these ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... mail had shot into the hold, the most reluctant of the visitors were being hustled down the last remaining gangplank. Ainsley's ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... fortune—whether barber, water-carrier, pipe-seller, dervish, doctor's servant, sub-executioner, scribe and mollah, outcast, vender of pipe-sticks, Turkish merchant, or secretary to an ambassador—equally accepting her buffets and profiting by her caresses, never reluctant to lie or cheat or thieve, or get the better of anybody else in a warfare where every one was similarly engaged in the effort to get the better of him, and equipped with the ready casuistry to justify any transgression of the moral code, Hajji Baba never strikes a really ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... military and naval officers and of many civilian experts. Their help, most of which is acknowledged in the text, has supplied us with the liveliest things in this book. We could wish that we had more of it. Naval and military officers do not advertise, and are reluctant to speak publicly of the part that they played in the war. They are silent on all that may seem to tell to their own credit or to the discredit of others, and this silence easily develops into a fixed habit of reticence. We are the more grateful to those who have ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... made their bow: the former remarked that he must go on board and attend to his patients. Jack and Jos Green were the only officers remaining. The latter had very little notion of dancing, but that did not deter him from hauling his reluctant partner, shrieking with laughter, through the mazes of the dance; at length, losing his equilibrium, as might have been expected, down he came, dragging the lady with him. He managed, however, to save her from injury, though he himself was somewhat severely hurt. Jack, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the opinion of the civilised world. Yet, to give an honest record of my observations of them, I shall have to praise them very highly in some respects. Whilst it would be going too far to say that the praise is reluctant, it is true that it has been in a way forced from me, for I went to Bulgaria with the prejudice against the Bulgarians that I have indicated. And—to make this explanation complete—I may add that I came back from ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... legions, angry at being detached from their victorious and darling commander for service on the Persian frontier, and had urged them to obedience, but at midnight the young Caesar was awakened by a clamorous and armed multitude besieging the palace, and at early dawn its doors were forced; the reluctant Julian was seized and carried through the streets in triumph, lifted on a shield, and for diadem crowned with a military collar, to be enthroned and saluted as emperor. In after life the emperor-philosopher looked back with tender regret to the three winters he spent in Paris before ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Bergson has been reluctant to commit himself on the question of immortality, but he of late has become quite convinced of it. He even goes so far as to think it possible that we may find experimental evidence of personal persistence after ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson
... that I love God no more, and aiming to do better. O Lord, the power impart.—We returned home greater debtors to the Lord than ever, for the mercies both of the upper and nether springs. My husband welcomed me with the class-book in his hand, which at first, I felt reluctant to take, but found a blessing in taking up the Cross.—When I retired to rest, I thought, if the Lord will condescend to give me some passage from Himself, which is not familiar to me, it will strengthen my faith. ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... have above spoken of this at some length, it is enough here to recall it to remembrance. Let believers, then, learn to lift up their heads towards the crown of glory and immortality to which God invites them, thus they may not feel reluctant to quit the present life for such a recompense; and, to feel well assured of this inestimable blessing, let them have always before their eyes the conformity which they thus have to our Lord Jesus Christ; beholding ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... shall have a grown-up daughter. She will be the kind of girl everyone will look at—and someone—important—may want to marry her. But, Oh!—" He was reminded of the day when she had fallen at his feet, and clasped his rigid and reluctant knees. This was something of the same feeble desperation of mood. "Oh, WHY couldn't someone like that have wanted to marry ME! See!" she was like a pathetic fairy as she spread her nymphlike arms, "how ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... wound, or they would have left him to die. Fritz, somewhat comforted, begged me to allow him to bathe, to divest himself of the colouring, which was now become odious to him, as being that of these ruthless barbarians. I was reluctant to consent; I thought it might still be useful, in gaining access to the savages; but he was certain they would recognize him in that disguise as the bearer of the thunder, and would distrust him. I ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Stood there with the venom frothing at the corners of his mouth, stood there a man straight out of the loins of Judas Iscariot, stood there making his testimony more damning a thousand times by pretending it was being dragged out of him, reluctant to give away his business companion. Told a positively damning story about meeting Sabre at the station on his departure from leave a day after the girl was sacked. Noticed how strange his manner was; noticed he didn't like being asked about circumstances of her dismissal; noticed his wife ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... that would have been the most sensible thing to do, but Robert was very reluctant to ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... watering-places, you play games, you do everything. How is it all done, pray, Mr. Newnes? What is the secret of your life?" "Well," he slowly replied, and with a certain shy hesitation, for though prompt and energetic enough in actual business, no more modest man, or one more reluctant to speak of himself and his doings walks this earth—"well, though I don't want to boast about it, yet the simple fact is, I work very quickly, and I get through my business much faster than most men do. I make up my mind, form my plans, and arrive at conclusions very rapidly. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Dinsmore was not one to let trifles turn him aside. He led the reluctant ex-dentist to a water-trough and soused ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... "didn't say cards once" during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... we can learn, occupied any office whatsoever; neither did he profit in fortune by the changes he had wrought, and to the last he wore the garb of poverty and led the simple life which had extorted the reluctant admiration of his noblest adversary. But he could not impose upon others the virtues he practised himself, nor was it in his power to direct the force his teachings had called into life. For the time being the Popes were powerless against the new order. Innocent ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... sidewhiskers, his thick eyebrows, and his lively blue eyes!—a man evidently not readily turned aside by rebuffs. He had already shown that his wit as a talker had been sharpened by long and varied contact with a world of reluctant purchasers. I was really curious to know more of him, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... (then Secretary of State), Mr. Judd (Chairman of the Republican State Central Committee), Mr. Peck, and Mr. Grimshaw were present. They were unanimous in opinion as to the expediency and propriety of making Lincoln a candidate. But he was still reluctant; he doubted that he could get the nomination even if he wished it, and asked until the next morning to consider the matter. The next day he authorized his friends to work for him, if they so desired, as a candidate for the Presidency, at the National Republican convention to be ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... another four months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards. Tycho wrote a little book on the new star, maintaining that it had practically no parallax, and therefore could not be, as some supposed, a comet. Deeming authorship beneath the dignity of a noble he was very reluctant to publish, but he was convinced of the importance of increasing the number and accuracy of observations, though he was by no means free from all the erroneous ideas of his time. The little book ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... quadrupeds and their ways, would do with a beast who kicked or ran away, especially in a lonely spot like this, where one so seldom meets a soul upon the road. Come up, Edward," she added, tugging at the bridle, and with some difficulty persuading the reluctant animal to take up his position between the shafts. Philippa went to the rescue, and between them the deed was done, and in a few moments they were seated side by side in the little cart, proceeding very ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purpose of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Reluctant as I must ever be, therefore, to depart from the attitude of silent attention which I think should be maintained by writers in the face of criticism, or to interrupt the fair reply of an opponent, the case is somewhat different when ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... own tendency is, because of our ignorance, to be sceptical and suspicious as to foreign works of art, especially of a kind that are novel and daring. No one is so hard to please as a simpleton. We are so afraid of being taken in, that we are reluctant to commit ourselves in favor of any new thing until we have heard from headquarters; but it appears to be considered a sign of knowledge to vituperate pictures and statues which do not conform to some undefinable ideal standard of our own invention. There is, of course, a class of indulgent ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... provided for him. Courageous in all things, he found himself not a little afraid of all the beautiful objects which he touched, afraid to lift the Sevres pitcher, afraid to open the long doors of the inlaid wardrobe, timid before the dazzling mirror—a reluctant guest who, for the time being, would have been thankful to escape to a carpetless floor and glad to wash in a basin of the commonest kind. When this passed, and it was but momentary, the delusion that a trick was being played upon him succeeded to it and he stood ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... tranquillise Clancy's fears, at the same time checking his impatience. Still is he reluctant to stay, and shows it by ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Customers watch one another suspiciously, after the manner of Britons. The first, who is elderly, removes his hat and displays an abundance of strong grizzled hair, which he surveys complacently in a mirror. The second, a younger man, seems reluctant to uncover until absolutely obliged ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... its resting place for a second, as though it was reluctant to be disturbed—then it yielded, and Croyden ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... he placed the pistol at the horse's head and as often withdrew it, reluctant, a man, as all who knew him wondered at, gentle to womanliness with a brute, though in a cause against men the most bitter and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Mr. Clinton declined to sign a paper presented, but declared that he had no animosity against Mr. Swartout, and would willingly shake hands and agree to meet on the score of former friendship. This being unsatisfactory, the fourth shot was promptly exchanged. Fortune, heretofore reluctant to decide between her favorites, now leaned toward the challenged party—Mr. Swartout being struck just below the knee. In reply to the inquiry, "Are you satisfied, sir?" standing erect while the surgeon kneeling beside him removed the ball, he answered, "I am not; proceed." ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... driven by her determination to be faithful to her own mistress, make life almost unbearable to a peaceable woman like her. The chief object of her righteous indignation is the "Bootrail." She is so reluctant to make any personal complaint, that she would pass over his grudging her a little sugar in her morning tea, but when he takes away a whole cupful for his own children, conscience compels her to tell her mistress. She has often pointed out to him that such conduct ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... never spoken to me before, and he seemed to hesitate now, staring at me as if reluctant to use his tongue, but he did speak in ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... come at length to the very end of the term; the girls were making up their minds to bid a reluctant good-bye to the beautiful old house where they had spent such a pleasant ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... called many in mockery, meaning to choose out of them only a few, and making his choice independently of any exertion of theirs. The picture is very different; it is a gracious call to us all, to come and receive the blessing; it is a reluctant casting out the greatest part of us, because we would not try to ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... my reluctant reply—"but then it seems too terrible to go about the horrible business deliberately, and ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... chosen. It was plain to see that the Throckmortons were not aware of the honor conferred upon them. The guest chamber having been converted into a convalescent hospital, Miss Ann must share room and bed with the reluctant Lucy. Bureau drawers were cleared and part of a wardrobe dedicated to the aged relative. Moreover there was no room in the stable for the visiting carriage horses, as a young Throckmorton had recently purchased a string of valuable hunters that must be housed, although ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... the letters until I reached the Battery. Despatching Neb to the boat, with orders to wait, I took a turn among the trees,—still reluctant to quit the native soil—while I broke the seals. Two of the letters bore the post-marks of the office nearest Clawbonny; the third was from Albany; and the fourth was a packet of some size from Washington, franked by the Secretary of State, and bearing the seal ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... some words to which I never could attach any particular meaning," proceeded the prince, as the slaves began to retire, "and three in particular that my attendants cannot satisfy me upon, or are reluctant ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as the assassin of her deceased husband. These suspicions were soon justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East, however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance; her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Louvre), or when, as witness to her son's destiny, she holds him forth to be seen of men. It is in this last capacity that her mood is most intelligible. She seems oppressed rather than humbled by her honors; reluctant, rather than glad to assume them; yet, with proud dignity, determined to do her part, though her heart break in the doing. Her nature is too deep to accept the joy without counting the cost, and her vision looks beyond Bethlehem to Calvary. This is well illustrated in the picture of ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... trial with any particularity. From first to last I had no chance and everybody in the room understood it. There were a dozen witnesses to prove that I had been in the thick of the rebellion. Among the rest was Volney, in a vile temper at being called on to give testimony. He was one of your reluctant witnesses, showed a decided acrimony toward the prosecution, and had to have the facts drawn out of him as with a forceps. Such a witness, of high social standing and evidently anxious to shield me, was worth to the State more than all the other paltry witnesses combined. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... moments there was deep silence in the room; then the Maid took her hands from her face, and she was calm and tranquil once again. She possessed herself of one of her father's reluctant hands. ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... murdered patriarch's beautiful bride is expected hourly, as the leading citizens of Crowheart are clamoring for justice and are bringing strong pressure to bear upon Sheriff Treu, who seems strangely reluctant to act." ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... all their troubles would be ended. After hours of vigorous effort and the expenditure of all her savings, he finally sat on the front doorstep the morning of Easter Sunday, bathed, shaved and arrayed in a fine new suit of clothes. She left him sitting there in the reluctant spring sunshine while she finished washing and dressing the children. When she finally opened the front door with the three shining children that they might all set forth together, the returned prodigal had disappeared, and was not seen again until ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... these statesmen were grouped energetic and able men like Hayne, McDuffie, and Hamilton of South Carolina, and Cobb and Forsyth of Georgia—men who sometimes pushed their leaders on in a sectional path which the latter's caution or personal ambitions made them reluctant to tread. Nor must it be forgotten that early in the decade the south lost two of her greatest statesmen, the wise and moderate Lowndes, of South Carolina, and Pinkney, the brilliant Maryland orator. In ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... meek-eyed Power I see With liberal hand that loves to bless; The clouds of Sorrow at her presence flee; Rejoice! rejoice! ye Children of Distress! 20 The beams that play around her head Thro' Want's dark vale their radiance spread: The young uncultur'd mind imbibes the ray, And Vice reluctant ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... young girl, from daylight to midnight, while the little sums eked out with frowns and reluctant fingers, hardly suffice to provide for you food and raiment? And the wife of your rich employer, who passes stranger-like by you, may sit at her marble toilet-table for hours, and retouch the faded brow of beauty before a gilded mirror; may lounge ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... she should winter abroad that year, and Edith was to accompany her; but they were both reluctant to go because of the bishop, whose duties obliged him to remain behind alone. Mrs. Beale glanced at him now affectionately. He was leaning back in a low chair, paunch protuberant, and little legs crossed; and he answered the look with a smile which was meant to be encouraging, but was only disturbed. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... shaken her head, but had made no special crusade to amend. Now, in view of the awe-inspiring visit of the Reverend T. W. Beasley, M.A., Mademoiselle had instituted an eleventh-hour spurt of diligence, and kept her pupils with reluctant noses pressed hard to the grindstone. Irregular verbs and exceptions of gender seemed much worse when taken in such large doses. The girls began to wish either that the Tower of Babel had never been attempted, or that ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... She and Marie, with the doctor and Allen Harrison, had arrived on the first train out of the Springs in four days, and Mrs. Whitney's greeting of Glover in the office was disconcerting. It scarcely needed Gertrude's face at dinner, as she tried to brave the storm that had set in, or her reluctant admission when she saw him as she passed up to her room that she and her father had been up nearly the whole of the night before, to ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... were lovelier things than life; there were harder things than death. Service is the measure of living. If the boys were to compress years of good living into a flame of serving humanity for six months, who was she, what was life here, that she should be reluctant? To play the game, for herself and her sons, this was the one thing worth while. More and more entirely, as the stress of the strange, hard vision crowded out selfishness, this woman, as thousands and tens of thousands all over America, lifted up her heart—the dear things that filled and ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... hour advanced, and I sent a note by her attendant, soliciting an interview. Her hotel was within a short distance; yet no answer came. I grew more and more reluctant to approach her without her direct permission. There are thousands who will not comprehend this nervousness, but they are still ignorant of the power of real passion. True affection is the most timid thing in the world. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... could guess the secret of Ben's power over him, though it was evident that he had gained it in some sudden way, for at the least sign of Sam's former tricks Ben would crook his little finger and wag it warningly, or call out "Bulrushes!" and Sam subsided with reluctant submission, to the great amazement of his mates. When asked what it meant, Sam turned sulky; but Ben had much fun out of it, assuring the other boys that those were the signs and pass-word of a secret society to which he and Sam belonged, and promised to tell them all about it if Sam would give ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... memorigo. Relict (widow) vidvino. Relief (assistance) helpo. Relief (raised out) reliefo. Relieve helpi. Religion religio. Religious religia. Relinquish forlasi. Relish gxui, sxati. Relish (zest) gusto. Reluctance malbonvolo—onto. Reluctant malbonvola—onta. Rely konfidi. Remain resti. Remainder, remains restajxo. Remains (food) mangxrestajxo. Remake refari. Remand reenmeti. Remark rimarki. Remarkable rimarkinda. Remedy (medical) kuracilo. Remedy rimedo. Remember ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... I feel very little better in my head, though my general health seems improved; but my kind physician says I am much better, and advises me now change of air. I am most reluctant to go, though on two former occasions when I used change of air, in August 1829 at Exmouth, and in 1835 at Niton in the Isle of Wight, the Lord abundantly blessed me in doing so, both bodily and spiritually. This evening a ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... generosi adolescentuli, youths of generous blood, was CHIDIOCK TITCHBOURNE, of Southampton, the more intimate friend of Babington. He had refused to connect himself with the assassination of Elizabeth, but his reluctant consent was inferred from his silence. His address to the populace breathes all the carelessness of life, in one who knew all its value. Proud of his ancient descent from a family which had existed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... She made a reluctant little gesture of assent; some such signal of acquiescence as Marie Antoinette may have ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Still, still reluctant Winter keeps Some chill surprise in store, And Spring through frosty curtain peeps On snowdrifts at her door; The full moon smites the leafless trees, So full, it bursts with light, Till the sharp shadows seem to freeze ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... planets in their hiding places. Let them waylay the fugitive comets in their flight, and compel them to disclose the precise period of their orbits, and to give bonds for their punctual return. Let them drag out reluctant satellites from "their habitual concealments." Let them resolve the unresolvable nebulae of Orion or Andromeda. They need not fear. The sky will not fall, nor a single star ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... once and without warning, this change had developed into what was evidently likely to prove a complete transformation—and he had surprised her into an involuntary, and more or less reluctant admiration of qualities which she had never hitherto suspected in him. She had consented to join him on this occasion in his trip to The Islands, in order to try and fathom the actual drift of his intentions,—for his idea that their son, Prince Humphry, had yielded to some particular ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... have black hair, she thinks," said Ruth. "His little hand is quite a man's, already. Just feel how firmly he closes it;" and with her own weak fingers she opened his little red fist, and taking Miss Benson's reluctant hand, placed one of her fingers in his grasp. That baby-touch called out her love; the doors of her heart were thrown open wide for the little infant to go in and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have her son leave the house at such a time; but Joe Brace made light of her fears, and she gave a reluctant consent. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... that he must yield to stern necessity, must 'forsake the balmy climate of Pindus for the Greenland of a barren and dreary science of terms;' and he did not hesitate to obey. His professional studies were followed with a rigid though reluctant fidelity; it was only in leisure gained by superior diligence that he could yield himself to more favourite pursuits. Genius was to serve as the ornament of his inferior qualities, not as an excuse for ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Republican Administration was taking no chances on his getting any military glory, and it marooned him in Florida till after the war. He returned good for evil by going to Washington, uniform and all, and dragooning reluctant Democratic Senators into voting for the treaty with Spain whereby we acquired the Philippines. This was one of his incidental opportunisms; he believed it would give the Democrats a winning issue, that of imperialism. The cast ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hard pressed for a reply, the judges gave such a halting opinion in favor of the king's policy as to remind us of the reluctant verdict wrung from the physicians and lawyers of Mecca on the occasion of coffee's first persecution.[81] "The English lawyers, in language which, for its civility and indefiniteness," says Robinson, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... away— Yet lingered where its whiteness gleamed As one above a sleeping Love, Oh, thus it was she seemed, Reluctant still to turn and go And leave ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... hear to that. She said they must be fair even to a college, and Mr. Luddington would want them to look the place over thoroughly while they were there. So after breakfast the two reluctant young people went with Julia Cloud ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the young fellow's retreating form with reluctant admiration. "He moves like a trained athlete and he hasn't got a bad face," he admitted. "I pray he does not ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... chaste and reluctant Muse, the battle of Aiken! Only don't sing it! State it, as is the fashion of our glorious times, in humble and perishable prose. Fling grammar of which nothing is now known to the demnition bow-wows, and state how in the beginning General Bullwigg had an advantage ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... allowed the herd to scatter over a thousand acres. Taking advantage of the loose order of the beeves, the old man rode back and forth through them until approaching darkness compelled us to throw them together on the bedground. Even after the first guard took charge, the drover loitered behind, reluctant to leave until the last steer had lain down; and all during the night, sharing my blankets, he awoke on every change of guards, inquiring of the returning watch how the cattle ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... of the Publishers, a portrait of myself, taken in the spring of this year, 1906, forms the Frontispiece to the present volume. I am somewhat reluctant to see it so placed, because it has nothing whatever to do with the story which is told in the following pages, beyond being a faithful likeness of the author who is responsible for this, and many other previous ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... virtuous tolerance that caused Maizie Gilbert to eye her with reluctant admiration. She alone knew what her ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... Mr. Punch, ever reluctant to take credit to himself, feels nevertheless bound to say that the suggestion of the name "Sammies" for our American Allies appeared in his columns as long ago as June 13th. On page 384 of that issue (after quoting The Daily News as having said, "We shall want a name for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... read this, Stephania, I shall be alone with the thought of you, traveling a reluctant road, but still with a burthen in my heart which will bring me to you again, and which even now envelopes my pang of separation in a veil of happiness. I have been blessed by Heaven's mercy with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... lease he had come to examine, and was disappointed to learn that the owner had just left. This was annoying; "Bob" had assured him that he was expected. Inquiry elicited from the surly individual in charge no more than the reluctant admission that Jackson had been called to the nearest telephone, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that Clifford's blow had freed her from her reluctant husband; and mayhap the marriage would give her claims on the Copeland property. But Grisell somehow could not join in the wish. She could only remember the merry boy at Amesbury and the fair face she had seen ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... change in Kilmeny at their next meeting—a change that troubled him. She seemed aloof, abstracted, almost ill at ease. When he proposed an excursion to the orchard he thought she was reluctant to go. The days that followed convinced him of the change. Something had come between them. Kilmeny seemed as far away from him as if she had in truth, like her namesake of the ballad, sojourned for seven years in the land "where the rain never fell and the wind never blew," and had come back ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Another fortnight and he was sufficiently convalescent to be moved, and accordingly they started to travel by very easy stages to Lisbon, there to take ship for England, as the doctor ordered Tom as well as his brother to go home for a while to recruit. Tom was the less reluctant to do so, as it was evident that with the force at his command Wellington would not be able to undertake any great operation, and that the siege and capture of Badajoz was the utmost likely to be accomplished in that season's campaign. The mails in due course had brought out the Gazette, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... what measures were used to force this degradation on the reluctant and high-spirited Constance; it is only certain that she never considered her marriage in the light of a sacred obligation, and that she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master, Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition, he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city situated far off amidst the desert.(18) In reality Scaurus also soon found himself compelled to return without ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... had incessant recourse to her advice; and her simplest words were as a law to them, her conduct their example. She assumed no power, and disclaimed all authority; but the sovereign empire of love was forced into her reluctant hands. They insisted on being governed by one they held in such affection, and gave up every pleasure for the sake of being with her, and sharing ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... clasp,—could almost hear the shrieking and moaning of the young fruit that saw its hope of happy life thus slowly consuming; but I was powerless to save. For weeks that loathsome army preyed upon the unhappy, helpless trees, and then spun loathsomely to the ground, and buried itself in the reluctant, shuddering soil. A few dismal little apples escaped the common fate, but when they rounded into greenness and a suspicion of pulp, a boring worm came and bored them, and they, too, died. No apple-pies at Thanksgiving. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Thursday night, I saw Mayes again. Mr. Bowmore was here, and when I left the house he troubled me much by coming after me. I was obliged to tell him that I wished to be alone, and I was in a nervously explosive state when I did it. He seemed reluctant to go; my anger blazed out, and I violently ordered him off. From what he has told me it seems that he followed me still, but lost sight of me near Penn's Meadow. Well, be that as it may, I saw Mayes and the young artist again. I watched from a rather awkward spot, and dusk was falling, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... while, D'Aulnay came back from France with fresh orders from the king for the arrest of De la Tour, and in October, 1644, sent to Boston an envoy with the new credentials. The Massachusetts authorities were reluctant to abandon De la Tour, but seeing no alternative they made a treaty for free-trade, subject to confirmation by the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... K—-Lynde pushed steadily forward. The first two nights he secured lodgings at a farm-house; on the third night he was regarded as a suspicious character, and obtained reluctant permission to stow himself in a hay-loft, where he was so happy at roughing it and being uncomfortable that he could scarcely close an eye. The amateur outcast lay dreamily watching the silver spears of moonlight thrust through the roof of the barn, and extracting such satisfaction from ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the serious business intentions, the luncheon which followed was the last the city saw of Bobby Burnit for three days. Be it said to his credit that he had accomplished his purpose when he returned. He had brought reluctant Jack Starlett back with him, and together they walked ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... of the crowds. Before that time her muse had been sylvan, speaking of "Flow'rs of May," and hinting at thoughts that overcame her when she roved the woodlands thro'; but now the inspiration was become decidedly municipal and urban, evidently reluctant to depart beyond the retail portions of a metropolis. Her verses beginning, "O, my native city, bride of Hibbard's winding stream,"—Hibbard's Creek runs west of Plattville, except in time of drought—"When thy myriad lights are ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... novels—The Reluctant Lover, Sheila Intervenes and The Sixth Sense—were written and published before their author was 27 years of age! But Sonia, the story that made him widely known, was written entirely during the period of his activities on the staff ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... which was bounded by the river. The Trojans advanced upon him with loud shouts, yet the brave king would fain have resisted. As when a troop of hunters press upon a fierce lion, the savage animal, too courageous to fly, yet dares not face the numbers and weapons of his assailants, so Turnus with reluctant steps drew backwards; yet twice again he attacked the Trojans and twice drove them along the walls. At length gathering from all parts of the camp, the Trojans made a united advance and Turnus, no longer able to withstand the assaults of his foes, fled to ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... fascination. Along with them, there was a sensuously pungent air about her which does not escape men, her gestures had something flattering, her eyes glowed with a romantic fire. Disturbed, lending but a reluctant ear. Monsieur Seguret could, nevertheless, not wholly evade the witchery which took his guests captive. A power stronger than his resolve forced him to leniency; he took a timid share in the conversation, in spite of the heavy load upon his heart. The talk turned upon politics, books, art, hunting, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... an opportunity to communicate with our comrades and friends, for up to this time we did not know whether any of our letters had been received. Capt. Cook had a pair of good stout brogans. These shoes he urged me to take in exchange for my dilapidated ones. At first, I felt reluctant to do so, but finally made the exchange and he left us with a light heart, but his anticipations were not realized, for instead of going directly North he was detained in Libby Prison until just before the rest of us arrived, and when we reached Annapolis ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... principle of what Philadelphia in my youth called "a Jersey treat." I do not say that economy was invariably our rule. We could be, on occasions, so rash that before our week was up we had to begin to count our francs, put by for the boat sandwich and the reluctant tips of the return journey, and eat the last meals of all in the Duval, which, if admirable as a place to economize in, is no more conducive to gaiety than a London A.B.C. shop or Childs's in New ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... this reluctant acceptance of a child by adoption, to fill the vacant heart,—how real and formidable is all this rehearsal of the tragedies of maturer years! I knew an instance in which the last impulse of ebbing life was such a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... honour of the Princess heiress presumptive to the Throne of Great Britain, they proposed to give the name Victoria; and they were thus the first to associate her with the Empire, which, in spite of reluctant politicians who did their best to restrict it, was destined to expand marvellously ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... not enough to be abreast of the world, I wanted to be a little ahead. In my solitude it was easy to cherish illusions concerning the value of my own work, to picture myself as a mighty and triumphant wrestler with Nature, capable, by his single strength, of forcing her reluctant secrets, to reveal them afterwards to an admiring world. But at Paris, with its enormous condensation of intellectual force, I could not flatter myself on the solitary greatness of my achievements, nor ignore ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to that, the most burdensome to the walker is a heart not in perfect sympathy and accord with the body,—a reluctant or unwilling heart. The horse and rider must not only both be willing to go the same way, but the rider must lead the way and infuse his own lightness and eagerness into the steed. Herein is no doubt our trouble, and one reason of the decay of the noble art ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... for convulsing England could have been devised. The marriage from which Mary sprang only stood on a reluctant and doubtful dispensation of the Pope's. Henry had entered into it at the entreaty of his ministers, contrary to a solemn promise given to his father, and in spite of the remonstrances of the Archbishop of Canterbury. No blessing seemed to have rested on it. All his children had died young, ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... pointing out to him the advantages of the match. It was not that Reggie disliked Maud. He admitted that she was a "topper", on several occasions going so far as to describe her as "absolutely priceless". But he seemed reluctant to ask her to marry him. How could Lady Caroline know that Reggie's entire world—or such of it as was not occupied by racing cars and golf—was filled by Alice Faraday? Reggie had never told her. He had not ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... much the soul departed, still May love to linger round this couch, My own heart tells me, even I Reluctant am to leave ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... the bottom of much failure in religion. There is no success anywhere in life save through the constant pressure of the will driving a reluctant and protesting set of nerves and muscles to their daily tasks. The day labourer comes home from his work with his muscular strength exhausted, but he has to go back to the same monotonous task on the morrow: ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture: I can see Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... you this information before, but papa and all the rest were anxious I should delay until we saw whether matters took a more settled aspect, and I myself kept putting it off from day to day, most bitterly reluctant to give up all the pleasure I had anticipated so long. However, remembering what you told me, namely, that you had commended the matter to a higher decision than ours, and that you were resolved to submit with resignation ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... alone, O Sons Of Song, The wings that float the loftier airs along. Whoever lifts us from the dust we are, Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals; Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls, Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,— Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.* Recall the Wars of England's giant-born, Is Elyot's voice, is Hampden's death in vain? Have all the meteors of the vernal morn But wasted light upon ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stopped, but it was evident that he was reluctant to leave his master alone with this villain. Eustace replied by drawing his good sword, and giving him a fearless smile, as he planted his foot upon the trap-door; and fixing his gaze upon Le Borgne Basque, made him feel that this was no ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nothing anomalous or dangerous in such a state of things; for an official like Sir John Maule, while ready enough to sanction the prosecution of an unpopular journal, which presumably has few friends, is naturally reluctant, as events have shown, to allow proceedings against a powerful journal whose friends may be numerous and influential. Fortunately, however, a Select Committee of the House of Commons has taken a more sensible view of the Public Prosecutor and the duties he has so ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... He was very reluctant to accept this appointment, but for none of the above reasons, as the average man might have been. Why he was doubtful of undertaking the responsibilities of such a position his letter of acceptance clearly shows. He considered the matter carefully and then wrote ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... that family, where each individual atom goes off by itself and absolutely refuses to unite even temporarily with any other atom. The nitrogen atoms will pair off with each other and stick together, but they are reluctant to associate with other elements and when they do the combination is likely to break up any moment. You all know people like that, good enough when by themselves but sure to break up any club, church or society they get into. Now, the value of nitrogen in warfare is due to the fact that all the ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... still: it was hateful to have cigarette-ends defiling the steps to her front-door, and often before now, when sketchers were numerous, she had sent her housemaid out to remove these untidy relics. She searched for it, but was obliged to come to the reluctant conclusion that there was ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... who were impatient and those who were half reluctant to attain it, the equal-handed hours brought the end of our exile. On one of our last evenings, April 6th, a reading was given in the school-room, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's music; no unfit close, we said, to our annns mirabilis. ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Paris with the Protestant nobles, and from all parts of France the Huguenots marched to assist him. Coligny, the greatest of the Huguenot leaders, hesitated; being, above all things, reluctant to plunge France into civil war. But the entreaties of his noble wife, of his brothers and friends, overpowered his reluctance. Conde left Meaux, with fifteen hundred horse, with the intention of seizing the person of the young king; but he had been ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... to feel that there are no priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no gods to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a reluctant homage. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... tremendous opposition and difficulties, he got together his reluctant Barons and a motley host, actually cutting down the trees with which to create a fleet, and then, depending upon pillage for subsistence, rushed to face victory ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... first vanquished them in turn and ravaged both that land and the territory of adjacent tribes which had taken part in the uprising. Immediately he reduced all of them to subjugation, gaining control of some with their consent, terrifying others into reluctant submission, and engaging in pitched battles with others. Later, when some of them rebelled, he again enslaved them. And for this thanksgivings and triumphal ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... act under my oath, I went out in search of Selim. He was not to be found in Murfreesboro, and a further search would have consumed time and thrown me back toward the Rebel lines. Overjoyed at my escape from the last danger, and not reluctant to make this contribution to the cause of my country, I turned my now buoyant steps homeward, under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. I rode into Nashville the 28th of June, with feelings widely different from those ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... out of Chris's surprised and reluctant fingers and began circling it over his head and giving it a sudden jerk. It didn't crack at first, but soon he got the knack of it and cracked it loudly as close to Celia Jane's ears and ankles as he could come without ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... grave." Jaralson was apparently a trifle reluctant to admit his ignorance of so important a point of his plan. "I have been watching about the place generally. A part of our work this morning will be to identify that grave. Here ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... explained, and the grandmother and aunt nodded a reluctant assent. Aunt Nan frowned. Elizabeth might have brought her friend along, and introduced him to Lizzie. Did Elizabeth think Lizzie wasn't ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... the never weary; Death, the friend of long suffering, and world weariness and despair; Death, the rescuer, the sometime comforter—has gone away with empty arms and reluctant tread, and—Life, flushed, triumphant, seizes his rescued subject and flings her out into the sea of human lives, perchance to alight upon some tiny green islet or, likelier yet, to buffet about among black waters, or encounter winds and storms, upheld only ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... half of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spike and wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a grave sort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Denny had time after time put all his strength against a reluctant log, skidding timber back on the hillside, and watched the lithe pike-pole bend half double under the steadily increasing strain. Somehow he felt very sure that one or the other of the captains would single him out; they couldn't afford ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... a bad climb. The perspiration rolled off Scott's face and the veins stood out upon his forehead. Gasping for breath, he dug his toes into the soft earth and plugged ahead, pulling the reluctant animals after him. He had nearly gained the top, was within twenty feet, perhaps, of the end of the climb, when Jasper began to pull back. They were breaking through some brush, Scott being nearly through when Jasper began pulling. Scott gave the bridle an irritated jerk and spoke sharply ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... her unaffected naturalness and apparent sincerity. Not a word, not even a suggestion while they were dancing, of the matter of the cab; it was as though she were just an old friend. And her dancing was a delight—such a delight, indeed, that he was reluctant to have it end. Somehow, one gets to know quickly one's partner ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... had been hit, but one and all made light of their injuries, and after receiving attention had resumed their places in the defence. Over thirty villagers had been badly wounded, but these were receiving the attention of their fellows, since, for some unexplained reason, they were reluctant to have their wounds dressed by ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... Myers loaded his team for Tennessee, and with his reluctant boy set out on his long journey. David was exceedingly restless. He now hated the man who was so tyranically domineering over him. He had no desire to return to his home, and he dreaded the hickory stick ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... rejoicing. One need not have wondered if the acknowledgment of a fact, dead in the teeth of all his prejudices, and seemingly destructive of some profound convictions, had been somewhat grudging. Even a good, true man might have been bewildered and reluctant to let go so much as was destroyed by the admission—'Then hath God granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life,'—and might have been pardoned if he had not been able to do more than acquiesce and hold his peace. We are scarcely just to these early ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... from the castle. The latter replies in an aria ("O Day of Mourning, Day of Sorrow") marked by sorrowful lamentation. Sophie again hurls her imprecations, and a very dramatic dialogue ensues, which takes the trio form as the reluctant Seneschal consents to enforce the cruel order. Once more Elizabeth tenderly appeals to her in the aria, "Thou too art a Mother." Sophie impatiently and fiercely exclaims, "No longer tarry!" The scene comes ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Betty, wishing she had said nothing, yet reluctant now to let the opportunity slip ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the colonel's reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder. "Won't that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you'll lose nothing by going below for a spell? Come, come, my good friend, have the leg ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... man to refuse. A little over forty at the period of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial dignity of years; it was, perhaps, with an unreverend awe, but he was awful. The Bench, the Bar, and the most experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority - ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the existence of vice and the possibility of crime among her own sex. You doubtless consider the Brinvilliers, Fredegonds, Fulvias and Faustinas, quite as fabulous as Centaurs, Sirens and Were-wolves; and I feel as reluctant to shake your fair faith in womanhood, as to dash the dew from a rose-bud, or rudely brush the bloom a cluster of tempting grapes; but the grim truth must be told, that our old friend was robbed and murdered ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the difference whether the thought of the name, or that of the will, of God be the prominent one. If men begin with the will, then their religion will be slavish, a dull, sullen resignation, or a painful, weary round of unwelcome duties and reluctant abstainings. The will of an unknown God will be in their thoughts a dark and tyrannous necessity, a mysterious, inscrutable force, which rules by virtue of being stronger, and demands only obedience. There is no more horrible conception of God than that which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the pursuing party were in readiness, Major Lee directed a change in the officer, giving the command to Cornet Middleton. His object was to add to the delay. He knew, moreover, that, from the tenderness of his disposition, Middleton would be reluctant to do any personal injury to Champe, in ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... the appearance of Wallace's essay in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, both Hooker and Lyell urged Darwin to publish the result of his long and patient research. But he was still reluctant to do so, not having as yet satisfied himself with regard to certain conclusions which, he felt, must be stoutly maintained in face of the enormous amount of criticism which would arise immediately his theory was launched on ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... harassed with ambuscades, but we got through without having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting than any of the previous nights had furnished. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... these ideas are correct, and what steps are best to take, you will now be able to determine, and instruct me accordingly. The truth is, that instead of being unwilling and reluctant to suppress, they dare not publish the work without indemnity. I am anxious to know your opinion on the subject, and hope to hear from ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... was not enough. But nobody minded. Nobody listened. Nobody took any notice of Mrs. Wilkins. She was the kind of person who is not noticed at parties. Her clothes, infested by thrift, made her practically invisible; her face was non-arresting; her conversation was reluctant; she was shy. And if one's clothes and face and conversation are all negligible, thought Mrs. Wilkins, who recognized her disabilities, what, at parties, is there ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... in throwing her into Shanghai during the great Taiping conspiracy, and compelling her to be an eye-witness of the crimes which sullied it. Beneath her windows were carried every day the dead bodies of the poor creatures massacred by the Taipings, and she followed with reluctant gaze these sad "waifs and strays" as ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... consciousness. Another fortnight and he was sufficiently convalescent to be moved, and accordingly they started to travel by very easy stages to Lisbon, there to take ship for England, as the doctor ordered Tom as well as his brother to go home for a while to recruit. Tom was the less reluctant to do so, as it was evident that with the force at his command Wellington would not be able to undertake any great operation, and that the siege and capture of Badajoz was the utmost likely to be accomplished in that season's campaign. The mails in due course had brought ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... years of hard work that had converted her little shop into a freehold, her old pride in having her title made out on parchment, the hurry she had been in to get it let, to go home by a particular ship, and the obstinate way in which her tenant's wife insisted on a right of purchase, and her own reluctant admission of the clause, thinking that as the house was not new, 250 pounds was an outside value for it, and now to think of its being such a kingdom. The town had run up to her little suburban shop, and far past it; on every side the monster, Melbourne, had been adding to his ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... vogue, this art of the Mannerists can scarcely be judged out of place. When I divulge the names of Giorgio Vasari, Giuseppe Cesari (Cav. d'Arpino), Tempesta, Fontana, Tibaldi, the Zuccari, the Procaccini, the Campi of Cremona, the scholars of Perino del Vaga, I shall probably call up before the reluctant eyes of many of my readers visions of dreary wanderings through weariful saloons and of disconsolate starings up at stuccoed cupolas in Rome and Genoa, in Florence and Naples, and in all ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... ten years of his life, he seems to have made, at a small school in the neighborhood, some small and reluctant progress into the mysteries of reading, writing, and arithmetic; whereupon his father took personal charge of the matter, and conducted his further education at home, along with that of other children, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... more. Whatever he does is done under the pressure of events, under the pressure of the public opinion. These agencies push Lincoln and slowly move him, notwithstanding his reluctant heaviness and his resistance. And he a standard-bearer ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... so bulky but there it would lay, And naught so ethereal but there it would stay, And naught so reluctant but in it must go: All which some examples ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... kissed the reluctant cheek of her young friend, or patroness, and took her departure with the light and stealthy pace of one accustomed to accommodate her footsteps to the purposes ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... for the musical exercise of young ladies, and for the comfort of all at an hotel. We supposed, however, that its being Christmas-time was probably the cause of the nocturnal music, of which we were the somewhat reluctant and suffering listeners. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... Government is allowed to go on financing the war by increasing the currency with the very reluctant help of the bankers, the difficulties of maintaining our gold standard and keeping the exchanges in favour of London will be very greatly magnified when the war is over and our gold reserves are no longer protected by the submarines and the high cost of shipping gold that ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... have the best conformation possible. The fact that the short section falls, as it were, inside, indicates that a short fight and speedy death may be expected. The owner of a weapon that passes this test is reluctant to part with it unless very advantageous offers are made ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, not as much, perhaps, as the Messrs. Effinghams; but then a man can see no more than is to be seen, and I do affirm, Captain Truck, that in my poor judgment, which I know is good ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a peace now existing, they will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when he leaned to the side of error. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and of how she had stood the cold and how reluctant she had been at first to leave Carter Hall, especially at the Christmas season, and of the Colonel (not a word, of course, about the encounter with Klutchem—no one would have dared breathe a word of that to her), and then of the scrap of a pickaninny ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a sort of path down to the brook, and then they led the old General down. He seemed a little reluctant, at first, to step into the water. However, he soon went in, and walked over, and Oliver fastened him to a tree, so that he could stand upon the bare piece of ground. Jonas then pulled the sleigh out of the road, so that it ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... fantastic manifestations of regard on the one hand, and coldness, superciliousness, or indifference on the other. Courtesies, like more substantial kindnesses, are neutralized by delay, and, when slow, seem forced and reluctant. Attentions, which in their place are gratifying, may, if misplaced, occasion only mortification and embarrassment, as when civilities befitting interior home-life are rehearsed for the public eye and ear. Nor is there any department of conduct in which ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... inevitably be starved out. It was therefore agreed that Jim should try to reach Goodnight and bring aid. It was a forlorn hope, but the only one. The herds must be at least sixty miles back down the trail. Jim was reluctant to leave, but Loving urged it ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... to his own city. Sinful in all his purpose, this wretch, in order to obstruct the sacrifice of my father, stole the sacrificial horse of the horse- sacrifice that had been let loose under the guard of armed men. Prompted by sinful motives, this one ravished the reluctant wife of the innocent Vabhru (Akrura) on her way from Dwaraka to the country of the Sauviras. This injurer of his maternal uncle, disguising himself in the attire of the king of Karusha, ravished also the innocent Bhadra, the princess of Visala, the intended bride of king Karusha. I have patiently ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... d'Armes were calling the hour of midnight when the priest and I stole silently past amid the shadows of overhanging trees. I find it impossible, even now, after the lapse of years, to dwell upon my parting with her who despatched me on so strange an errand. My reluctant pen halts, while the tears, dimming my old eyes, bid me turn to other scenes. However, under God, the venture of that night might terminate, I firmly believed I was gazing into her dear face for the last time; yet, honor sealed my lips, holding back unspoken ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... church on the sabbath-day, and pass the time that had heretofore been spent in the place of worship, in roaming about the wharves of the city, or in excursions into the country. This influence was slightly resisted, Thomas being ashamed or reluctant to use the word "No," on what seemed to all the young men around him a matter of so little importance. Still, his own heart condemned him, for he felt that it would pain his father and mother exceedingly if they knew that he neglected to attend church at least once on the sabbath-day; ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... is echoed with so much affectation in the world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted. The poet may gaily describe the short hours of recreation; but he forgets the daily tedious labours of the school, which is approached each morning with anxious and reluctant steps.' See ante, p. 44, and post, under ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... century came to regard as the age of prose. Of his three great Lives we feel that those of Dryden and Pope express the pleasure he spontaneously and unconsciously felt, while that of Milton is a reluctant tribute extorted from him by a genius he could not resist. Among the few poets in his long list for whom the nineteenth century cared much are Gray and Collins; and of Collins he says almost nothing in ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... animal at bay. With revolver pulled round to the front ready to hand, and half expecting occasion to use it in defence of my life, I grimly speculate on the number of my cartridges and the probability of each one bagging a sore-eyed Celestial ere my own lonely and reluctant ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... cruel fane, Long hast thou held me, pitiless god of Pain, Bound to thy worship by reluctant vows, My tired breast girt with suffering, and my brows Anointed with perpetual weariness. Long have I borne thy service, through the stress Of rigorous years, sad days and slumberless nights, ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... on his side, with the constraint which always fell upon him in her presence more marked than ever. His eyes were on the ground. He seemed reluctant ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... was so extraordinarily strong that others hastened to his aid, for the capture was beyond the capabilities of one man kneeling in a tucked-up sheet of bark. The whole fleet of canoes barely succeeded in towing the massive and reluctant creature to the nearest beach, and Tom was wont to tell that it took eight strong men to turn it on its back. It was "kummaoried" on the sand, and Tom oft pointed out the very spot as proof of the most famous feast within the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Sophist has fallen on its members. Their feigned ardours and unreal rhetoric are delightful. They can make the worse appear the better cause, as though they were fresh from Leontine schools, and have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakeably innocent. But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to precedent. In spite of their endeavours, the truth will out. Newspapers, even, have ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... initial advantage. The Lacaedemonians, on their part, seem to have endeavoured to assume the defensive both by land and sea; while their foot-soldiers were assembling in the neighbourhood of Corinth, their fleet sailed as far as Delos and there anchored, as reluctant to venture beyond as if it had been a question of proceeding to the Pillars of Hercules. Athens, which ran the risk of falling into the enemy's hands for the second time through these hesitations, evinced such marked displeasure that Mardonius momentarily ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... anointed the future king he assembled the whole nation together, through their deputies, at Mizpeh, who confirmed the divine appointment. Saul, who appeared reluctant to accept the high dignity, was fair and tall, and noble in appearance, patriotic, warlike, generous, affectionate—the type of an ancient hero, but vacillating, jealous, moody, and passionate. He ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Kennedy filled his lungs with air as if reluctant to leave the drive. "Our constitutional," he remarked, "is ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... in their revenge, and sparkle with joy, as the sun shines upon their victory. That keel, which, with the sharpness of a scythe, has so often mowed its course through the reluctant wave, is now buried;—buried deep in the sand, which the angry surge accumulates each minute, as if determined that it never will be subject to its ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... customs, obstacles and absurdities, enraged myself, limited myself, gave myself to occupations I saw with the clearest vision were dishonourable and vain, and at last achieved the end of purblind Nature, the relentless immediacy of her desire, and held, far short of happiness, Marion weeping and reluctant in my arms. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... repeated his demand for yet more money, and this time it was received not, as heretofore, with reluctant submission, but with acclamation. At last people saw what the minister was driving at; only the few who would have disowned the name of Italian voted with the minority. The fifty million francs were quickly subscribed, chiefly ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... whom fortune's ray Illumined still with beams of cloudless day; Yet fail'd to chase the darkness of the mind, That brooded still on loftier hopes behind. From him a nobler line in two degrees Reduced Numidia to reluctant peace. Crete, Spain, and Macedonia's conquer'd lord Adorn'd their triumphs and their treasures stored. Vespasian, with his son, I next survey'd, An angel soul in angel form array'd; Nor less his brother seem'd in outward ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... us down its rocky steep, so we had to walk. I admired this lonely valley far more than before. It was full of infinite depths of blue—blue smoke in lazy spirals curled upwards; it was eloquent in a morning silence that I felt reluctant to break. Against its dewy greenness the beach shone like coarse gold, and its slow silver river lingered lovingly, as though loth to leave it, and be merged in the reckless loud-tongued Pacific. Across the valley, the track I was to ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... wilder minuets, lashed each other with infatuated glee, mocking the whistle of the wind with an angry swish of their tall bodies. Around the cornices of the Inn of the Hawk and Raven scurried the singing breezes, reluctant to leave a playground so pleasing to the fancy. Soon the night became a cauldron, a surging, hissing, roaring receptacle in which were mixing the ingredients of disaster. Night-birds flapped through the moaning ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... miserably. She was crushed by the immensity of the difficulties confronting them. Expedients which looked simple beforehand were found lamentably deficient to cope with wild nature on the stupendous scale of this gloomy land. Suarez, too, was very reluctant to leave the boat, but the American adopted a short cut in the argument, offering him the alternative of climbing ashore or of being ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... defenceless, and the shrieks of women struggling with their murderers; while through all, and above all, boomed out the deep-toned bells of the metropolitan churches—one long burial-peal; and amid this ghastly diapason it was the pleasure of the tiger-hearted Charles to accept the reluctant and informal recantation of his two horror-stricken victims; after which he compelled them without remorse to the agony of seeing their friends and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... door, recoiled for a second as the gale swept angrily against him, then plunged blindly across the street. He clambered into the seat of his cab, depressed the starter, and eventually was answered by the reluctant cough of the motor. He raced it for a while, getting the machinery heated up preparatory to ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... library privileges suspended or revoked. But many librarians are uncomfortable with approaching patrons who are viewing sexually explicit images, finding confrontation unpleasant. Hence some libraries are reluctant to apply the ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... she said, with a reluctant smile— "I suppose it was the strange yacht that had the music on board last night. It kept me awake. I thought it was some tiresome person out in a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... having nothing else to do, I decided to make the long- projected visit; that is, if I could persuade Mademoiselle to accompany me. After my experience in the Rue St.-Arnaud the other day I did not venture to drive, so we started off to walk (with Mademoiselle's reluctant consent) to the Boulevard de Courcelles, where Delsarte ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... and looked at each other. Each had his or her own opinion on the subject which was uppermost in their minds, but each was equally reluctant to express it, till that of the others had been got at. So each of the three said "Well?" to the other two, and stood waiting, as if they were playing the old game of "Who speaks first?" It got tiresome, however, after a bit, and ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... Slim was reluctant to release the telegraph key. However, as Joe began folding the paper in such a way that only the last sentence showed, their aroused curiosity brought both of them to ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... establishment! It was the same story when I asked them to open the schools at night and let in the boys to have their clubs there. The saloon was bidding for them, and bidding high, but the School Board hesitated because a window might be broken or a janitor want extra pay for cleaning up. Before a reluctant consent was given I had to make a kind of promise that I would not appear before the Board again to argue for throwing the doors wider still. But it isn't going to keep me from putting in the heaviest licks I can, in the campaign that is coming, for turning the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... even in Petit Jehan itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the dame des belles Cousines, during an absence of her lover on service, falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the nouvelles themselves. But the earlier part is gracious—a word specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little unreal; does not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... education, for in the autumn after his visit she entered the Cedar Valley Seminary at Osage and her going produced in me a desire to accompany her. I said nothing of it at the time, for my father gave but reluctant consent to Harriet's plan. A district school education seemed to him ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... requisites for a manufacturing point. The Cuyahoga river, though giving abundant water power along a considerable portion of its course, enters Cleveland as a slow moving stream, winding its sluggish way in so tortuous a course that it seems reluctant to lose its identity in the waters of the lake. Water power, under such circumstances, is out of the question, and, as with no coal, and a rapidly decreasing supply of wood, steam cannot be economically used for manufacturing purposes, the people of Cleveland ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the Treasury. 'Where is it,' said the President, quickly, his eye lighting up in a moment. 'I brought it with me,' said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket. 'I wrote it this morning.' 'Let me have it,' said the President, reaching his long arm and fingers toward Chase, who held on seemingly reluctant to part with the letter which was sealed and which he apparently hesitated to surrender. Something further he wished to say, but the President was eager and did not perceive it, but took and hastily opened ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... on that morning he found himself reluctant to leave, all his ties binding him to his master's home, this was the custom among them. He would say to his master, "I don't want to leave you. This is home to me. I love you and the mistress. I love the place. All my ties and affections are here. I want to ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... that Restoration House which, under another name, he assigned to Miss Havisham, and so round by Fort Pitt to the Chatham lines. And there—who can doubt?—if he seemed to hear the melancholy wind that whistled through the deserted fields as Mr. Winkle took his reluctant stand, a wretched and desperate duellist, his thoughts would also stray to the busy dockyard town and "a blessed little room" in a plain-looking plaster-fronted house from which dated all his early ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... dispensation from above. He often paused, seemed to find a difficulty of breathing, was at a loss for words, of which, however, he never failed to find the most pungent at last; and assumed, in a remarkable degree, the appearance of speaking only from a strong compulsion, a feeling of reluctant duty, a sense of moral necessity urging him to a task which burdened all his feelings. I will acknowledge that, when he had made his way through this difficult performance, I followed him with unequivocal delight, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... tests by which single mental functions are measured approximately in short quick examinations, has been much discussed in psychological circles. For a long while the thorough scholars remained very reluctant to accept such an apparently superficial scheme, when these tests were proposed especially for the pedagogical interests of the schoolroom. It was a time in which the scientific efforts were completely devoted to the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... wear it, with the love of a grateful old man." He turned and abruptly walked away as Helen untied the box, but he could not so escape from those swift feet. There was a cry as the girl peered beneath the papers, and then a swift rush toward him. So it happened that it was not Zaidos' reluctant and unaccustomed shoulder on which the happy tears were shed, and it was not to Tony that Helen's last tender girl-kisses ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... had some interest in scientific agriculture. Both the owner and the vine-dresser in this parable were out for agricultural efficiency. The owner hated to see soil and space wasted; the vine-dresser was reluctant to sacrifice a tree, and proposed better tillage and more fertilizer. Taking this parable in connection with what precedes, we see that Jesus was concerned about the future of his nation and its religion. Both would have to validate ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... that we do not have to return to it again, or permit any of them to do so. In fact, we shall not hereafter consider, with any ulterior material or spiritual motive, any more of such disparaging, denigrating matter, in the two MSS. before us, as has to pass through our reluctant hands "touchin' on and appertainin' to" the great City of Manhattan and its distinguished denizens. For our part, we have had enough of this painful task. And truly, we have never before undergone such trials ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... The vintagers were going forth to their toil; the wine-press was busy in the shade, and the clatter of the mill kept time to the miller's song. I loitered about the village with a feeling of calm delight. I was unwilling to leave the seclusion of this sequestered hamlet; but at length, with reluctant step, I took the cross-road through the vineyard, and in a moment the little village had sunk again, as if by enchantment, into the bosom of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... window, with the reluctant conviction that he had been nursing an untenable theory, a last ray of sunshine shot through the open window, causing the dust he had raised by his entrance to quiver and gyrate like a host of mad bacilli dancing a jig. The shaft of light, falling ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... to think that a man might buy an election and yet not be entirely bad. Second only to Pell, was his whilom enemy, the former District-Attorney, now a state senator, who battled himself into Peter's reluctant admiration and friendship by his devotion and loyalty to the bills. Peter concluded that he had not entirely done the man justice in the past. Curiously enough, his chief antagonist ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... especially averse to lending. Dr. Guhrauer's assertion respecting Leibnitz, that "his library was numerous and valuable, and its possessor had the peculiarity that he liked to worm in it alone, being very reluctant to let any one see it," applies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... or a shoe-binder. She is really of use, for its working is by no means ideal, and with her wider knowledge she has suggested improvements and expedients for making both ends meet which were sometimes so reluctant to meet. She has kept a conscience against subsidising the Union from her own means; and she even accepts for her services a small salary, which its members think they ought to pay her. She owns this ridiculous, like all the make-believe ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... are thinly attended; I'm the only resident clergyman, and I'm sorry I must confess that some of our people are indifferent: reluctant, or perhaps half afraid, to interfere. They want a clear lead; if we could get a big determined meeting it might ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... our college professors are fixtures. Such local college attachments are not known in Germany; and the promotions which are frequent in Germany are less thought of here. When we think of calling foreign teachers, we encounter other difficulties. Many are reluctant to cross the sea; and others are, by reason of their lack of acquaintance with our language and ways, unavailable. Besides we may as well admit that London, Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, and Vienna afford facilities ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... the father bird for all this time, though I have mentioned it but casually, was of course a subject of continual remark. How was it to be explained? My own opinion is, reluctant as I have been to reach it, that such absence or desertion—by whatever name it may be called—is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point I shall have some things to ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... of her devotion to Zillah, and some further conversation followed, all of which resulted in this—that Hilda wrote the letter in Zillah's name, and signed that name in her own hand, and under Zillah's own eye, and with Zillah's half-reluctant, half-pettish concurrence. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... in by their fathers and presented without any interruption to her flow of talk. She let fall a question here and there that was presumably directed to one or the other of her sisters, but their faint, reluctant answers apparently did not disturb her. She was treating them as though they were dingy frumps; and they revolted against all this prattle about Paris. It was distinctly unbecoming in a woman whose sins were so grievous to ripple on so light-heartedly ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... will be done, Holy and righteous One! Though the reluctant years May never crown my throbbing brows with white, Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine: Yet by the solitary tears, Deeper than joy or sorrow,—by the thrill, Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen, In those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... your two uncles from India," said Aunt Lucy, taking Bobbie's reluctant hand. "They have come on purpose to see you, so you must leave the guinea-pigs for a minute—Jerry can stay with them, and come down as soon as ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... haste and got from the side of my bed the only chair in the room, placed it in the window, sat down before the reluctant instrument, and gave it a third swing. Then, my elbows on the sill, I sat and watched it with growing awe, but growing determination as well. Once more it showed signs of refusal; once more the forefinger of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... where the hill was bare Woke a reluctant breeze. Dimly I knew My Day was come. The wind-blown blossoms threw Their breath about me, and the pine-swept air Grew to a shape, a mighty, formless thing, A phantom of ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... year when, from May 1 till snow flew, his fleets of rafts of pine lumber were not running over the dam at Grand Rapids. With the business men along the river his relations had been close and friendly. They were, therefore, not reluctant to do him a favor. Among these I will mention but two, though there were many others who were ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... is, the blame, if it rests upon any one, should rest upon Carlyle. He collected the letters. He wrote the lines which burn and scorch with self-reproach. It is he who pressed upon the reluctant Froude the duty of printing and publishing a series of documents which, for the most part, should never have been published at all, and which have done equal harm to Carlyle, to his wife, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... they were apart. Mahony urged and pleaded, but could not get Polly to name the wedding-day. He began to think pressure was being brought to bear on the girl from another side. Naturally the Beamishes were reluctant to let her go: who would be so useful to them as Polly?—who undertake, without scorn, the education of the whilom shepherd's daughters? Still, they knew they had to lose her, and he could not see that it made things any easier ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... town, Hal declared, that, if he and Ned could remain behind the train for a few hours, he knew they could capture one; becoming so urgent in his appeal, that I finally yielded a reluctant consent to the project, cautioning them under no circumstances, to remain away from the train more than two or three hours. This they faithfully promised not to do, and departed; notwithstanding Jerry pronounced ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... his studies at a place far inland, at the proposal of his tutor, to recover, as the tutor suggested, a certain loss of robustness, something more than that cheerful indifference of early youth had passed away. The learned man, who held, as was alleged, the doctrines of a surprising new philosophy, reluctant to disturb too early the fine intelligence of the pupil entrusted to him, had found it, perhaps, a matter of honesty to send back to his parents one likely enough to catch from others any sort of theoretic light; for the letter he wrote dwelt much on the lad's ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder than the clearer air,—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber; or it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... had little connection with each other; they were the outcome of individual daring, mere boat's-crews from one or another of the Northern fiords. A few of the more persistent gradually grew reluctant to retreat with their booty to the frozen north, and tried to gain a footing on the shores of the fertile and wealthy island they had discovered. They made temporary camps on the beach, always beside the best harbors, and threw up earthworks round them, or perhaps more lasting forts of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Conference has now been in session fifteen days. While I have felt reluctant to do any thing which should have the appearance of precipitating our action, of cutting off or limiting debate, I have all the time been pressed with this conviction; that if we are to save this country we must act speedily. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... known and the knower is threefold. Cognition is incomplete and lacks the free co-operation of the knower when God merely pervades (durchwohnt) the creature, as is the case with the devil's timorous and reluctant knowledge of God. A higher stage is reached when the known is present to the knower and dwells with him (beiwohnt). Cognition becomes really free and perfect when God dwells in (inwohnt) the creature, in which case the finite reason yields itself freely ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... crown his passion! Ah, every utterance from the depths of feeling The timid lips have stammeringly expressed,— Now failing, now, perchance, success revealing,— Gulps the wild Moment in its greedy breast; Or oft, reluctant years its warrant sealing, Its perfect stature stands at last confessed! What dazzles, for the Moment spends its spirit: What's genuine, shall ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... deference, he had been briefly told the outward circumstances of the case, which he knew already; for these two had been formerly members of his congregation, and gossip had not been reluctant in telling their story. Hosmer, of course, had drifted away from his knowledge, and in late years, he had seen little of Fanny, who when moved to attend church at all usually went to the Redemptorist's Rock Church with her friend Belle Worthington. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... neither mail-carrier nor any one else, save in some life-or-death emergency, with licence from the Northwest Mounted Police, may take out horse or dogs to start a journey when the temperature is lower than 45 deg. below zero; but I have seen a reluctant mail-carrier chased out at 60 deg. below zero, on pain of losing his job, on the American side. Moreover, between the seasons, when travel on the rivers is positively dangerous to life, the mail must still be despatched and received, although so great is ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... thereafter Seward went to Cuba for his health and on the way saw St. Thomas. He then became resolved to buy and asked Denmark to name a price, but she refused. The plan, however, was laid before the Danish Cabinet in 1866. The Danes were reluctant to alienate these islands because they loved the colony. They believed, too, that the sale would offend England, France, and Spain. Mr. Seward and Mr. Yeamen, our minister at Copenhagen, however, pushed it and the Danish government finally offered the United States the three islands for $15,000,000. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... following this advice; and he urged it upon Maud, as the safest and most prudent course they could pursue. Our heroine, however, was so reluctant even to assuming the appearance of happiness, so recently after the losses she had experienced, that the lover's task of persuasion was by no means easy. Maud was totally free from affectation, while she possessed the keenest sense of womanly ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, he saw he was botching it just like everything else. He had come too close, and his heavy boot was pressing on the tip of her shoe; and he had not quite landed square on her lips. But still, he was close to her. He was reluctant to break it up, but he felt she was only half-responding, not giving anything of herself while he had given all. ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... to take breath, and picking up her knitting to inspect it for a moment, seemed somewhat reluctant ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... meantime how Maezli had proposed to visit the sick Castle-Steward and how she had at first been reluctant to go, till Maezli had made her feel that she was wrong. She related everything that had happened and all the questions he ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... under Janet's fixed and unshakable delusions. She saw that high-sounding titles were no more part of the personalities bearing them than the mass of frankly false hair so grandly worn by Aristide's grand-aunt was part of the wisp-like remnant of natural head covering. But that other self of hers, so reluctant to be laughed or frowned down and out by the self that was Hiram Ranger's daughter, still forced her to share in the ancient, ignorant allegiance to "appearances." She did not appreciate how bored she was, how impatient to be back with Dory, the never monotonous, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... told the villagers to resume relations with Marget and Ursula in a private and unostentatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were told to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the suspicions of the household. The villagers were at first a bit reluctant to enter such a dreadful place, but the priest said they would be under his protection while there, and no harm could come to them, particularly if they carried a trifle of holy water along and kept their beads and crosses handy. This satisfied them and made them willing to go; envy ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the guessing and conceits of a multitude of writers, most trustworthy of whom are the early Christian Fathers, who, to the end that they might arouse the attention of the sleeping nations, yielded a reluctant, but impartial and graceful, tribute to the long-forgotten creeds of Chaldea, Phenicia, Assyria, and Egypt. Nevertheless, they would never have appealed to the doctrine of Buddha as being most like to Christianity in its rejection of the claims of race, had they not found in its simple ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... had given her. "I can't? Watch me!" She grinned up at him, her eyes still dancing. "Every chance I get, I'm going to hug your arm like I did a minute ago. And you'll take hold of my forearm, like you did! That can be taken, you see, as either: One, a reluctant acceptance of a mildly distasteful but not quite actionable situation, or: Two, a blocking move to keep me from climbing up you ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... way to his dressing room, he found her in a cloud of finery which her skilful hands were forcibly compressing into a last portmanteau. He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts into her life. "When I'm rich," she often said, "the thing I shall hate most will be to see an ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... evidently made in good faith, and Gilbert hesitated, reluctant to accept it, and yet unwilling to reject it in a ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... her lips and chin, and fell on the silk collar round her neck. She could not take her own handkerchief from her pocket, sitting as she was with my arm round her. I drew out mine and dried the wet eyes, and then pressed the soft reluctant head against my shoulder. Once there, it remained, too weary to lift ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... scarcely passed ere he heard the tramp of Sherman's army sweeping victoriously across the State, and beheld the once proud and haughty Charleston in possession of the Union legions. As he saw the starry flag again waving aloft in triumph, he hastened, with reluctant footsteps, to place himself once more under its protecting folds, thus renewing, in 1865, his oath of allegiance to the government whose authority he had defied ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... we reserve the name "conscience" for the vaguer and more elusive restraints and leadings, the sense of reluctant necessity whose purpose we do not clearly see although we feel its pressure, the accumulated residuum of long inner experience and many influences from without. Our minds retain many creases whose origin we have forgotten; we veer away from many a pleasant inclination ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... which made for the alliance with France and through it for the Triple Entente. It is well known that even after the termination of the Russo-German secret treaty of mutual neutrality in 1890, the Tsar Alexander III remained for a long time reluctant to come to terms with Republican France. Towards the end of 1890 there was a fresh outbreak of official anti-Semitism in Russia, and the bitter cry of the persecuted Jews was heard all over Europe. At that moment it happened that negotiations for a large ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... politely protested that we should rather stay in the library; Mrs. Endicott was not to be resisted. "Your father and my mother enjoy looking at books more than anything else," she said pleasantly, as we made our reluctant way back; "but I know that young people like to be where there are life and gaiety,—and you haven't even had a cup of chocolate. Come this way, and I'll introduce you to ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... mother. They had incessant recourse to her advice; and her simplest words were as a law to them, her conduct their example. She assumed no power, and disclaimed all authority; but the sovereign empire of love was forced into her reluctant hands. They insisted on being governed by one they held in such affection, and gave up every pleasure for the sake of being with her, and sharing ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... cutlery with which he had been so kindly presented, should be retained as an heirloom in his family; and he assured them that he should ever be faithful to his death to the principles which had earned for him their approval. In taking his reluctant leave of them, he wished them many merry Christmases, and many ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... any kind about etiquette. You eat, drink, and are merry, or, if you prefer, are sad; just as you please. You may wear uniform, or you may not, it's your own affair; and consequently, it may be imagined how insensibly such privileges gain upon one, and how very reluctant we become ever to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... steamer. The more I thought of catching the steamer, the less I cared to do so; the more I thought of leaving home, the less I cared to do so. It was not that I was going away from Sylvia that made me thus reluctant to start. It was because I was going away without taking leave of her,—without a word or even a sign from her. I ground my teeth as I thought of how I had lost the only chance I had had of bidding ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... unconfusedly, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers. And these two natural wills are not contrary one to the other (which God forbid), as the impious heretics say, but His human will follows, not as resisting or reluctant, but rather therefore as subject to His divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the will of the flesh should be moved, but be subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as His flesh ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... "'Yes,' I says, reluctant like, 'I s'pose it's fair. But how will it work out? will there be enough to make it worth ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... lived upon the hope to meet with the lost again. At last, and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection lived,—was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of your mother in Ernest Maltravers! It devolved on me (an invidious—a reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering, patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again. You know Maltravers,—his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
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