"Unwillingness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... giving up my room. I had a strange reluctance to making the offer, which surprised myself. Was it a boding of evil to come? I cannot say. We are strangely and wonderfully made. It MAY have been. At any rate, I do not think it was any selfish unwillingness to make an old and infirm lady comfortable by a trifling sacrifice. I was perfectly healthy and strong. The weather was not cold for the time of the year. It was a dark, moist Yule—not a snowy one, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... of Harvard University is therefore in a way justified in his unwillingness to identify the grammarian and the Yoga editor on the slender evidence of these commentators. It is indeed curious to notice that the great commentators of the grammar school such as Bhart@rhari, Kaiyya@ta, Vamana, Jayaditya, Nages'a, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... truth, after the following fashion. It came to pass at last that a day and an hour was fixed in which Mr. Gilmore might come to the vicarage and find Mary alone. There were no absolute words arranging this to which she was a party, but it was understood. She did not even pretend an unwillingness to receive him, and had assented by silence when Mrs. Fenwick had said that the man should be put out of his suspense. Mary, when she was silent, knew well that it was no longer within her power ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... their first meeting, McNabbs had felt an instinctive distrust of the quartermaster. Two or three insignificant facts, a hasty glance exchanged between him and the blacksmith at the Wimerra River, his unwillingness to cross towns and villages, his persistence about getting the DUNCAN summoned to the coast, the strange death of the animals entrusted to his care, and, lastly, a want of frankness in all his behavior—all these details combined had awakened the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... & high heaven doth know, With what unwillingness I went to Church. But you enforced me, you compelled me to it: The holy Church-man pronounced these words but now: I must not leave my husband in distress, Now I must comfort him, not go ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... child, after having given proofs of memory and intelligence, experiences daily more and more difficulty in retaining and understanding what is taught him, it is not only from unwillingness and idleness, as is commonly supposed, but from a disease eating out life itself, brought on by a self-abuse of the private organs. Besides the slow and progressive derangement of his or her health, the diminished ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... L250,000 is spent in Ireland in giving relief to 8,000,000 of the people. But if his lordship took time to consider, he would see that the disproportionate expenditure was not caused by any restrictions which the Irish law imposed, but by the unwillingness of the Irish people to take advantage of its enactments. If he had recourse to the returns of the commissioners, he would have found, that while in the year ending January 1844 the gross number of those who received ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... important to the interests of the country, as well as of our university, but my wish is merely to open it for our own consideration and discussion. We have already done so much for the improvement of our system of instruction, that public opinion will not reproach us for any unwillingness to alter. It is our first duty to be well satisfied that we can improve: such alterations ought only to be the result of a most mature consideration, and of a free interchange of sentiments on the subject, in order that we may condense ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... in his dominions except Goa, and it was even hinted that Goa itself would be given up, if Albuquerque would surrender Timoja, who was looked on as a traitor to his country. This proposition it need hardly be said was rejected with scorn. Eventually, whether from the unwillingness of the Portuguese captains or from sheer impossibility of defence, Yusaf Adil Shah's army made its way into the island of Goa on May 17, 1510. The Portuguese at first hoped to hold the citadel of Goa; but finding the position untenable, Albuquerque withdrew his ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... well," he said to Olaf, "in thus coming away with seeming unwillingness. But do not suppose that I value you so lightly as did your late master, who thinks, foolish man, that you are no better than many another bond slave whom he might buy in the marketplace. Had Reas exacted an hundred gold marks instead ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... forgotten the observations of Lady M—relative to Lionel, and what the lad now said made me surmise that there was some mystery, and, on examination of his countenance, there was a family likeness to Lady R—. I also called to mind her unwillingness to enter upon the subject when I brought ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven, and unafraid, and had never worn woven cloth on my body. And as the flames sprang up, and Elgiva sang her death-song, and the thralls and slaves screeched their unwillingness to die, I tore away my fastenings, leaped, and gained the fens, the gold collar of my slavehood still on my neck, footing it with the hounds loosed to ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and superior. There is the first spur, Desire, the base of the reward system, the incentive of self-interest, the attitude which says, "Why should I make an effort unless it will give me pleasure?" with its concomitant laziness, unwillingness to work without payment. There is the second spur, Combat, the competitive system, which sets one against another, and finds pleasure not in learning, not exercising the mind, but in getting ahead of one's fellows. Under these two wholly masculine influences ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... to refuse monsieur?" replied Lurline, hesitating, yet softening her unwillingness to comply by a volley of sidelong glances. "Monsieur is not aware that he is placing me in a most delicate position. It is against madame's rules to be disturbed when her toilet is progressing: it requires her concentrated ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... observed that some threatening looks directed towards them by Messrs. Bennet and Tyrman, seemed to silence them for a moment, but their youthful spirits soon overcoming their fears, the whispering and giggling recommenced, and glances were cast at the white stranger, which seemed to intimate no unwillingness to commence a closer acquaintance. After the conclusion of the sermon, another psalm was sung, and the service concluded. The display of costume, as the congregation strolled homewards in groups, with the greatest self-complacency, through the beautiful broad ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... even from so illustrious a source failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her a due sense of the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of her vocation. We have already alluded to her modesty in her unwillingness to assert herself or claim any prerogative,—something even morbid and exaggerated, which we know not how to define, whether as over-sensitiveness or indifference. Once finished, the heat and glow of composition ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... to acknowledge a former letter forwarded to me from Hans Place. I assure you I felt very grateful for the friendly tenor of it, and hope my silence will have been considered, as it was truly meant, to proceed only from an unwillingness to tax your time with idle thanks. Under every interesting circumstance which your own talents and literary labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... awkward and unwelcome one. The assassination of Lincoln came to their relief. They could join, without insincerity, in the burst of public feeling which that terrible deed excited; could merge their protests against Lincoln in the established unwillingness to say evil of the dead; could give momentary pause to national and political considerations, beside the grave of one preeminent citizen; and could start afresh afterwards, with a new situation, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... elaborate illustration of the first four lines of this passage, painted by Botticelli (in the Florence Academy of Fine Arts), proves Botticelli's incapacity or unwillingness to deal with the subject in the spirit of the original. It is graceful and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... we believe, can blame General Washington for his unwillingness to add to the British forces arrayed against his country by exchanging the captured troops in the hands of the Americans for the crews of American privateers, who were not in the Continental service. As ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... back on his seat in sickening despair. He knew enough of courts to be aware of the extreme unwillingness of juries to convict, even where the evidence is most clear, when the penalty of such conviction is death. At the period of the trial most condemnatory to the prisoner, he had repeated this fact to himself, in order to damp his too certain expectation for a conviction. Now it needed not repetition, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... enumeration of the deficiencies of Montjoy, he was clearly understood to intimate his own superior fitness for the office. The queen, notwithstanding certain suspicions which had been infused into her of danger in committing to Essex the command of an army, and notwithstanding the unwillingness which she still felt to deprive herself of his presence, appears to have adopted with eagerness this suggestion of her favorite;—for she held in high estimation both his talents and his good fortune. Montjoy promptly retired from a competition in which he must be unsuccessful; the adherents ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... tell us of Rochford's absence, and to say that, should we wish it, he would accompany us farther, and, though at the risk of his life, try to find our white friend. From what I heard him say, I was now convinced of his honesty, as also of his affection for Rochford. His unwillingness to take us at once to the camp was fully accounted for. The people before me, I saw, were evidently a party of runaway blacks; two, indeed, I recognised as those who had deserted from us, and I had little doubt that Rochford had persuaded them that he would obtain their freedom. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... unwillingness, Lescande detained him until he had extorted a promise to come and dine with them—that is, with him, his wife, and his mother-in-law, Madame Mursois—on the following Tuesday. This acceptance left a cloud on the spirit of Camors until ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... may be to do what is right, yet up to a certain point they are ashamed not to do so, and that they withstand wrongdoers openly, particularly if there are any who receive damage through the wrong done: and we shall find that what ruins everything and is the source of all evil is the unwillingness to do what is right without reserve. {25} Now in order that no such obstacle may stand in the way of the humiliation of Thebes, let us demand the re-establishment of Thespiae, Orchomenus, and Plataeae, co-operating with their citizens ourselves, and requiring ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... State convention was held at Collinsville, in spite of some unwillingness of local suffragists to "shock the town" by having such a meeting there. By this time Mrs. Hooker, though still president, had largely relinquished the work to Mrs. Elizabeth D. Bacon, the faithful vice-president. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... time that the doctor heard the Recluse speak of his peculiar opinions; but, although always ready to avow and dilate upon them when others were willing to listen, he had uniformly manifested an unwillingness to allude to himself or the incidents of his life. Whenever, heretofore, as sometimes happened, the curiosity of his auditors led the conversation in that direction, he had invariably evaded all hints and repulsed every inquiry. But his ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... this eloquent document will, however, realize that its author lacked the energy and self-reliance necessary to deal with the desperate situation in which the country was placed. In his eagerness to save the Belgian towns and to safeguard unity, in spite of the unwillingness of Holland and Zeeland to depart from their expectant attitude, he concluded with the Duke of Anjou, on September 29th, the treaty of Plessis-lez-Tours, by which, in exchange for military help, the duke was to receive the title of hereditary sovereign of the United ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... such as small souls show when they are on the point of proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... far to see him. He desired to hear all about me, and was greatly moved at the account I gave him of the Rainbow's loss. He was sorry to find that all the time I had been at sea I had not improved my condition in the world. I confessed that it was owing to my idleness and unwillingness to learn. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... debates on the subject, presented an address to the king, requesting he would abandon this proposed marriage. To this he was not inclined to listen, his honour being so far involved in the business; but notwithstanding his unwillingness, his councillors urged him to this step, and prayed he would stop the princess, then journeying through France on her way to England. This so incensed him that he immediately prorogued parliament, and freed himself from further ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... in a conversation with me, acknowledges that there is a secret in the family, and is just upon the point of revealing its nature, when Mr. Clavering enters the house. Upon his departure she declares her unwillingness ever to mention the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... greatly interested in getting a library for the working girls' club, which they helped support. Patty was usually most enthusiastic and energetic in furnishing any project for helping this work along, and Elise was greatly surprised at her present unwillingness to hold a ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... and moved slowly and reluctantly. She did not say that she felt waiting on her mother to be a trouble, but her face, and the expression of her shoulders, and her dull, dawdling movements said it for her; and poor Mrs. Bright, who was not used to such unwillingness on the part of her little daughter, felt it so much that she shed a few tears over the second cup of tea after it was brought. This dismayed Eyebright, but it also exasperated her. She would not take any notice, but stood by in silence till her mother had finished, ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... bishop was made known. The boats, the carts, the horses were now liberally brought in from their lurking-places; the artillery and stores were landed; and the drivers of the carts, &c., were paid in drafts upon the Irish Directory, which (if it were an aerial coin) served at least to mark an unwillingness in the enemy to adopt violent modes of hostility, and ultimately became available in the very character assigned to them by the French general; not, indeed, as drafts upon the rebel, but as claims upon the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to arms, and troops pouring in from Tutuila and the westward to join in the onslaught against Mataafa. The Taufusi people, as foreigners, were not liable to the levy except for two striplings by way of rent, both of whom were subscribed with unwillingness, though neither was O'olo. This Evanitalina learned with joy, for death was in the air and bloody fighting nigh at hand, and her tenderness for O'olo, lying secret in her bosom, like a red-hot coal, was fanned to the flame of agony. But no, he was fortunately in the lock-up, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... beyond expression. I had felt guilty enough when an unwilling auditor of the conspirators,—since, though one employs spies, one does not therefore act that part one's-self, but on emergencies,—an unwillingness which would not, however, prevent my turning to advantage the information gained; but here, to listen to this rehearsal of woes and blisses, this ah mon Fernand, this aria in an area, growing momently more fervent, was too much. I overturned the cask, scrambled upon my feet, and fled from ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... prohibition to the Jews to serve "their gods upon the high mountains and upon the hills" is traced back to the unwillingness of their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to pursue adeptship. This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense: for ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the way they keep ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... their character." The free-list offered by the United States reads like a diplomatic joke: "burr-millstones, rags, fire-wood, grindstones, plaster and gypsum." The real bar in this and subsequent negotiations, was the unwillingness of the Americans to enter into any kind of arrangement for extended trade. They did not want to break in upon their system of protection, and they did not set a high value on access to the Canadian market. In most of the negotiations, the Americans are found trying to drive the best possible ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... what they set out to do, although Mr. Huxley only achieves a personal synthesis of style and substance in "The Death of Lully." The other three stories are full of promise as yet unrealised because of Mr. Huxley's inability or unwillingness to conceal the technique of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... This unwillingness to discuss conditions gives rise among people who are deficient in poise to a special form of reasoning, which causes them to summarize in the most hurried fashion even the gravest events, upon the ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... to seek the city out of sight. His choice lay between this woman and El Dorado, in whose search he had wasted all his life. He did not deceive himself, whatever he might say aloud; his hesitancy did not arise out of unwillingness to desert Spurling, but from unwillingness to abandon the quest while a fragment of hope remained. With that stolen gold, if he could slip by the winter patrol and carry it out to Winnipeg, he would be able to strike for the south and sail up the Great Amana, past the ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... servant to facilitate my departure. But I do not take my farewell without protesting, avec tout mon coeur, at the misunderstanding to which I am persistently subjected. The inevitable bitterness in my soul does not prevent me even now to forget the sweet hours of rest that I have enjoyed here. The unwillingness on your part, monsieur, to comprehend my position, does not interfere to stifle in my breast the consciousness but of honourable purpose. I ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... the unwillingness of Lucy and Julia to allow him to depart with such a companion, Bertram and Dandie (for Meg invited Dinmont also to follow her) hastened to obey the gipsy's summons. There was something weird in the steady ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Masters, "but these laws were made by men, and men have always shown an unwillingness to legislate against their sex. Now there were some young men in Millville at the time your sister went ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... the bar, opened before Lord Chief Justice Tenterden an action for the amount of a wager laid upon the event of a dog-fight, which, through some unwillingness of dogs or men, had not been brought to an issue. "We, my lord," said the advocate, "were minded that the dogs should fight."—"Then I," replied the Judge, "am minded to hear no more of it:" and he ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... purpose; for, being told that the Consul had come to see him, and asked whether he had anything to communicate, he said only, "O, I want him to get me well!" and the whole life that was left in him seemed to be unwillingness to die. This did not last long; for he soon relapsed into his first state, only with his face a little more pinched and screwed up, and his eyes strangely sunken. And lost in his head; and the surgeon said that ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... having been the unconscious instrument of her son's temptation. But what right had she, after all, to suspect Dick of considering, even for a moment, the act of which she was so ready to accuse him? His unwillingness to let her see the drawings might have been the accidental result of lassitude and discouragement. He was tired and troubled, and she had chosen the wrong moment to make the request. His want of readiness might even be due to the wish to conceal from her how far his friend had ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... of a queer unwillingness to have her leave him. He wondered what excuse he could offer to prolong the companionship of the evening. He wanted to link up her affairs with his in some way, if he could—that there might be something in common between them. To solicit her aid—her counsel; it is the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... or no Professor Panky was really deceived by the sweet effrontery with which my father proffered him the bone. If he was taken in, his answer was dictated simply by a donnish unwillingness to allow any one to be better informed on any subject than he ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... been in Florence six months and married more than a month when Sir John disposed of our services to the eight commissioners of war; when, with great unwillingness, I was forced to leave wife and home and resume command of my three ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... in an official way, was less than two years after my arrival in the District, while holding the office of sheriff,—when, in corresponding with Mr. Secretary Joseph, during the troubles in January, 1838, I, in a postscript to a letter in which I expressed unwillingness to call in aid from other quarters, while our own population were allowed to remain inactive, was led to add the following remarkable words: 'My vote has been equally decided against employing the colored people, except on a similar emergency;—in fact, though a cordial friend to the emancipation ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... them, or forced upon them; and that everything unpropitious and dishonorable, including the blunders of their adversaries, may be traced to them. I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it to be all that could be effected under the present constitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have been a wiser and bolder course to have persisted in the restriction on Missouri, until it should have terminated in a convention of the states to revise and amend the constitution. This ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... from side to side, in negation or unwillingness, dates back to the nursing period of the individual's life, when this movement was made in rejecting undesired food. Directly useful in this case, it was carried over to analogous situations that aroused ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... 1807, did not come into general use till some time after the middle of the century. To the generality of philosophers (the word physicist was even less in favor at this time) the various forms of energy were still subtile fluids, and never was idea relinquished with greater unwillingness than this. The experiments of Young and Fresnel had convinced a large number of philosophers that light is a vibration and not a substance; but so great an authority as Biot clung to the old emission idea to the end of his life, in 1862, and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... himself was too unwell to write, and had been so for some days. It is probable that lapse of energy consequent upon illness had something to do with this remarkable paralysis of action, in a man usually bustling and efficient; and there may naturally have been unwillingness to relinquish command,—which would have been his proper course,—after the mortifications of the previous year, when he was just flattering himself with the prospect of ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... "Opium War" that diplomatic relations were opened with the court at Pekin, and a common policy adopted for all parts of the empire, in its dealings with the outer world. Considering the extremely conservative character of the Chinese, their adherence to old forms and customs, their general unwillingness to do differently from their ancestors, and the not over-amiable character of the majority of the foreigners that went there to trade, it is not surprising that many years were required for commercial relations to grow up ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... through whose Mediumship 'Spiritual Photographs' are produced. The 'conditions' which this Medium demanded would have made any attempt at investigation a mere waste of time, and his terms of remuneration were, in addition, as we have before mentioned, prohibitory and suggestive of unwillingness to come before the Commission. In these days of 'Composite Photography' it is worse than childish to claim a Spiritual source for results which can be obtained at any time by any tyro in the art. Mr. Keeler's letter will be ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... peaks, covered to their very summits with wood. We could now distinguish the roar of torrents, and a confusion of strange sounds, issuing from dark forests of pine. I confess at this moment I was somewhat startled. I experienced some disagreeable sensations, and it was not without a degree of unwillingness that I left the gay pastures and enlivening sunshine, to throw myself into this gloomy and disturbed region. How dreadful, thought I, must be the despair of those who enter it ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... about over the country, where we had given assurance of protection. Neither of them received this proposal well, excusing themselves because of weariness and exhaustion; and altho either might have done better than I, being more youthful and athletic, yet seeing their unwillingness, the next morning I took the negro with eleven Indians, and, following the Christians by their trail, I traveled ten leagues, passing three villages, at ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... American; and Mr. Russell touches on some of them with more wit than sympathy. Thus he writes: "The influence of democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost every page of William James's writing. There is an impatience of authority, an unwillingness to condemn widespread prejudices, a tendency to decide philosophical questions by putting them to a vote, which contrast curiously with the usual dictatorial tone of philosophic writings.... A thing which simply is true, whether you like it or not, is to him as hateful as a Russian autocracy; ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... forgot his grandfather's former harshness, and reproached himself for his unwillingness to come to England, when he saw how solitary the great house was, and how utterly the feeble and paralytic old man was left to the care and companionship of servants. He wondered at first that this should be so, for the rich generally have no want of friends; but the puzzle ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... also anxious with regard to another matter, but that anxiety he managed so effectually to smother that he would not even allow himself to think that it had any part in Ogilvie's curious unwillingness ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... along the poisoned arrow in the quickest manner possible you are sure to carry off some of the poison. Though three minutes generally elapse before the convulsions come on in the wounded bird, still a stupor evidently takes place sooner, and this stupor manifests itself by an apparent unwillingness in the bird to move. This was very ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... opening of the preceding month. In the night of the 2nd, a boat was taken from Parramatta by some people who got unobserved out of the harbour. The three men who were put on shore from the Cumberland at the time she was seized upon, from an unwillingness to accompany them, being in this party, it was supposed they were connected in some way with those who were in that boat, and whom they might know where to find. An armed boat from the Supply was immediately dispatched ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... unwillingness the captain of the guard of Thrieve did as he was bidden. The Earl reversed it in his hand and held ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... "Seventh-Day Baptists" in Niagara Nicholas, Prince of Montenegro, opposes Herzegovinian insurrection in its early stages Stillman's first audience with his character and appearance his civil list incidents in Stillman's intercourse with unwillingness to take responsibility of a war his conditions refused by Turks relations with Austria his gratitude to Stillman for sympathy aroused by his Times correspondence his opposition to Russian suggestions movements during the war brief ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... to his wife, communicating to her his appointment as commander-in-chief, he said: "I have used very endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity; and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Doubtless one reason for the refusal of Congress to reduce the representation of the Southern States, after the legislation of a few years ago, that practically disfranchised the Negro in the far South, has been an unwillingness thus to lend national sanction to the inferior political as well as social status to which this legislation has at least for the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... made to have but one person work on it. But the thing that has caused the greater part of the delay was the wide variation between the results in the tests of those nuts which were sent into both the 1918 and 1919 contests, and my unwillingness to have these results appear in print until the reasons for these discrepancies ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... perfectly certain that Miss Gryll was not yet well enough to be removed. No one was anxious to refute the proposition; they were all so well satisfied with,"the place and the company they were in, that they felt, the young lady included, a decided unwillingness to go. That day Miss Gryll came to dinner, and the next day she came to breakfast, and in the evening she joined in the music, and, in short, she was once more altogether herself; but Mr. Falconer continued to insist that ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... profound resentment against the cause of his disturbance. He relieved his sense of responsibility by some didactic remarks on the vicious tendencies of the working-classes, and concluded with the reflection that the more you did for them the less thanks you got. But when Amherst showed an unwillingness to let the matter rest on this time-honoured aphorism, the President retrenched himself behind ambiguities, suggestions that they should await Mrs. Westmore's return, and general considerations of a pessimistic nature, tapering ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... governor's predecessor in office, Adelantado Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, had desired many times to send some religious to the Chinese kingdom, to engage in the preaching of the gospel, and to study the affairs of that kingdom. They had, however, never been able to attain their desire, because of the unwillingness of the Chinese merchants trading at that port to take anyone—although whatever sum they should ask would have been given them—as they feared the punishment that would be inflicted upon them, according to the law of the kingdom. For security that no ill-treatment would be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... why Christ's command remains so largely a dead letter is to be found in our unwillingness to acknowledge that we have committed an injury. That another should have wronged us we find no difficulty in believing; that we have wronged another is very hard to believe. Look at the very form of Peter's question: "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... me to explain this mysterious behavior. I could not trust myself to answer her, to look at her; but grasping her arm, I drew her after me. She hesitated, rather through confusion of mind than from unwillingness to accompany me. This confusion gradually abated, and she moved forward, but with irresolute footsteps and continual exclamations of wonder and terror. Her interrogations of "What was the matter?" and "Whither was I going?" were ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... for much as she would like to see her compagnon du voyage, she felt an unwillingness to meet him in the presence of Carrie, who she knew would spare no pains to mortify her. Soon forgetting Durward, Anna again alluded to her plan of dressing 'Lena, wishing "Cad would mind her own business." Then, as a new idea entered her head, she brightened ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... that," said Rudolph Musgrave, with careful patience. "Virginia's faithfulness has been proven by too many years of faithful service. Nothing more strikingly attests the folly of freeing the negro than the unwillingness of the better class of slaves ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... unwillingness, repeated his summons, this time loud enough to wake any ordinary sound sleeper. But no sound came from within the room, and after a third and much louder thumping at the door, Allerdyke ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... systems there can be no doubt. The result is seen in the child's hazy and indefinite ideas about religion; in a later astonishing lack of interest in the problems of religion on the part of adults; in the child's unwillingness to undertake the study of his lessons for the Sunday school; in the fact that to many children the Sunday school lesson hour is a task and a bore; and in the fact that the Sunday school does not in a large degree continue to hold the loyalty of its members after they have reached the age of deciding ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... Welles thus guardedly commented upon it in his Diary: "It appears to me a mistake to fight the enemy in so strong a position. They have selected their own ground, and we meet them there." But it was McClellan's unwillingness to do the very thing that Burnside is censured for having done, and that proved so overwhelming a disaster, that was the occasion for ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... as well at Florence as another. The worthy men, hearing this, essayed him again with sundry discourse, but, failing to get other answer of him, told his mother, who, sore provoked thereat, gave him a sound rating, not because of his unwillingness to go to Paris, but of his enamourment; after which, she fell to cajoling him with fair words, coaxing him and praying him softly be pleased to do what his guardians wished; brief, she contrived to bespeak him to such purpose ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... accepted by all, and the proposer gets ready to carry out his plan. Hitherto it may be said the Suitors had a certain right, the right of suit, which, however, becomes doubtful through the uncertainty about the death of the husband, and through the unwillingness of the wife. But now their guilt is brought out in strong colors, there can be no question about it. They man a boat and lie in wait for their prey on a little island which the youth has to pass ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... schools. His devout spirit rebelled against the carefully defined limits which his logical intellect would have imposed upon it. He could not altogether avoid applying his system to the absorbing subjects of theology, but he did so with some unwillingness and with much reserve. Revelation, once acknowledged as such, was always sacred ground to him; and though he often appears to reduce all evidence to the external witness of the senses, there is something ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... that he would have earned quite as much money with "Salome" and "Der Rosenkavalier" had they been works of high, artistic merit as he has earned with them in their present condition. The truth is that he has rationalized his unwillingness to go through the labor-pains of creation by pretending to himself a constant and great need of money, and permitting himself to dissipate his energies in a hectic, disturbed, shallow existence, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... for pretences to immediate inspiration; as for instance, "It was delivered unto me; "— "I strove not to speak;"-"I said, I will be silent;"—"But the word was in my heart as a burning fire;"—"and I could not forbear." Hence too the unwillingness to give offence; hence the foresight, and the dread of the clamours, which would be raised against them, so frequently avowed in the writings of these men, and expressed, as was natural, in the words of the only book, with which they were familiar [29]. "Woe is me that I am become a man of strife, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices, so long will the liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation. The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... in November they sent a small force to Lechmere's Point, at a time when a very high tide had converted the place into an island. They took a few cows, and lost a couple of men; on retiring they pointed to the American unwillingness to attack them, but this, as we have already learned, was on account of the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... inclined to think that partisan feeling is of less effect in this matter than, in some, ignorance of the facts and lack of critical faculty, and in others, really well-informed persons, failure to verify alleged facts, or an unwillingness to correct the errors of an overwrought public opinion—errors which, quite unknown to themselves, they really desire to believe. It is easier, and at the same time it is safer, to rest content with the news supplied from house to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... thought so, and she gave it up; with a lingering unwillingness got off the bed and wrapped her furs round her. Mr. Linden put her into the sleigh, keeping Jerry back to let the doctor precede them; and when he was fairly in front, Faith was doubly wrapped up—as ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... us keep our vengeance for those who by their own actions have justly incurred it. The very intensity of our desire to punish the wrong-doer should be the measure of our unwillingness to inflict torture on the helpless and the innocent. "Lest we grow hard"—it should be our daily dread. "A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character: bestial, childish, stupid, scurrilous, tyrannical." A pagan, ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of Christian peoples to win back the Mediterranean to the Cross and draw a line beyond which the Crescent should never pass. In this plight of Venice he saw an opportunity, because hitherto the persistent neutrality or the unwillingness of the Venetians to fight the Turk to the finish had been one of the chief obstacles to concerted action. He therefore pledged his own resources to Venice and attempted to collect allies by the appeal to the Cross. The results were discouraging, but a force of Spanish, Papal, and Venetian ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... proposition was freely discussed whether it would not be the best course to secede from the Confederacy altogether, and place themselves under a British protectorate. The only difficulty in the way seemed to be the unwillingness of Great Britain to act as step-father to such a spoiled child as ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... destructive influence of modern education, and by what may be called the modern spirit, the same influences are telling both in Europe and in India; they have come from Europe to India. There is the same unwillingness to believe in the supernatural, and the same demand that religion shall satisfy ethical and utilitarian tests. One difference, however, we may note. The educated men of India may not be living so entirely in the modern atmosphere as the men of Europe and America; but in India the modern ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... yield to nothing but superior strength. It was possible, even probable, that in such a conflict Cicero would be victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not from cowardice, for he had courage enough when occasion demanded, not even from unwillingness to risk the lives of his friends, though this weighed somewhat with him, but chiefly because he hated to confess that freedom was becoming impossible in Rome, and that the strong hand of a master was wanted to give any kind of security to life and property. The other course ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... execution, or has been rendered impracticable on account of changes which have occurred since its promulgation. In the application of this rule the responsibility for mistakes rests upon the subordinate, but unwillingness to assume responsibility on proper ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... and it was with strong unwillingness that I allowed Ellen this morning to do as she had proposed; but in truth I was making a choice between difficulties. I am very sorry I chose as I did. If you are a father, sir, you know better than I can tell you how grateful I am for your ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... selling value, too, in the placing of tones in your mouth. A tone placed far forward indicates lack of thought and instability. It is the tone we associate with "lip judgments." On the contrary, hidden thoughts, unwillingness to tell all you know, are suggested by tones placed far back in your mouth. The middle-of-the-mouth tone makes the impression that the voice is properly balanced, and suggests the associated idea of mind balance. Avoid ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... another step. Some distance farther on the road he positively refused to carry this old truck another step. When almost to the inn he positively refused to carry this senseless rubbish another step. The Worcester girls had such vivid contempt for his expressed unwillingness that they neglected to tell him of any appreciation they might have had for his ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow-citizens. They concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they constitute a private ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... together by a chief (Tache) who had ceased to be actuated by strong party feelings or personal ambitions and in whom all sections reposed confidence. Standing alone, this reasoning is sound in practical politics. Behind it, of course, was the unwillingness of Brown to accept the leadership of his great rival. Macdonald then proposed Sir Narcisse Belleau, one of their colleagues, as leader of the government. Brown assented; and the coalition was {107} reconstituted on ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... become a Fellow of Trinity, Borrow remarked, "Ah! Fellows of Trinity always marry their bed-makers." Agnes Strickland was another victim. Being desirous of meeting him and, in spite of Borrow's unwillingness, achieving her object, she expressed in rapturous terms her admiration of his works, and concluded by asking permission to send him a copy of The Queens of England, to which he ungraciously replied, "For God's sake, don't, madam; I should not know where to put them or what to do with them." ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part company with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be considered, that, if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... a long time. He kept thinking that he ought to go, and also that he was bored, and yet he felt a singular unwillingness to leave, possibly because of his sense that the visit was in a measure forbidden by prudence. The longer he remained, the prettier Ellen looked to him. New beauties of line and color seemed to grow apparent in the soft glow from the hideous lamp. There was a wonderful starry radiance in ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... try to show you. Suppose you went to Margaret Moffatt. You know her proud, sensitive nature; her loyalty and absolute frankness. After the shock and torture she would go to her father with the truth—for she would believe you—and announce her unwillingness—I am sure, even though her heart broke, she would do this—to marry Huntter. Then the matter would lie among men; men with the traditional viewpoint; men with much, much at stake. If Huntter has, as you say, taken ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the unwillingness of morphologists to admit the new formation of organs are to be sought in the main principle of pure morphology itself, that the unity of plan imposes an iron limit upon adaptation, and in the powerful influence exercised at the time by materialistic habits of thought. Teleology ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... unwillingness I force Her follies, and in those her sin, be witness, All these about me: she is bloudy minded, And turns the justice of the Law to rigor: It is her cruelites, not I accuse her: Shall I ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... met before, in various ways, Bedient's unwillingness to identify himself with results of his own bringing about. Beth had long realized his immaturity, yet she had not spoken. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... expedient for us to become enlightened, because some day we shall declare ourselves free! That is just the same as not wishing the prisoner to be well-fed so that he may improve and get out of prison. Liberty is to man what education is to the intelligence, and the friars' unwillingness that we have it is ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... hearing that we were about to depart, the other travellers wished to accompany us; but the Indians would not hear of it, and, I observed, kept a stricter watch than usual over them. Manco showed great unwillingness to ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Anne Woodford had kept Lucy Archfield's birthday with her, and there was no refusing now, though there was more and more unwillingness to leave Mrs. Woodford, whose declining state became so increasingly apparent that even the loving daughter could no longer be blind ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the rest,' observed Mrs Lammle, rising with a show of unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. 'We are real friends, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... letter, frowning, but an idea that he should find something in this letter about D'Artagnan conquered his unwillingness to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... evil which the people endure is self-imposed. They reveal a combination of blind improvidence, reckless expenditure and an unwillingness to shake off impoverishing customs. For instance, the debt incurring propensity of the native is akin to insanity. All the poor people with whom I am acquainted are bound hand and foot by this terrible mill-stone. And the interest paid upon loans is crushing. Two and three per cent. per month ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... but I fancied that I still detected a slight unwillingness in his movements. My request for the bill had been met with a smile and a polite shake of the head. Louis whispered in my ear that we were the guests of the management,—that it would not be correct to offer the money for our entertainment. So I was ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its several battalions, to participate in any of those engagements or campaigns, some of which it has been the pride and pleasure of comrades here to describe. It was, however, from no hesitation or unwillingness of theirs. The call was hopefully expected but disappointedly unheard. Yet, may they not fairly claim to share in the glory of the result, and to them may not the words of the ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... It was his unwillingness to allow a thing to be done which, as a man and a gentleman, he thought both dishonourable and wrong, that prevented Taquisara from leaving Muro at once. For himself, his first impulse was to escape ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... genius, or guardian spirit of the emperor, and would not burn incense before his statue, which stood in every town. Such a refusal to take what was really an oath of allegiance was regarded as an act of rebellion. These feelings of hostility to the Christians were strengthened by their unwillingness to serve in the army and to swear by the pagan gods in courts of law. In short, the members of this new sect must have appeared very unruly subjects who, if allowed to become numerous enough, would endanger ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... journeying the next day, alone, toward Venice. I had left written adieux for the party at Vallambrosa, pleading to my friends an unwillingness to bear the pain of a formal separation. Betwixt midnight and morning, however, I had written a parting letter for Stephania, which I had committed to the kind envoying of Father ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... true that it had once belonged to her father—the father she had never known—but then it had also belonged to Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, and Daphne was conscious now of an invincible unwillingness to accept ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent by Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important dispatches, and also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her that she had carried her unwillingness to join her husband far enough. Doubtless the gallant commissioners had given her a hint that further refusal meant inevitable reprisals. It is quite feasible that the rollicking Junot, who was always ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... qualified by his situation as well as by his personal qualities to be the umpire in that great contention. He was the King of a prelatical kingdom. He was the Prime Minister of a presbyterian republic. His unwillingness to offend the Anglican Church of which he was the head, and his unwillingness to offend the reformed Churches of the Continent which regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sleep, and of that last tender, yearning, pitiful look of love, came back on him to arouse successive surges of grief. Contrast Christ's love with your ingratitude, Christ's constancy with your fickle devotion, Christ's meekness to take the yoke of His Father's will, and your unwillingness to bear His cross of shame, and ask if you, too, have no cause for tears like those ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... prosecute my journey hither, and accordingly took an opportunity of explaining to the Meer my wishes and intentions, requesting him to furnish me with an adequate escort for my protection. He evinced a decided unwillingness to facilitate my advance, treating my anxiety to collect coins as an assumed reason to conceal some other more important motive. This was very provoking, but, by this time, we were so much accustomed to have the true and simple account of our plans and intentions ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... slaves impressed from another plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good nature made ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sister's request, he had undertaken to manage a shoe store that represented one of their holdings but at the end of a couple of months had given it up—also in accord with her wishes. Higgins, their old clerk, had come to her with tearful warnings that Terry's unwillingness to refuse credit to any one who came in with a tale of hard-luck was ruining the business: and Terry had lost the custom of several good families by declining to humor ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... old diplomat told me the other day," said Lord Fontenoy—but with a cold unwillingness, as though he disliked the subject—"that she was the most beautiful woman, he thought, that had been seen in ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... discourse he became more restless, and his soul seemed to be weary of her earthly tabernacle; and this uneasiness became so visible, that his wife, his three nieces, and Mr. Woodnot, stood constantly about his bed, beholding him with sorrow, and an unwillingness to lose the sight of him, whom they could not hope to see much longer. As they stood thus beholding him, his wife observed him breathe faintly, and with much trouble, and observed him to fall into a sudden agony; which so surprized ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... soon after Minna's arrival in Riga, I had been particularly pressed by Holtei not to prevent my wife's engagement at the theatre. I asked him to talk things quietly over with her, so that he might see that Minna's unwillingness rested on a mutual understanding, and not on any jealousy on my part. I had intentionally given him the time when I was engaged at the theatre on rehearsals for the necessary discussions with my wife. At the end of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... once," said Mr Girtle, and there seemed to be an unwillingness to leave, as the butler went out and closed ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... came to the young husband's mind not infrequently, and always with a slight aroma of bitterness, the conviction that Lydia was perfectly able to do whatever she really wished to do and considered important; and that previous conditions must have been due to her unwillingness to set herself seriously at the problems before her. It was a new theory about his wife's character, which the intelligent young man laid by on a mental shelf for future use after this period of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with a certain unwillingness that he had accepted this post among the four delegates, for nothing had been heard of his wife, and it was terrible to him to leave London while her fate was as yet doubtful. On the whole, he was less inclined than ever now to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... precious stones of extraordinary value. To leave such valuables in a room with an unlocked door was in itself a symptom of insanity, and when I parted with Thesiger for the night I had not the least doubt that my unfortunate host was really insane. All the same, I had a curious unwillingness with regard to signing the certificate. Bagwell eagerly asked me if I did not intend to sign. To his astonishment, I replied in the negative. I said that the case was a very peculiar one, and that it would be necessary for me ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... girl had evidently had a fine musical education. She played very sweetly, though only upon request. Once she sang an English ballad, upon still more urgent request, but she seemed to do so with such unwillingness that she was not pressed again. Her voice, as shown on that occasion, was mournfully sweet and pure, and highly cultivated. She spoke French with singular facility and unusual correctness for an American. Bell and the brothers hoped that ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... when she and George visited Crawley and his wife at these quarters, that they had very nearly come to their first quarrel; that is, George scolded his wife violently for her evident unwillingness to go, and the high and mighty manner in which she comported herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and Amelia did not say one single word in reply; but with her husband's eye upon her, and Rebecca scanning ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... vice of baulking, or jibbing, as it is called in England, by improper management. When a horse jibs in harness, it is generally from some mismanagement, excitement, confusion, or from not knowing how to pull, but seldom from any unwillingness to perform all that he understands. High-spirited free-going horses are the most subject to baulking, and only so because drivers do not properly understand how to manage this kind. A free horse in a team may be so anxious to go, that when he hears the word he will start with a jump, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... could set limits to what he had called the power of Nature if he was once to admit that an ass and a horse might, through that power, have been descended from a common ancestor. Nevertheless, he shows no unwillingness or recalcitrancy about letting the wedge enter, for he speaks of domestication as inducing modifications "sufficiently profound to become constant and hereditary in successive generations ... by its action on bodily habits it influences ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... regard of Charles the IId. that he was considered as a man standing fair for preferment. In 1683, broke out the Rye-house Plot, a relation of the particulars of which, Charles the IId. commanded Dr. Sprat to draw up. This the Dr. in a letter to lord Dorset, informs us, he did with great unwillingness, and would have been impelled by no other consideration, than that of a royal command. The reason he executed these orders with so much reluctance, was, because many of the most popular men in the nation were either concerned themselves, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... once. But cheer up, thou grave, learned, and most melancholy jackanape! Hast thou not told me that a moderate portion of thy drug hath mild effects, no ways ultimately dangerous to the human frame, but which produces depression of spirits, nausea, headache, an unwillingness to change of place—even such a state of temper as would keep a bird from flying out of a cage were ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... important professional business of the day, scarcely reverted to the vexatious occurrence of the morning; but now, at eve, the tide of attention, that had been so long dammed back, came flowing over his spirit with increasing depth and force; and, in spite of his unwillingness and the necessity for recruiting his wasted energies, for the performance of the onerous public duties of the morrow, he fell to brooding over the new misdeed of the already too obnoxious Narcisse. From ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... innocent, why should we hesitate to put her on the stand, to give her opportunity to defend herself, to enable her to shatter, in a few words, this chain of circumstance so firmly forged about her? If she were innocent, would she not naturally wish to speak in her own behalf? Did not her very unwillingness to speak argue—— ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... history is that he was Lob under the guise of a child; that he was driven away by new clothes; that he returned from unwillingness to see an old family go to ruin "which he had served for hundreds of years;" that the parson preached his last Sunday's sermon at him; and that, having stood that test, he took his place ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... assurances, that the people of England would never endure a peace without Spain, nor the men in power dare to attempt it, after the resolutions of one House of Parliament to the contrary. But, in the midst of this unwillingness to receive any overtures from France by the Queen's hands, the Dutch ministers were actually engaged in a correspondence with that court, where they urged our inability to begin a treaty, by reason of those factions which themselves had inflamed, and were ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... who chanced to hear Miss Shedlock?[A] tell that same story will remember that the absurd rhyme gave great opportunity for expression, in its very repetition; each time that the fisherman came to the water's edge his chagrin and unwillingness were greater, and his summons to the magic fish mirrored his feeling. The jingle is foolish; that is a part of the charm. But if the person who tells it feels foolish, there is no charm at all! It is the same principle which applies ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... earth!" ejaculated the listener. Then some of the hidden things began to define themselves in the light of this astounding revelation: Hallock's unwillingness to go to Flemister for the proof of his innocence in the building-and-loan matter; his veiled warning that evil, and only evil, would come upon all concerned if Lidgerwood should insist; the invasion of the service-car at Copah by the poor demented creature whose cry was still for vengeance upon ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... said on this point lately as to increase our unwillingness to insist upon a subject in itself very ungrateful; but a reference to it is unavoidable, if we would adequately show what is the legitimate use and duty of private judgment, in dealing with those notes of truth and error, by which Providence recommends to us or disowns ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... be briefly formulated as follows: We can imagine but two reasons why God should not truly forgive us our sins in the process of justification: inability and unwillingness. To say that He is unable to forgive us our sins would be to assert that the remission of sin involves a metaphysical impossibility. This no Protestant will admit, because all believe that "nothing defiled shall enter ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... child is now a grown-up, healthy man. And our child died. Yet we had prayed for her as few, perhaps, have prayed for any child. Why, then, was she not spared? I do not know. But I do know that there was in my life, at that time, the sin of bitterness toward another, and an unwillingness to forgive a wrong. This was quite sufficient to hinder any prayer, and did hinder for years, until it was ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... the windows of the state cabin, where three or four of us were, and covered us all over, though a bureau sheltered me from the main shock. About eleven I lay down in the great cabin, and in a short time fell asleep, though very uncertain whether I should wake alive, and much ashamed of my unwillingness to die. O how pure in heart must he be, who would rejoice to appear before God at a moment's warning! Toward morning "He rebuked the wind and the sea, and there was ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... might have answered, or in what perplexity between truth and unwillingness to hurt she might have landed him before long, I need not speculate, seeing all danger was suddenly swept away by a second voice, addressing Cosmo as unexpectedly as ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald |
