"Vacillation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is at each beginning and ending a loss of the working power, which can neither start on a new career at full speed, nor arrest itself without previous slackening. This waste is made still greater by the suspense or vacillation of purpose of those who not only have no settled plans of industry, but often know not what to do, or are liable, so soon as they are occupied in one way, to feel themselves irresistibly ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... you have communicated to us, the very critical state in which the country now is, and above all the duty which I owe to her Majesty under the present circumstances, has made a most strong impression upon my mind. At the risk, therefore, of imputation of vacillation or of any other motive by others, may I ask of you to give me a few hours' time for further reflection, before finally deciding upon the course which I may feel it to be my duty to pursue? Believe me, my dear Sir ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... opinion that was confidently expressed on Saturday gave way to a new opinion, and the noble Lord announced that legislation would be proceeded with immediately. All this indicates that there was a good deal of vacillation on the part of the Government. At last, however, has come the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control. There were some good things in it, no doubt. I do not suppose that any man could stand up, and go on speaking for five hours, without ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... general. I wonder why she didn't! That's the only thing that gives me hope. There must be something in her—something that don't appear—something she doesn't know about, herself. What is it? Maybe it was only vanity and vacillation. Again, ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... reckoning was due. It was not in his nature to face a crisis, and with him a trouble seemed less formidable if it could only be put off a little. Edmonds, who knew with what kind of man he had to deal, said nothing further, and quietly reached out for another cigar. He saw vacillation in his ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Hesitation, vacillation and growing diffidence take the place of self-reliance. He falls to the bottom like a stone. And there he rests—a drag anchor in the mire. His job gets the best of him because he lacks initiative. Once ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... for remaining at home, that he himself began to believe in it, and gave way. The more this conclusion suited his own wishes the easier it became to find reasons for it: old Rufinus really did not need him; and if he—Orion—had cause to be ashamed of his vacillation, on the other hand he could comfort himself by reflecting that it would be unkind and ungrateful to his good friends to leave them in the lurch just when he could be of use to them. One pair of protecting arms more or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... while following with his sister in the train of the pious Belarab, he had his moments of anger, of anxiety, of despondency. His friendships, his future, his country's destinies were at stake, while Belarab's camp wandered deviously over the back country as if influenced by the vacillation of the ruler's thought, the very image ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... truth,' or, 'of the Amen.' The prophet deduces from the name the solemn thought that those who truly feel its significance will shape their words accordingly, and act and speak so that they shall not fear to call His pure eyes to witness that there are neither, hypocrisy, nor insincerity, nor vacillation, nor the 'hidden things of dishonesty' nor any of the skulking meannesses of craft and self-seeking in them. 'I swear by the God of the Amen, and call Thy faithfulness to witness that I am trying to be like Thee,' that is what we ought to do if we call ourselves Christians. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... craved light alone, and the mouths which craved only bread. He felt that the ideal must yield to the real, the remote to what was near; and the work of Italian deliverance remained incomplete. It was his very devotion to the one principle which brought the reproach of vacillation upon him." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of mine who has an advertising agency wanted to secure the business of a prominent manufacturer who was inclined to vacillation. The prospect was always timid about acting and had the reputation of a chronic procrastinator. My friend went ahead with the selling process in ordinary course until he had proved the desirability of his service and had shown ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... and nights to reach Bamboo Island [the Japanese pronunciation would be Chikushima; perhaps is another form of Tsushima], where they effected a junction with the forces of the provincial staff from Liao-yang. It was the intention to first attack the Dazai Fu, but there was vacillation and indecision. On the 1st day of the 8th moon a great typhoon raged, and 60 or 70 per cent. of the army perished. The Emperor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... his enemy, he parted with one of the best units from his numbers, although, even with her present, he was inferior to the allies. He felt keenly, however, the responsibility he assumed, not only towards the Admiralty, but towards his own success and reputation. At one time he seems, with unusual vacillation, even to have returned upon his decision, and to have notified Calder that the ship could not be spared; for on the 12th of October the latter wrote him: "The contents of your Lordship's letter have ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... betrayals, than the miseries he must bring on himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him than the present evil. The results of confession were not contingent, they were certain; whereas betrayal was not certain. From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense and vacillation with a sense of repose. The disinherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined to dig and to beg, was almost as helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by the favour of earth and sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot where it first shot upward. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... terror which the name of that celebrated reformer inspired in the hearts of Roman Catholics, in order to intimidate the court of Rome and humiliate its pride. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that, with this vacillation of principles and declared antipathy to Rome, Charles should have regarded, in his dominions, if not with manifest favour, at least with cold indifference, the propagation of what were then called, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... weak, irresolute mouth. Here the resemblance stopped, for Miss Hamilton's firm lips and finely-curved chin showed no lack of power; but in her brother's face—attractive as it was—there were clearly signs of vacillation. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... doggedly to the same general northerly direction. When you are lost, nothing is more foolish than to make up your mind hastily and without due reflection; and nothing is more foolish than to change your mind once you have made it up. That way vacillation, confusion, and disaster lie. Should you decide, after due consideration of all the elements of the problem, that you should go east, then east you go, and nothing must turn you. You may get to the Atlantic Ocean if nothing else. And if you begin to modify your original plan, then ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... who appealed to all the finest instincts of his people. He had tried to arrange a marriage between Elizabeth of England and Henry of Anjou, the brother of the French King, but had not been successful, owing to Elizabeth's politic vacillation. He was detested by Catherine de Medici because he had great power over her son, the reigning monarch, whom she tried to dominate completely. A dark design had inspired the Guise faction of late in consequence of the Queen's enmity to the influence of Coligny. It was hinted that the Huguenot ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... Villiers, in a calmer tone—"it's enough to make any man with warm blood in his veins FEEL! Everywhere signs of weakness, cowardice, compromise, hesitation, vacillation, incompetency, and everywhere, in thoughtful minds, the keen sense of a Fate advancing like the giant in the seven-leagued boots, at huge strides every day. The ponderous Law and the solid Police hem us in on each side, as though ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... been the most potent influence in determining his method of work during the Peace Conference. He seemed to think that, having marked out a definite plan of action, any deviation from it would show intellectual weakness or vacillation of purpose. Even when there could be no doubt that in view of changed conditions it was wise to change a policy, which he had openly adopted or approved, he clung to it with peculiar tenacity refusing or merely failing to modify it. Mr. Wilson's mind once ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... sketch, a rough piling up of observations and ideas, disordered and often incoherent. In the midst of the story, as I have said, the author forgets it, and starts off upon another. In "Jennie Gerhardt" there is no such flaccidity of structure, no such vacillation in aim, no such proliferation of episode. Considering that it is by Dreiser, it is extraordinarily adept and intelligent in design; only in "The Titan" has he ever done so well. From beginning to end the narrative flows logically, steadily, congruously. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... literally, it claims for the Kaiser the divine attributes attributed to the Caesars. Even the Caesars, in baser and more primitive times, found posing as a divine superman somewhat difficult and disconcerting. Shakespeare subtly suggests this when he makes his Caesar talk like a god and act with the vacillation of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... the chief magistrate of Rome entered the apartment. He was a short, fat, undignified man. Indolence and vacillation were legibly impressed on his appearance and expression. You saw, in a moment, that his mind, like a shuttlecock, might be urged in any direction by the efforts of others, but was utterly incapable of volition by itself. But once in his life had the Prefect ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... pity the thousands who are lying on the bloody battle-fields of Jena and Auerstadt, and accusing the duke of having murdered them! You had better pity Prussia's misfortunes and disgrace, which have been brought about by the duke! For, I tell you, the indecision, vacillation, and timidity of the duke were the sole causes of our terrible disaster. All of us felt and knew it. None of the younger officers and generals had any doubt about it; every one knew that those old gentlemen, who had outlived their own glory, and still believed ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... fruitless vacillation of the only existing public authority, one of the most fatally celebrated actors of the worst times of the Revolution, Fouche, owed his ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... maritime preparation and of maritime force, this people would hold the balance in many of the grave questions that are now only in abeyance in European politics. Hitherto we have been influenced by every vacillation in English interests, and it is quite time to think of turning the tables, and of placing, as far as practicable, American interests above the vicissitudes of those of other people. The thing is more easily done than is commonly imagined, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Ducrot during the hour and a half while the command was in his hands, hauled forward to the front again by de Wimpffen, his successor, knew not where to yield obedience, and the entire lack of plan and competent leadership, the incomprehensible vacillation, the abandonment of positions only to retake them again at terrible cost of life, all these things could not fail to end ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... she drew herself away and shivered. She knew she was wicked now—very, very wicked—but it was again characteristic of her that having made her decision there was no vacillation about her. The die was cast—for that night they were to be happy, and all the rest of her life ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... the scene with moist eyes. He was generally a man of prompt decision, and he well knew that he would incur by this act the charge of vacillation. It was a noble self-denial in him to be willing to do so, but it would have required an iron heart to resist such earnest supplications, and he was more than repaid when he saw how much anguish he had removed by ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... He had suffered himself to be persuaded into joining in a species of amusement for which he cared nothing, by a mere word from a woman for whom he cared less, but whom he had half determined to marry, and who had wholly determined to marry him. He, who hated vacillation, had been dangling for four-and-twenty hours like a pendulum, or, as he said to himself, like an ass between two bundles of hay. At one moment he meant to marry Donna Tullia, and at another he loathed the thought; now he felt that he would make any sacrifice to rid the ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... vain it is to be merely a philosopher in this world. Hamlet is always pondering, thinking of the abstract rights and wrongs of the case. In the result, though he does eventually avenge his father's murder, his introspection and vacillation have led to the death of himself and no fewer than three other innocent persons—Ophelia, Polonius and Laertes. Yet Hamlet was at least twice as brainy as the rest of them, and he was also a good sportsman; for instance, he refuses to kill Claudius when he finds him at a disadvantage—that ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... were, an abstract or epitome, in octavo, of his folio Dictionary, and a few essays in a monthly publication, entitled, The Universal Visiter. Christopher Smart, with whose unhappy vacillation of mind he sincerely sympathised, was one of the stated undertakers of this miscellany; and it was to assist him that Johnson sometimes employed his pen[893]. All the essays marked with two asterisks have been ascribed to him; but I am confident, from internal evidence, that of these, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... but he does not yet understand what {92} he is trying to explain, and for that reason the being whom he creates is portentous, but not human. To understand this, you need only compare Richard with Macbeth. In Macbeth we have a host of different forces—ambition, superstition, poetry, remorse, vacillation, affection, despair—all struggling together as they might in you or me; and it is this mingling of feelings with which we all can sympathize that makes him, in spite of all his crimes, a human being like ourselves. But in Richard there is no human complexity. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... the reign of James I., and ending a century later with Darby of Coalbrookdale. Practically these heroic men had all their contemporaries against them. Public opinion attacked them through private persecution and violence. The apathy and vacillation of governments left them without defence; and had governments then represented public opinion completely, and had also controlled all labour and capital, the discovery in question, which was retarded for three generations, would in all probability have never been made at all. ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... of postal service conducted in the way described, one cannot wonder that the affairs of the American Colonies should get into a bad way when conducted under a policy of so manifest vacillation and indecision. ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... when spoken to, for German despair is very gloomy. The remaining Plenipotentiaries at last understood the nature of the game that was being played, and realised that we were down to the naked and crude facts of life and death. Their confounded vacillation has alone brought us to this pass. They do realise it now, and they are made to realise it more and more by the savage looks everyone has been ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... poor friend, George Talboys, had died in my arms, and I had buried him in this quiet church, in one corner of the vaults over which I tread to-day, how much anguish of mind, vacillation and torment I might have escaped," thought Robert Audley, as he read the faded inscriptions upon tablets of discolored marble; "I should have known his fate—I should have known his fate! Ah, how much there would have been in that. It is this ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... unending military expenditure. And they gave the colonists ground for complaints, sometimes just, sometimes unjust, against the home government, which was constantly accused of parsimony, of shortsightedness, of vacillation, of sentimental weakness, in sending out too few troops, in refusing to annex fresh territory, in patching up a hollow peace, in granting too ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... against their earthly drafts. They had become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte's hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further vacillation. ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... will she wait for him (for it is a man to a certainty)?' resumed the elder of the smokers, at the end of several minutes of silence, when, full of vacillation and doubt, she became lost to view behind some bushes. 'Will she reappear?' The smoking went on, and up she came into open ground as before, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... to interpret in consultation any obscurities in the laws against heresy, and to administer the lighter penalties of deprivation of office and preferment. This recognition of episcopal jurisdiction was annulled by Alexander IV, who, after some vacillation, in 1257 rendered the Inquisition independent by releasing it from the necessity of consulting with the Bishops even in cases of obstinate and confessed heretics, and this he repeated in 1260. Then there was a reaction. In 1262, Urban IV, in an elaborate code of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... exact counterpart of Luther. He appealed to the limited few, Luther to the masses; he to the educated and higher classes, Luther to the ignorant and lowly; he was a man of reflection, Luther a man of action. The apparent vacillation of Erasmus may have been due to ill health, to the influence of the Pope, to the ties of the Church in which he had been reared, to the satisfaction he found in his eminent literary position, and to his dislike ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... ill-treatment to abuse his master and worship the idols. "But how dost thou find thy heart?" said the prophet. "Steadfast in the faith," said he. "Then," answered Mohammed, "if they repeat their cruelty, thou mayest repeat thy words." He also had himself an hour of vacillation. Tired of the severe and seemingly hopeless struggle with the Koreish, and seeing no way of overcoming their bitter hostility, he bethought himself of the method of compromise, more than seven centuries ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... obligation, and on the Jack Stepneys' return from their honeymoon she felt it incumbent upon her to light the drawing-room lamps and extract her best silver from the Safe Deposit vaults. Mrs. Peniston's rare entertainments were preceded by days of heart-rending vacillation as to every detail of the feast, from the seating of the guests to the pattern of the table-cloth, and in the course of one of these preliminary discussions she had imprudently suggested to her cousin Grace that, as the dinner was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... was immediately arrested by the military power; but his bold words were already in the hands of the public, and produced a great effect: so great an effect that the Government, after some vacillation, withdrew the state of siege; though at the same time it strengthened the military organisation and made it more stringent. Three of the Committee of Public Safety had been slain in Trafalgar Square: of the rest the greater part went back to their old place of meeting, and there awaited the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... him: he writes to Atticus,[116] "I believe I do not please Caesar, but I am pleased with myself, which has not happened to me for a long while." However, this effort at independence was but transient. At no period of his public life did he display such miserable vacillation as at the opening of the civil war.[117] We find him first accepting a commission from the Republic; then courting Caesar; next, on Pompey's sailing for Greece, resolving to follow him thither; presently determining to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... an order must be definite and must be the expression of a fixed decision. Ambiguity or vagueness indicates either vacillation or the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... diplomacy tried abroad was wholly unsuccessful, and we are obliged to submit to new international principles inaugurated at our cost; and, summing up, instead of a broad, decided, general policy, we have vacillation, inaction, tricks, and expedients. The people fret, and so will the Congress. Nations are as individuals; any partial disturbance in a part of the body occasions a general chill. Nature makes efforts to check the beginning of disease, and so do nations. In the human ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... remarkable for the rapidity of his decisions and the lack of vacillation in his opinions. He felt no timidity ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... approached each other, the young man stopped and looked at him fixedly. Father Salvi avoided the look and was somewhat distracted. This vacillation lasted only a moment. Ibarra made a rush toward him, and stopped the priest from falling only by grasping his shoulder. Then, in a ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... the other hand, if the soldier or peasant or small merchant had dues coming to him in English money he then found them valued at forty to the pound sterling. This difference between eighty and one hundred and twenty-five he thought (naturally enough to his unsophisticated mind) was due to the vacillation in policy of enforcement of the pegged rate and prosecution of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... last. The dream she had once had of playing to an audience and seeing only Lancelot Vane in the first row of the pit applauding and eager to congratulate her, was gone. She was done with him for ever. So she told herself. And to strengthen this resolve she recalled his weaknesses, his vacillation, his distrust in himself, his lapses into inebriety. Yet no sooner had she gone over his sins than she felt pity and inclined to forgiveness. But not forgiveness for his faithlessness. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... and opposing elements to combine in the service of his ends. In spite of Napoleon's promises and of the current of personal sentiment which lay beneath them, he soon foresaw that the unwillingness of France and the constitutional vacillation of the Emperor would render them barren of results, unless Austria attacked—an eventuality which was considered impossible on all sides. Mazzini, who was generally not only clear-sighted, but also furnished with secret information, ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 1154, which granted to Henry II. the Lordship of Ireland, but which Henry left unemployed for seventeen years, to that of the Irish petition for a legislative Union in 1703, which remained unanswered for nearly a century, vacillation and hesitation rather than eagerness for aggression have been the characteristic marks of English policy in Ireland. Far-sighted statesmen could point out the benefits to Ireland from such a connection, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... into the night, Herald Square was filled with a surging throng watching the bulletins from the chamber of death. It was a dignified end. There must have been a good deal of innate nobility in William McKinley. With all his vacillation and infirmity of political purpose, he must have been a man whose mind was saturated with fine thoughts, for to the very last, in those hours of weakness when the will no longer sways and each word is the half-unconscious ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a Hanoverian peasant, and Hardenberg put new life into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled squares of red-coats were relieved by these Prussians, and Bluecher, or "Old Marschall Vorwaerts" as he was called, redeemed his countrymen's years of effeminate lassitude and vacillation. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... monasteries, who by the distribution of alms held in pay the rabble of cities and starving peasants on the lands of impoverished nobles. Montmorency, Conde, and Navarre leaned towards the Reform,—doubtful and inconstant chiefs, whose faith weighed light against their interests. Yet, amid vacillation, selfishness, weakness, treachery, one great man was like a tower of trust, and this ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and now there is no way to tell which day it was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible. Every one in the ship says so. And this is not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it was part of his delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horse he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor take another more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopeless vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, and that he need do nothing. Perhaps it was ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... when Winny Dymond did it there was a difference, or it seemed so to young Ransome. Winny approached the bars with shyness and a certain earnestness and gravity of intent. She hesitated; for a moment she was adorable in vacillation. She shook her head at the bars, she bit her lip at them; she set her face at them in defiance; then, with a sudden amazing celerity she gave a little run forward and leaped upon them; she swung herself in perfect rhythm and motion onward and upward and from side to side; she arched ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... our wine we always arrived at an understanding very quickly, but as soon as we sat at the piano, I had to listen to the most extraordinary objections concerning the trend of which I was for some time extremely puzzled. As the matter was much delayed by this vacillation, I put myself into closer communication with the stage manager of the opera, Hauser, who at that time was much appreciated as a singer and patron of art by the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... not unlike his son-in-law, Sir William, has, because of his vacillation, far less of our respect than the younger man in the matter of his refusal to cast in his lot with that of the Revolution. In 1778 he was publicly proscribed and formally banished from Massachusetts. He thereupon took up his abode in Kensington, Middlesex, and from this place, in ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... and take warning from the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... frivolous, impulsive people, virile, yet lacking the accredited determination and persistency of the Teuton. This impression has been a great mistake. The faces of the men and women of France alike show no sign of vacillation. The French are counting the terrific cost, as becomes the thriftiest of nations, expecting to collect a bill that in their opinion has been running since the Franco-Prussian war and through the humiliating and irksome years which ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... imagination from height to height, but the small boulders of difficulty trip them up, for they are hopelessly unpractical; they have neither strength of purpose nor fortitude, and their best-laid schemes are always frustrated at the critical moment, by either the incurable blight of vacillation, or by the determination to amplify their scheme ere it has proved successful, sacrificing probable results for ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... This vacillation exhausted Mrs. Vint's patience. "What are ye sighing about, ye foolish man?" said she, contemptuously; "you have got it all your own way. If 't is a wife ye want, ask Mercy, and don't take a nay. If ye would have a housekeeper, you need not want one long. I'll be bound there's plenty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... visible, and this radical mistake became the parent of monstrous delusions. The ecclesiastical writers who flourished towards the end of the second and beginning of the third century exhibit a considerable amount of inconsistency and vacillation when they touch upon the subject; [641:2] but, half a century afterwards, the language currently employed is much bolder and more decided. At that time Cyprian does not hesitate to express himself in the strongest ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Salisbury, Lord orders withdrawal from negotiations with Italy in reference to occupation of Kassala acknowledges Crispi's services to the cause of European peace renews compact with Italy and Austria vacillation of Sandown Sandwith, T. Humphrey, English consul at Crete Sapunzaki, General Saracco, Sig., Italian Minister of Public Works, Saturday Club Stillman's first attendance at Emerson as a member of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... any time allowed for vacillation. When, in the morning of 11 September, Colonel Hatzopoulos met the German officer, the latter handed to him a telegram from Hindenburg, guaranteeing the transport of the Greeks to Germany with their arms, where they would be treated as guests. He added ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... his friend answered, with a fine affectation of carelessness. "I merely looked in to see how you were getting on. There's no news. The government seem to be in a mess, but even their own friends are ashamed of their vacillation. They're talking of still another lyric theatre; you'll have to save up your voice, Linn—by Jove! you fellows will be in tremendous request. What else? Oh, nothing. There's been a plucky thing done by a servant-girl ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... realisation of this scheme; and his Minister at Berlin continued to decline acceding to the Northern alliance. The Prince of Hesse-Cassel took a similar view of the case; but acted with a degree of vacillation worthy of the late conduct of Prussia herself, refusing on the one hand to embrace the confederation proposed by the Cabinet of Berlin, and yet declining, on the other, to form part of the Rhenish league, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... for doing the most unwise thing. He was a northern man with southern principles, and this may have unfitted him to see things in their true relations. He certainly was putty in the hands of those who wished to destroy the Union, and his vacillation precisely accomplished what they wished. Had he possessed the firmness and spirit of John A. Dix, who ordered,—"If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot;" had he had a modicum of the patriotism of Andrew Jackson; ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Man's vacillation is Fate's determination, and Miss Harden was as firm as Fate. He felt that the fine long hands playing with the catalogue were shaping events for him, while her eyes measured him ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... to enlarge their sphere of action; hence it is almost impossible that such a government should not ultimately succeed, because it acts with a fixed principle and a constant will, upon men, whose position, whose notions, and whose desires are in continual vacillation. It frequently happens that the members of the community promote the influence of the central power without intending it. Democratic ages are periods of experiment, innovation, and adventure. At such times there are always a multitude of men ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... puzzled, for they had been so often deceived that they felt it to be most important that they should not err this time. As they hung in admiration over the sleeping babes, one of them remarked a circumstance that at once decided their preference and put an end to their vacillation: one of the little heroes held his hand tightly closed; the tiny, mottled palm of the other was wide open as it lay upon his snowy breast. 'He will be a liberal and bold knight,' said one of the Bearnais, 'and will best suit us as a head.' This infant was accordingly chosen, given up by ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... but his proclivity, mentally, was for arms—he loved to direct and control. In very early life he showed much skill and tact as an officer in the Canadian campaign; but he wanted those moral traits which give dignity and decision to character, and confidence to the public mind. His vacillation of opinion, as well as of conduct, was convincing proof that he acted without principle, and was influenced by his own selfish views. Man, to be great, must act always from principle. Principle, like truth, is a straight edge, will admit of no obliquity, is always the same, and under ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... apartment, the victim not only of shame,—the bitterest of tortures to a young and high mind,—but of other contending feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his wrath, and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage ferocity and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not all of them either Arians or intriguers. It was not always furtive sympathy with heresy which led them to regret the heresiarch's expulsion for doctrines which he disavowed; neither was it always partizanship which could not see the innocence of Athanasius. Constantine's vacillation is natural if his policy was to seek for unity by letting the bishops ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... of that state of vacillation between the conviction of insanity and the commencing conviction of something worse ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... form and substance of unity. In the Lutheran of August 22, 1907, Dr. Krotel declared with respect to the doctrinal attitude of the Council: It "firmly refuses to occupy the unionistic position of doctrinal vacillation and tolerance. Contrary to the theological temper of the age, it maintains that there are articles of faith so definite and fixed and clear as to demand unqualified endorsement and defense." (Doc. Hist., 138.) But Dr. Krotel's assertions are not ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... unregenerated way, absorbed in the ambitions and interests of a worldly life, we are perhaps content. When we live regenerated and in the spirit, we are in great joy; but when we try to live between the two and would serve God and worldly interests at the same time we are in gloomy wretchedness, vacillation, depression. ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... at other times with tears in his eyes he would swear with far resounding, multitudinous oaths to accompany the Gryphon. One day Wolseley's pocket-book and a tooth-brush would be packed in tin; next day they would be unpacked. The vacillation was awful; it amounted to an agony; it involved all the circles; the newspapers were ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... throne, but the guilt of blood seemed to cleave to the crown; he met with the obedience of his father's times no more. The Anglo-Saxon magnates seized the occasion which this crime, or the subsequent vacillation of the government between violence and weakness, offered them, to aim at an independent position, and to indulge in a personal ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... wealth for Mr. Leslie. It was a sudden realization of the truth, a sudden conviction of the strength of her own feelings, a sudden horror of the wickedness of falsifying them, and a sudden appreciation of the hollowness of worldly ambition when brought face to face with death. There was no hesitating vacillation in Sibyl's character. She had been self-deceived, but, as soon as she felt the truth, she threw aside errors with all her might, and gave herself up boldly, wholly and heartily to her new life. Aunt Faith understood ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... mind, which arises from two contrary emotions, is called "vacillation"; it stands to the emotions in the same relation as doubt does to the imagination (II. xliv. note); vacillation and doubt do not differ one from the other, except as greater differs from less. But we must bear in mind that I have deduced this vacillation from causes, which give ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... leaders of the revolt did not at once show the necessary determination in attacking. In civil war, more than in any other, victory can be insured only by a determined and persistent course. There must be no vacillation. To engage in parleys is dangerous; merely to mark time is suicidal. We are dealing here with the masses, who have never held any power in their hands, who are therefore most wanting in political self-confidence. Any hesitation at revolutionary headquarters demoralizes ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... following account of this affair: "We do not hesitate in saying, and have good reason to know, that had any want of firmness on the part of the leader, or any indecision or vacillation appeared, and a mischance occurred, this splendid command would then and there ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... mine 'excellent wife' cannot find it out), I had already pacified myself and subsided back to Albemarle Street, as my yesterday's yepistle will have informed you. But I thought that I had explained my causes of bile—at least to you. Some instances of vacillation, occasional neglect, and troublesome sincerity, real or imagined, are sufficient to put your truly great author and man into a passion. But reflection, with some aid from hellebore, hath already ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... explanation with a bow, then he spoke energetically and rapidly, pressing his advantage before the other's weakness should lead him into fresh vacillation. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... his clear vision, foresaw the jealousies and international complications that would arise through a political marriage of this character. This, and his unwillingness to part with Josephine, is a conclusion that may reasonably account for the vacillation that was so pronounced from ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Turks again and again from their youth up, prepared grimly for revenge; sanguine boys, who held arms in set fight for the first time that day, looked forward eagerly to the moment of action. Even to the last the incurable vacillation of the allied admirals was felt: they suggested a council of war. Don John's reply was worthy of him: "The time for councils is past," he said; "do not trouble yourselves about aught but fighting." Then he entered his ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... a celebrated English politician, born of good family; entered Parliament shortly after the Revolution (1688) as a Whig, but after a period of vacillation threw in his lot with Tories and in 1701 became Speaker of the House; in 1704 he was associated with St. John (Bolingbroke) in the Cabinet as Secretary of State, and set about undermining the influence of Godolphin and Marlborough; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... priest. He has no doubt as to what is the right thing to do. He has the advantage of a perfectly clear and single purpose, and no sort of restraint of conscience or delicacy keeps him from speaking it out. He is impatient at their vacillation, and he brushes it all aside with the brusque and contemptuous speech: 'Ye know nothing at all!' 'The one point of view for us to take is that of our own interests. Let us have that clearly understood; when we once ask what is "expedient for us," there will be no doubt about ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... had in critical periods evinced a want both of firmness and of sagacity. When the Southern States were on the eve of secession and the temper of the country was on trial, he had, though with honest intentions, shown signs of irresolution and vacillation. When he was betrayed into the ill-advised and abortive peace negotiations with Southern commissioners at Niagara, he had displayed the lack of tact and penetration which made the people doubt the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... And in taking precautions and making provision against that, I by no means swerved from my well-known loyalist policy, but my object was to make him more of a loyalist and induce him to drop somewhat of his time-serving vacillation: and he, let me assure you, now speaks in much higher terms of my achievements (against which many had tried to incite him) than of his own. He testifies that while he served the state well, I preserved ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world—are only designed, as he declares by letter, to confute the materialists, and derive their impregnability entirely from the inner evidence of feeling, which amid the vacillation of the reason pro and con gives ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... all those who selected the site—would seem to have contemplated the possibility of an attack. Indeed the whole situation was regarded as purely temporary. The vacillation, caused by the change of parties and policies in England, led to the Malakand garrison remaining for two years in a position which could not be well defended either on paper or in reality. At first, after the Chitral campaign of 1895, it was thought that the retention of the brigade in ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Revolution, breaking royalty in the King and the King with royalty, did so almost without noticing the man in the fierce crushing of the idea, the vast storm of the Assembly-Tribunal, the public wrath interrogating, Capet not knowing what to reply, the alarming, stupefied vacillation by that royal head beneath that sombre breath, the relative innocence of all in that catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of the man condemned,—he had looked on those things, he had contemplated that giddiness; he had seen the centuries appear before the bar of the Assembly-Convention; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... cruelty to others seemed to himself sanctioned by his own insensibility to fear, and contempt for bodily pain, smiled with bitter scorn at the apparent vacillation and weakness of the prisoner: but, as he delighted not in torture merely for torture's sake, he motioned to the guards to release the Israelite; and replied in a voice unnaturally mild and kindly, considering the circumstances of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nature until overmastered by two grim men who gradually hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Buchanan, and the last poor crisis in his inglorious career, came on Sunday, December 30th. Before that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to pity and his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately, "The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view found expression in such comments as this, "Buchanan, it is said, divides his time ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... symbolizes the decline of Spain, the dying away of its heraldic glories, and the melancholy which pervades the soul of Spain; the common people, though possessing reservoirs of strength, are plunged in vacillation and doubt. The sad ending is the most appropriate to the national psychology of the time. Warned by Electra, he says, he deliberately avoided popular applause, and sought to gain the ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... possess all those things after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart—I know—would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven of refuge against ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... his speeches there was neither carelessness nor vacillation. Less finished advocates turn aside to indulge themselves in playing with an illustration or a favourite proposition, at the risk of betraying the distinction between their own natural train of thought and their immediate argument. Mr. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... of the creator" was so obvious that the Christians were not inclined to resort to demonology for an explanation of this phenomenon, the less so as they could not identify the sun or the moon with a demon. The conflict of these different points of view accounts for the peculiar vacillation in the Christian conception of paganism. On one hand, we meet with crude conceptions, according to which the pagan gods are just like so many demons; they are specially prominent when pagan miracles and prophecies are to be explained. On the other ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... and even now she could not absolutely cease to entertain some hopes of the results of Oliver's return, nor silence one lingering fancy that Louis might yet wait unbound; although she told herself of his vacillation between herself and Isabel, of his father's influence, and of the certainty that he would see many more worthy of his love than herself. Not any one who could love him so well—oh no! But when Mary found ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the justification for drawing the members of a Cabinet from the leaders of a single party, who think alike and understand one another's minds. Whenever this condition has been absent, confusion, vacillation and contradiction have always marked the conduct of public affairs, and ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... antagonists and their fellow-senators show the right Roman nature at need. Marius sleeping quietly under the menace of death; his heroic son, with his little band of soldiers, committing suicide rather than surrender at Praeneste; Octavius scorning to imitate the vacillation and cowardice of his colleagues; Sylla plunging back alone into battle, that his example may reanimate the courage of his fleeing army: these are scenes that recall the best traditions of Rome. They are taken from Plutarch, it is true; ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... impossible; his attention must wander. The genius who, working with his favorite subject, finds a multitude of trains of thought called up by each idea, and who therefore spends hours on one topic with no vacillation of attention, is an illustration of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... the council was called to decide. Foremost in the group in dignity, though not in importance or in energy, was the aged Alexander, whose imprudent sermon had provoked the quarrel, and whose subsequent vacillation had encouraged it. He was the bishop, not indeed of the first, but of the most learned, see of Christendom. He was known by a title which he alone officially bore in that assembly. He was "the Pope." "The Pope of Rome" was a phrase which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... own bravery, to their able leader, and finally to Persian vacillation and cowardice, this little army had now reached a place of safety. It was long, however, before they got back to their native country, and when they did, they were not to arrive at its shores asleep, on shipboard, as the much wandering ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... hesitate before they determine the right from left. This is exasperating to the highest degree, and is destructive to the discipline of an elephant. There must be no uncertainty; if there is the slightest vacillation, it will be felt instinctively in the muscles of the rider, and the animal, instead of obeying mechanically the requisite pressure of knee or foot, feels that the mahout does not exactly know what he is about. This will cause the elephant to swing his head, instead of keeping ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Ministers to the true fighting objective Redmond had won. They were also delighted to see the Irish party openly exert its power—not quite realizing that such exhibitions were against the interest of the democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. The Government's vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the Veto question ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Dr. Kuyper draws a conventional picture of British policy with regard to the Boers, making it out to be ever greedy of power. The contrary is the truth. A vacillating and timid policy has been England's great mistake in South Africa; it is this very vacillation that has brought about ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... them that those "taking part with a riotous mob in forcibly resisting and obstructing the execution of the laws of the United States... cannot be regarded otherwise than as public enemies," and that "while there will be no hesitation or vacillation in the decisive treatment of the guilty, this warning is especially intended to protect and save the innocent." The next day, he issued as energetic a proclamation against "unlawful obstructions, combinations and assemblages of persons" in North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... the tax, which brought in only a trifling sum, was to be maintained as an assertion of right. Grenville pointed out that a partial repeal would not conciliate the colonists, that the troubles in America had been caused by vacillation, and that what was wanted was a plan of government steadily pursued and enforced. The opposition desired complete repeal, and the ministerial majority was only 62. On the evening before this debate an event took place at Boston which strengthened the spirit of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... demand for a protectorate over the Greek subjects of the Sultan. Turkey had no interest in the religious questions at issue, and she pursued a wavering course between the disputing powers, fearing to offend either of them. Russia at last began openly to threaten Turkey, and, finding vacillation and diplomacy no longer availing for a postponement of the conflict, the Sultan declared war, October ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... latter of whom had many friends amongst the English, to Calcutta, to re-open the negotiations for a neutrality. These negotiations seemed to be endless. The most striking feature was Admiral Watson's apparent vacillation. When the Council proposed war he wanted peace, when they urged neutrality he wanted war. Clive went so far as to present a memorial to the Council, saying it was unfair to continue the negotiations if the Admiral was determined not to agree to a treaty. It seems as if the Council ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... more mercy than you deserve—you to whom mercy was ever a sign of weakness, of vacillation. There is a gulf between us, Uncle Seth—a gulf which for a long time I have dimly sensed and which, because of my recent discoveries, has widened until it ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Executive department doing? What assurance have we there for the safety of the country? But we come back from that inquiry with a mournful conviction that feeble hands now hold the reins of state; that drivelers are taken in as counselors, not provided by the Constitution; that vacillation is the law; and the policy of this great Government is changed with every changing rumor of the day; nay, more, it is changing with every new phase of causeless fear. In this state of the case, after complications have been introduced into ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the vacillation of Beauclerc's mind suddenly ceased. Desperate, he stopped her, as she would have turned down that path to the landing-place where the boat was mooring. He stood full across the path. "Miss Stanley, one word—by one word, one look decide. You must decide for me whether ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the United States sends one war-ship to Cuba, a thing it is no longer likely to do, Spain would act with energy and without vacillation."—El Heraldo, January 16th. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... probabilities of success or failure. After my decision is made, I never again review the ground over which I travelled in coming to a decision, but pass onward with faith and vigour in the accomplishment of all that I have undertaken. More men are ruined by vacillation than from ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... damaged goods of her late husband, among which were sundry towels, "used and torn." During the terrible struggle which had just occurred, she had sided with her brother, against King Richard, of whom her husband Exeter was a fervent partisan. Perhaps such vacillation as was occasionally to be seen in Exeter's conduct may be traced to her influence. The night that King Richard was taken, she "made good cheer," though the event was almost equivalent to the signing of her husband's death-warrant. I doubt if we must not class this accomplished and beautiful ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... reason why we bear with you. La nuit porte conseil! Yet what counsel have you brought to me?—and I at the pass where my need is uttermost. Shall I go to her this afternoon, and unburden my soul—or shall I not? You have left me where you found me—in the same fine, free, and liberal state of vacillation. Discredited oracle!" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Taylor's own composition, of a very different character is substituted for it. In it occurs the following, which is of bibliographical interest: "The importunate desire of my friends has forced me to reprint this little Treatise of Dr. Dean's Spadacrene Anglica, which the vacillation of these distracted and ruinous times had almost lost and obliterated. To this of Dr. Dean's I have added the Observations of Michael Stanhope, Esquire, which I have excerpted forth of his two ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... your pardon," said he. "I forgot myself. I've a bad habit of reflecting aloud. That's why I almost always insist on working alone. My uncertainty, hesitation, the vacillation of my suspicions, lose me the credit of being an astute detective—of being an agent for whom there's no ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the seceding States. Buchanan had been pressed by South Carolina to yield possession of federal property in that State and especially to withdraw Federal troops from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbour. After some vacillation he had refused to do this, but had taken no steps to reinforce and re-supply the weak garrison under the command of Major Anderson. On March 5, Lincoln learned that Sumter would soon have to be yielded unless reinforcements ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... hang my friend, Undy Scott, the member of Parliament for the Tillietudlem burghs, if I could but get at his throat for such a purpose! Hang him! aye, as high as Haman! In this there would be no regret, no vacillation of purpose, no doubt as to the propriety of the sacrifice, no feeling that I was so treating him, not for his own ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... irresistible she had leaned too far out from the cliff, and would have leaned farther had he not taken matters into his own keeping without apology. Another thing; the pressure of his hand over hers remained a sensation still—a strong, steady, masterful imprint lacking hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though her hand still tightened under his—and she was conscious, too, that nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no tremor of instinctive recoil. For never ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... time on, with every changing wind, McCombs would first accept and then reject the offer of the French post. By his vacillation he prevented the appointment of an Ambassador to France for four months. He had easy access to the President and saw him frequently. As he left the White House after calling on the President one day, Mr. Wilson showed sharp irritation ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... supposed likely to sympathize and to act with the people of the South. But a variety of causes and influences combined to prevent Kentucky from taking a decided stand with either of the combatants, and produced the vacillation and inconsistency which so notably characterized her councils and paralyzed her efforts in either direction, and, alas, it may be added, so seriously affected her ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... [35] The feebleness and vacillation of Dr. Tyndall's whole views of things, as soon as they bear on matters that are of any universal moment, is so typical of the entire positive thought of the day, that I may with advantage give one or two further ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... executive work which involves the cooperation of two different men or parties, where both parties have anything like equal power or voice in its direction, there is almost sure to be a certain amount of bickering, quarreling, and vacillation, and the success of the enterprise suffers accordingly. If, however, either one of the parties has the entire direction, the enterprise will progress consistently and probably harmoniously, even although the wrong one of the two parties may ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... though since belief in the inheritance of acquired characters fell into disrepute, the fact has been a good deal overlooked. The "Origin" without "use and disuse" would be a materially different book. A certain vacillation is discernible in Darwin's utterances on this question, and the fact gave to the astute Butler an opportunity for his most telling attack. The discussion which best illustrates the genetic views of the period arose in regard to the production of the rudimentary ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... close of the war, they timidly refused to lead the nation in demanding suffrage for all. If even Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith, the very apostles of liberty on this continent, failed at that point, how can we wonder at the vacillation and confusion of politicians at this hour. We had hoped that the elections of '67, with their overwhelming majorities in every State against negro suffrage, would have proved to all alike, how futile is compromise, how short-sighted is policy. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her accustomed assiduity and tenderness, exhibiting in her frank features those changing emotions of joy and regret which occasionally beset her, as her active mind dwelt on the decided step she had just taken, with the contending doubts and hopes, and possibly with some of the mental vacillation, that was natural to her situation ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... act as such. It has refused to encumber itself with expensive and useless dormitories, and the faculty has in the main left the students to themselves. But whenever interference became necessary, it has acted promptly, without undue haste or severity, and also without vacillation. Here, at least, we do not find the ruinous practice of suspending a student one week, only to take him back the next. The mere existence, then, of the Sheffield Scientific—to say nothing of its success—by the side of the powerful corporation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... not dead," they protested together, "we left him a few minutes since alive and well." I seized upon the vacillation manifest in their voices and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... think I will take your advice." He was half ashamed thus to speak, because he was about to do something for which his conscience strongly condemned him, and also because he felt he was manifesting weakness and vacillation in the presence of one whom he, in his heart, despised, and who, after this, would hold similar sentiments in regard to himself. "I do feel a little unlike myself this morning, and as the wind is rather squally, and the captain says when ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... and reverenced by all alike, had never made any confidential advances to him. Probably the deeply-read student and simple-natured man failed to appreciate the more brilliant, if less profound, scholarship of the orator, and the vacillation and complexity of his character. While Cicero loaded him with praises and protestations of friendship, Varro appears to have maintained a somewhat cool or distant attitude. At last, however, this reserve was broken through. In 47 B.C. he seems to have ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... natural ear for the mere characteristic harmony which ought to subsist between the sound and the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waverley to be a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation and want of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither momentum nor elasticity in it; I mean as to the score, or effect upon the ear. He has improved since in his other works: to be sure, he has had practice enough. Poets either ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... plea than a long claim of faithful service, was so successfully exerted, as to contribute greatly to the depression of that loyal and ill-rewarded family. But Buckingham was incapable, even for his own interest, of pursuing the steady course which Christian suggested to him; and his vacillation probably saved the remnant of the large estates of the Earl ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... had trusted his hopes of bliss was no heroine. She was a lovely, loveable girl, nothing more. How would she greet him when they met presently on the tennis lawn? With tears and entreaties, and pretty little deprecating speeches, irresolution, timidity, vacillation, perhaps; hardly with heroic resolve to act and dare ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... terms of fondness in which he addresses her, and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors, have, by the very force of contrast, a powerful ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the notch which marks the lowest point to which the river has ever fallen at Cincinnati and that which records the point of its highest rise, the distance is sixty-four feet. If our Eastern rivers were capable of such vacillation as this, our large cities would go under once or twice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... was the first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of social union; because she had united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusiveness of aristocratical societies; because she had the vacillation of a republic without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without its stability. Such a system neither could nor ought to be maintained; the internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the despotism of Russia; and the growth of improvement among its people was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... regarding him with mock sternness, "we don't allow that kind of thing. It is shameful vacillation—I love a long word—What's the other word I was trying for?—still longer—I mean, tergiversation! it comes from tergum and verso, and means turning the back. It is rude to ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... The certain and inevitable disorder, which a body of troops always presents in action, is with the moral effect of modern appliances, becoming greater every day. In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and commanding ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... finally at rest, being a valiant young creature, Damaris permitted herself no second thoughts, no vacillation or delay; but went straight downstairs and crossing the strip of terrace garden, bare-headed as she was, waited at the head of the steps leading up from the carriage drive to greet the idol ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sometimes that great attribute of the divine nature is proposed as holding forth a pattern for us to follow, and the faith in it as tending to make us in a measure steadfast like Himself, as when Paul indignantly rebuts his enemies' charge of levity of purpose and vacillation, and avers that 'as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea and nay' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made testamentary provision for its heir. After much wrangling and vacillation, it fixed upon New York as the seat of the new Government and summoned the States to choose presidential electors, Senators, and Representatives. The new national legislature was to assemble on the first Wednesday in March, which fell upon ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni very powerfully describes the vacillation and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... vacillation and doubt were unknown. A certain wisdom could never be his, for he saw no alternatives. He never balanced two courses of ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... me! Why not request me to tell you where Soult will fight us next, and when Marmont will cross the frontier? My dear boy, I have not seen her for a week, an entire week,—seven full days and nights, each with their twenty-four hours of change and vacillation." ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... time for ardent wooing on his part, no vacillation nor coyness on hers. He loved her with an absorbing passion—loved her for her wonderful physical beauty, and what she may have lacked in mind he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... almost always some hesitation when a Governor begins to reign. He is the Prime Minister of the Bank Cabinet; and when so important a functionary changes, naturally much else changes too. If the Governor be weak, this kind of vacillation and hesitation continues throughout his term of office. The usual defect then is, that the Bank of England does not raise the rate of interest sufficiently quickly. It does raise it; in the end it takes ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... and more philosophy, fewer prizes for forensic ability and more for strength and vigour of analysis. The central seat of character is the mind. A man of weak character thinks vaguely, a man of clear intellectual decisions acts with precision and is free from vacillation. A country of educated men acts coherently, smites swiftly, plans ahead; a country of confused education is ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... with you, there is only a simple, imperceptible transmission from my soul to yours. You do not perceive any marked results, and they are not great, because you are not in a state to receive much, and often interrupt me by speaking, which causes in me a vacillation of grace. If we were together some considerable time without distraction, you would perceive more marked results. It is the desire of God that there should be, between us, perfect interchange of thoughts, of hearts, ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... friend should, in the strictness and nicety of her feelings on my account, conceive me capable of encouraging an intercourse which could lead to a less worthy thought of me in the mind of the most scrupulous of man—or of womankind." But even this vacillation of opinion and resolution tended to bring the image of the handsome young Damian more frequently before the Lady Eveline's fancy, than perhaps his uncle, had he known it, would altogether have approved of. In such reflections, however, she never indulged long, ere a sense ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... that Alexander is hesitating," exclaimed Napoleon, triumphantly. "He dares not attack me, and his vacillation will give me time to complete my preparations, and surround him so closely that he cannot escape. While he is still dreaming at the Kremlin of the possibility of peace, I shall be at the gates, and ask him in the thunder of my cannon whether he will ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the fault of Birdwood, Hunter-Weston and Paris. I read their "appreciations of the situation" some days ago, but until to-day I have not had the unbroken hour needed to digest them. Birdwood begins by excusing himself in advance against any charge of vacillation. At our first meeting he said he was convinced our best plan would be to go for the South of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Now he has, in fact, very much shifted his ground under the influence of a new consideration, "(which I only learned ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... would no doubt have crushed the insurrection, at least for the time. But the indifference, vacillation and delay of the British authorities greatly encouraged its rapid development. Macnaghten at first 'did not think much of it.' Shelton was ordered into the Balla Hissar, countermanded, a second time ordered, and again instructed to halt for orders. At last the Envoy himself ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... exceed the vacillation and confusion that reigned in the English cabinet at that time. The forces of England were frittered away in small and objectless expeditions, the plans of action were changed with every report sent either by the ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty |
