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More "Vacillating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Of its dukes, one was a prisoner in the hands of the English; the other was connected with the French party through his brother-in-law, King Charles, and with the Burgundian party through his father-in-law, the Duke of Lorraine. No wonder the fealty of the townsfolk was somewhat vacillating; downtrodden by men-at-arms, forever taken and retaken, red caps and white caps alternately ran the danger of being cast into the river. The Burgundians set fire to the houses, pillaged the churches, chastised the most notable burgesses; ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... reign, xxii. 10-12, was succeeded by the rapacious Jehoiakim (608-597), who cared nothing for the warning words of Jeremiah (xxxvi.), and his successor Jehoiachin, who was exiled to Babylon after a three months' reign, was followed by the weak and vacillating Zedekiah, who reigned from 597 to 586, when Jerusalem was taken and the monarchy perished. The priests and prophets were no more faithful to their high office than the kings. The prophets were superficial men who did not realize how deep and grievous was the hurt of the people, xxiii. 9-40, and who ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that responsible Government which all along had been the key to the whole difficulty, the condition precedent to a Federal Union ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... steady his nerves a little. And when the moon went down and the day was slowly breaking, he took his way, with a vacillating intention and many a chilling doubt, along the winding road to ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... ANTONIO DE, a vacillating ecclesiastic, born in Dalmatia; was educated by the Jesuits; taught mathematics in Padua; wrote a treatise in which an explanation was for the first time given of the phenomenon of the rainbow; became archbishop of Spalatro; falling under suspicion he passed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... historischen Entwickelung". Stuttgart, 1889. Chapter entitled "Bestandigkeit oder Veranderlichkeit der Naturwesen".), went the length of admitting (in 1762) that new species might arise by intercrossing. Buffon's position among the pioneers of the evolution-doctrine is weakened by his habit of vacillating between his own conclusions and the orthodoxy of the Sorbonne, but there is no doubt that he had a firm grasp of the general idea of "l'enchainement ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... which brought about the downfall of Napoleon, gave new life to the Collection of Antiquities, and what was more than life, the hope of recovering their past importance; but the events of 1815, the troubles of the foreign occupation, and the vacillating policy of the Government until the fall of M. Decazes, all contributed to defer the fulfilment of the expectations of the personages so vividly described by Blondet. This story, therefore, only begins to ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... strong personality, whose estates joined his own. This appeared more plausible than the suit of Cantemir, and his Lordship watched Katherine when she was with these two and soon found, so he thought, it was for the latter she cared; indeed 'twas hard for him to follow the trend of her vacillating mind. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... difficulties would be removed if a policy were adopted with which the people could heartily sympathize, and if the king placed himself at the head of his parliament and led them on. But his advice was neglected by the vacillating and peace-loving monarch, his proffered proclamation was put aside, and a weak, featureless production substituted in its place. Nevertheless the new parliament seemed at first more responsive than might have been looked for. A double subsidy was granted, which was expressly stated to be "not on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... leading spirit of the Girondists, who were also known as Brissotins. Vergniaud certainly was far superior to him in oratory, but Brissot was quick, eager, impetuous, and a man of wide knowledge. But he was at the same time vacillating, and not qualified to struggle against the fierce energies roused by the events of the Revolution. His party fell before the Mountain; sentence of arrest was passed against the leading members of it on the 2nd of June 1793. Brissot attempted to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... institution—behind everything, no matter what it be, Plato perceived an idea, immortal, eternal, indestructible, and incorruptible, which existed in the bosom of the Eternal, and of which all that comes under our observation is only the vacillating and troubled reflection, and which supports, animates, and for a time preserves everything that we can perceive. Hence, all philosophy consists in having some knowledge of these Ideas. How is it possible to attain such knowledge? By raising the mind ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Thus vacillating between virtue and vice; to neither constant, and upbraided by both; his mind, like his person in the glen, was continually passing and repassing between ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... it is both amusing and painful to follow the author's vacillating description of Judaism. At first Judaism is a form of belief. Then it becomes the effect of that belief upon thought and conduct. From that it evolves into some irreducible minimum of conformity, if we can only get hold of it. This being difficult, it gets to be a series of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... life the court returned to Thebes. A certain noble named Ay came next to the throne, but held it for only three years. The country was now in a chaotic condition, and was utterly upset and disorganised by the revolution of Akhnaton, and by the vacillating policy of the three weak kings who succeeded him, each reigning for so short a time. One cannot say to what depths of degradation Egypt might have sunk had it not been for the timely appearance of Horemheb, a wise and good ruler, who, though but a soldier of not particularly exalted birth, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... at random, now reflected that she certainly did not look forward to the intimacy of three or four weeks on board ship which was threatened. Women of her own age usually boring her, she supposed that girls would be worse. She glanced at Rachel again. Yes! how clear it was that she would be vacillating, emotional, and when you said something to her it would make no more lasting impression than the stroke of a stick upon water. There was nothing to take hold of in girls—nothing hard, permanent, satisfactory. Did Willoughby say three weeks, or did he ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... really did much to help him; she knew his weak, vacillating, and speculative nature would long since have left them penniless had he not yielded to her advice and protests on many occasions, Generous and extravagantly hospitable, he spent his money lavishly, and had squandered two or three fortunes in wild business ventures in the Indian Seas instead ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... been more bizarre than an Azurian princess holding court upon the edge of a Florida prairie? This, emphasized by our escape from death, added color to the fabric of unreality whose warp was romance, and whose woof was the mystifying surge of human impulses. So my vacillating spirits rebounded to the pinnacle of happiness and, raising my hand, I announced in a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... vacillating conduct of his allies, had already passed from Africa into Sicily, where he spent the following winter. In the early part of the year 1271, he set sail for Acre, where he landed at the head of only one thousand men; but so high was his reputation among the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... be solved. Divided, helpless, uncertain, England could no longer remain what she had been for six hundred years. She stood vacillating, drawn by contrary attractions to opposite centres, half-way between the North, that had last populated the land, and the South, that had taught and christianised the nation. On both sides fresh invaders threaten her; which will be the winner? Should the North triumph, England ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the Duck-billed Platypus A sad example sets for us. From him we learn how indecision Of character provokes derision. This vacillating beast, you see, Could not decide which he would be— Fish, flesh or fowl—and chose all three. The scientists were sorely vexed, To classify him so perplexed Their brains that they with rage at bay Called him a horrid name one day, A name that baffles, frights ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... incompetent. Fortunately for Syracuse, Alcibiades, the most skilful of the three, was soon deposed from his command by a factious and fanatic vote of his fellow-countrymen, and the other competent one, Lamachus, fell early in a skirmish: while, more fortunately still for her, the feeble and vacillating Nicias remained unrecalled and unhurt, to assume the undivided leadership of the Athenian army and fleet, and to mar, by alternate over-caution and over-carelessness, every chance of success which the early ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... however, in stating that he was particularly sought after, and that orders were given to shew him no quarter. Certain it is that he was overtaken, and "sacrificed to the fears of Prieto, who justly considered him the sword and buckler of the irresolute and vacillating Freire." He was pronounced by an English traveller, as "the handsomest man he had ever seen in either hemisphere," and undoubtedly his tall, athletic, and beautifully proportioned person, his almost Herculean strength, the elegance of his manners, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... and reasonable prudence, a people with a low, vacillating, and uncertain moral ideal may, for a time, be able to stem the tide of outraged virtue, but this is merely transitory. Ultimate destruction and ruin follow absolutely in the wake of moral degeneracy; this, all history shows;—this, experience ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... ending: the degradation and drudgery of the life he was to return to on the morrow: all rose up in tumultuous conflict. A feeling of anguish that was elemental and not of the moment filled him. Drifting and vacillating nature—he saw himself as in a boat borne along by currents that carried him, now near isles of beauty, and then whirled him away from their vanishing glory into gloomy gulfs and cataracts that went down into blackness. He was master neither of joy nor sorrow. Without will: unpractical; ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Lincoln's true quality. Motley, watching events from Vienna, had a better perspective than Boston then afforded. Even Mr. Norton, Lowell's dear friend and associate upon the North American Review, thought in 1862 that the President was timid, vacillating, and secretive, and, what now seems a queerer judgment still, that he wrote very poor English. But if the editors of the North American showed a typical Anglo-Saxon reluctance in yielding to the spell ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... feeble. Brandenburg and Denmark had been alienated by the States concluding a separate peace at Nijmwegen and leaving them in the lurch. The attention of the emperor was fully occupied in defending Hungary and Vienna itself against the Turks. England under Charles II was untrustworthy and vacillating, almost a negligible quantity. A visit made by William to London convinced him that nothing was at present to be hoped for from that quarter. At the same time the very able French ambassador at the Hague, D'Avaux, did his utmost to foment the divisions and factions in the Provinces. He ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... manufactories; after which the foreigner would leisurely look about to indemnify himself in the increased prices which he would be enabled to command by his monopoly of the supply of our consumption. What American citizen, after the government had displayed this vacillating policy, would be again tempted to place the smallest confidence in the public faith, and adventure once more into this ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the dawn is not far distant. Spain is now breaking the eastern sky for her beloved Philippines, and the times are changing, as I positively know, faster than we imagine. This government, which, according to you, is vacillating and weak, should be strengthened by our confidence, that we may make it see that it is the custodian of our hopes. Let us remind it by our conduct (should it ever forget itself, which I do not believe can happen) that we have faith in ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... what must be fought for to the death; they mistook subordinate or unimportant points for the key of their position: in their compromises or in their resistance they wanted the guidance of clear and adequate principles, and they were vacillating and ineffective. But stronger and far-seeing minds perceived the need of a broad and intelligible basis on which to maintain the cause of the Church. For the air was full of new ideas; the temper of the time was bold ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Nicholas's reign. The armed attempt to overthrow the Imperial power, ending in the execution or exile of many young members of the first families, struck terror into the Noblesse, and prepared the way for a period of repressive police administration. Nicholas had none of the moral limpness and vacillating character of his predecessor. His was one of those simple, vigorous, tenacious, straightforward natures—more frequently to be met with among the Teutonic than among the Slav races—whose conceptions ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... time things went well. Pretorius was Commandant General in Natal, Potgieter Chief Commandant in the allied Western Districts. The legislative power was in the hands of a Volksraad of twenty-four members, whose ways were more vacillating and erratic than advantageous. "Every man for himself and God for all" seemed to be the convenient motto of this assembly, except perhaps on urgent occasions, when Pretorius and Potgieter were called upon as joint dictators to settle some knotty ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Athenian with one bound passed the portico, he traversed the house, and rushed with swift but vacillating steps, and muttering audibly to himself, down the starlit streets. The direful potion burnt like fire in his veins, for its effect was made, perhaps, still more sudden from the wine he had drunk previously. Used to the excesses of nocturnal revellers, the citizens, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker, suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was before the young man. Ah! surely, she alone had that swaying figure; she alone knew the secret ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... him bitter and despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... meantime, while your men of science are thus vacillating, in the definition of the species of the only animal they have the opportunity of studying inside and out, between one and sixty-three; and disputing about the origin, in past ages, of what they cannot define ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... of reconstruction in the South as weak and vacillating—a civil and military failure. As the army advances, the South should be held as conquered soil, its civilization torn up by the roots, the property of the Southern white people confiscated and given to the negroes. The ballot ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... the Parliament would be punished, but would be neither conciliated nor tamed into submission. To make matters worse, Blois was given up, and Pontoise was substituted for it! This latter town being close to Paris, the chastisement became ridiculous, showed the vacillating weakness of the Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to laugh at him. One thing was, however, well done. The resolution taken to banish the Parliament was kept so secret that that assembly had not the slightest ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... came the conservative reply from a knot of twelve bishops who had met to consecrate a new church for Basil of Ancyra. But its weight was far beyond its numbers. Basil's name stood high for learning, and he more than any man could sway the vacillating Emperor. Eustathius of Sebastia was another man of mark. His ascetic eccentricities, long ago condemned by the council of Gangra, were by this time forgotten or considered harmless. Above all, the synod represented ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Study existing facts, and decide on a definite line of policy, and follow it through. Russia, having a definite line of policy, is strong; we have not one, and are weak and vacillating. 'A double-minded man is unstable in all ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... emperor, after a pause, "these are idle musings, Lacy. Your picture of the great Frederick has made me melancholy; I cannot but hope that it is overdrawn. It cannot be that such a warrior has grown vacillating; he will surely awake, and then the old lion will shake his mane, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... down upon my neighbours, the incarnation of honesty; but I can find excuses for myself when I desire them, I hug my personal esteem too close, and a thousand to one I am too great a coward at heart to tell myself the naked truth. You, on the other hand, are vacillating and ill at your ease. You shrink from the hards of life which I steer happily through. But you have no delusions with yourself, and the odds are that when the time comes you may choose the "high that proved too high" and ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... meanwhile, Peter's mind was continually vacillating between Alabama, with his wife and children, and his new-found relatives in the North. Said a brother, "If you cannot get your family, what will you do? Will you come North and live with your relatives?" "I would as soon go out of the world, as not to go back and do all I can for them," was the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... standing before it quite thirty minutes that night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, in amused contempt at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. There is the high-curving brow—really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me now—and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to make my sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is wonderfully done, the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for although it is rather a staring look, yet one can almost see the dark pupils ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... must have been the young man, certainly, for he was strong and industrious, while the abbe was aged and weak; besides, his mind was too vacillating to allow him to carry out ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and died ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning—say about a quarter to twelve, noon—see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle! I, too, have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prefer him to Clermont. Her life is the tragedy of a soul too indolent to swim against the current of events. Mrs. Haywood managed to give extraordinary vividness and consistency to the character of the vacillating Henrietta by making the plot depend almost entirely upon the indecision of the heroine. Consequently none of the author's women are as sharply defined as this weak, pleasure-loving French girl. The character drawing, though too much subordinated to the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... somewhat vacillating position on the whole to favor democracy, but only a few pages further on Kautsky explains his reasons for opposing the initiative and referendum, and we see that when the point of action arrives, his democratic ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... retreating columns again formed into squares to permit stragglers to come up. The rattle of small-arms, the heavy peal of artillery, the earth-quake crash of cavalry, rose on every side, while the cheers which alternately told of the vacillating fortune of the fight rose amidst the wild pibroch of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... either sedition or internal disturbances, is certainly a marvelous thing. And, for a people to remain free it is essential that they should be ready to do this always. Neither this fidelity nor this concord is due to sober reflection (la raison raisonnante); reason is too vacillating and too feeble to bring about such a universal and energetic result. Abandoned to itself and suddenly restored to a natural condition, the human flock is capable only of agitation, of mutual strife until pure force at length predominates, as in barbarous ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and defeated him, sending his army flying terror-stricken back upon Armagh. This feat established him as the hero of the North. No army which Sussex could again gather together could be induced to risk the fate of its predecessor. The deputy was a poor soldier, feeble and vacillating in the field. He was no match for his fiery assailant; and after an attempt to get over the difficulty by suborning one Neil Grey to make away with the too successful Shane, he was reduced to the necessity of coming to terms. An agreement was entered into with ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... six months of the monotony, the frightful isolation and the loneliness had wrought a change. The young man brooded continually over his fate. His days were filled with morbid self-pity, which eventually engendered in his weak and vacillating mind a hatred for those who had sent him here—for the very men he had at first inwardly thanked for saving him from ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it be the most delightful function of the poet to set our lives to music, yet perhaps he will be even more sure of our maturer gratitude if he do his part also as moralist and philosopher to purify and enlighten; if he define and encourage our vacillating perceptions of duty; if he piece together our fragmentary apprehensions of our own life and that larger life whose unconscious instruments we are, making of the jumbled bits of our dissected map of experience a coherent chart. In the great poets there is an exquisite sensibility both of soul and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... science of modern times; and, finally, the generals, men for the most part not above mediocrity, consumed by petty rivalries, some of them of an ignorance beyond all belief, and at their head the Emperor, an ailing, vacillating man, deceiving himself and everyone with whom he had dealings in that desperate venture on which they were embarking, into which they were all rushing blindfold, with no preparation worthy of the name, with the panic and confusion ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... court could surpass the lavish elegance and dissipation which was indulged in by Maximilian and his very sweet but ambitious wife Carlotta. Her personal popularity and influence was fully equal to that of her husband, while her tenacity of purpose and strength of will far excelled that of the vacillating and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the coast ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... possessed that first requisite for a statesman, firmness. Cicero, on the contrary, was irresolute, timid, and inconsistent.[113] He talked indeed largely of preserving a middle course,[114] but he was continually vacillating from one to the other extreme; always too confident or too dejected; incorrigibly vain of success, yet meanly panegyrizing the government of an usurper. His foresight, sagacity, practical good sense, and singular tact, were lost for want of that strength of mind which points ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... fool!" The words leaped from the lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating mass of people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with Ralph, and a little murmur ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... contributions of money and offerings of arms. A good deal of attention has been excited by a letter from Mr. Bartholomew Szemere, one of Kossuth's former friends, and even a minister in the Hungarian revolutionary cabinet, charging him with cowardice, weakness, and a fatally irresolute and vacillating policy in the administration of affairs. Szemere also denies that Kossuth has any just right to call himself the Governor of Hungary, or even the leader of the Hungarian people. On the other hand, Mr. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... only a strong hand but a stout heart and a wise head at the helm. Excessive caution was necessary, perpetual vigilance was imperative; a single imprudent measure might be fatal in such exigencies. And this accounts for the vacillating policy of Elizabeth, so often condemned by historians. It did not proceed from weakness of head, but from real necessity occasioned by constant embarrassments and changing circumstances. According to all the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... depression, during which she despaired of everything. The love of a very young girl may in itself be both strong and enduring, but it generally has the effect of making her prone to extremes of hope and fear, uncertain of herself, vacillating in her ideas, and unsteady in the pursuit of the smaller ends of life. Throw two equal weights into the scales of a perfectly adjusted balance, the arm will swing and move erratically many times before it returns to its normal position, although there ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... emotions with an intensity which the beautiful lines alone could not effect. Ichabod we read once, but when we know the meaning of its spiritual name and remember that it is Whittier's indignant rebuke of Webster for his vacillating policy in the slavery agitation, we read it again with a renewed and more vivid interest. Many things, however, are so universal that one cares not whether they were written by a Hindoo or an American, whether they are full of personal experience or drawn with the fervor ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Guy, who was deeply moved by this outburst of anger and suffering, this cry of pain that declared itself involuntarily, his feelings vacillating between doubt and pity. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every lesson in school or college is an opportunity. Every examination is a chance in life. Every patient is an opportunity. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... pressure of a friendly hand which tells her that there is one who understands her deeds, and in her place would do the like. The idea of a God who not only sympathizes with all we feel and endure for our fellow-men, but who will pour new life into our too languid love, and give firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an extension and multiplication of the effects produced by human sympathy; and it has been intensified for the better spirits who have been under the influence of orthodox Christianity, by the contemplation of Jesus as "God manifest in the flesh." But Dr. Cumming's ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... upstarts. The Bourbons and the nobles allied to them were, some from sincere conviction and some from policy, adherents of Calvinism. Thus the Protestants in France became a political party, as well as a religious body, and a party with anti-monarchical tendencies. Anthony of Bourbon, a weak and vacillating person, had married Jeanne d'Albret, the heiress of Bearn and Navarre, a heroic woman and an earnest Protestant, the mother of Henry IV. His brother Louis, Prince of Conde, a brave, impetuous soldier, whose wife, the niece of the Grand Constable Montmorency, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... when he remembered that he had absolutely nothing on hand to eat. He hastened to saddle up. As he was about to mount he paused to look uncertainly up the trail on which he had thrown away the cigarettes. While he stood vacillating, his hand went to his hip pocket and drew out the silver-cased brandy flask. He looked at it, and its emptiness reminded him that he was thirsty. He went down to the pool for a drink. Having filled his flask, he returned up the bank and ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... feel the content you express: at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot's wife. What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... on "most confidentially" to state his attitude toward Davis thus "While I do not and never have regarded him as a great man or statesman on a large scale, or a man of any marked genius, yet I have regarded him as a man of good intentions, weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate, but not firm. Am now beginning to doubt his good intentions.... His whole policy on the organization and discipline of the army is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that he is aiming ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... might find its precipices, He might possibly escape them: For the fate the most fastidious, For the impulse the most powerful. Even the planets most malicious Only make free will incline, But can force not human wishes. And thus 'twist these different causes Vacillating and unfixed, I a remedy have thought of Which will with new wonder fill you. I to-morrow morning purpose, Without letting it be hinted That he is my son, and therefore Your true King, at once to fix him As King Sigismund ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... they hied to the place, where the Hibernian, clothed in his brief authority, sometimes perpetrated applications of birch without rhyme or reason; but much oftener allowed his authority to be trampled upon, according as the severe or loving humor prevailed. This vacillating administration was calculated for any result, rather than securing the affectionate respect of the children. Scarcely the first quarter had elapsed, before materials for revolt had germinated under the very throne of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... growl, but turned away with Griffith as Lord James sprang up the verandah steps and blandly led the vacillating Resident Engineer into his quarters. The visiting engineers crossed over to the big ungainly bunkhouse, and entered the section divided off for the bosses and steel workers and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... single soldier ready to march on Albania. Ramadan, that year, did not close until the new moon of July. Had Ali put himself boldly at the head of the movement which was beginning to stir throughout Greece, he might have baffled these vacillating projects, and possibly dealt a fatal blow to the Ottoman Empire. As far back as 1808, the Hydriotes had offered to recognise his son Veli, then Vizier of the Morea, as their Prince, and to support ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Ohio black walnut is prone to hybridize with butternut trees in its vicinity and others have told me of its hybridizing with English walnut trees near it, which shows it to be almost as vacillating in character as our Japanese walnuts or heartnuts. Ohio black walnuts, when planted, usually produce vigorous stocks, many of which show hybridity of some sort. If one examines the nuts of the Ohio and finds them dwarfed or deformed, he may ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... however, directed, and eloquence was the most perfect fruit of his talents. Nor can we here speak of Cicero as a man. He has his admirers and detractors. He had great faults and weaknesses as well as virtues. He was egotistical, vain, and vacillating. But he was industrious, amiable, witty, and public spirited. In his official position he was incorruptible. He was no soldier, but he had a greater than a warrior's excellence. In spite of his faults, his name is one ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... He received in exchange a reinforcement of the best-equipped and best-trained soldiers of the Irish army. Avaux and De Rosen were both sent back to France by James; and thus, with but few officers, badly-equipped troops, and his own miserable and vacillating counsel, he commenced the war which ended so gloriously or so disastrously, according to the different opinions of the actors in the fatal drama. In July, 1690, some of James' party were defeated by the Williamites at Cavan, and several of his best officers were killed or made ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... myself in the wrong with regard to Beauclerk," she continued quietly. "That is merely fair to him. Every one shall know that I have been weak and vacillating. May God forgive me and humble me—for I shall not be understood, even by many good people. But the next worst thing to making an error is to abide by it. Dear David, try to follow my feeling. It has all passed in my mind in such a way that ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of apologies and pretexts, but to no purpose. For two days I remained in vacillating indecision; I neither saw nor heard of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... owner. It was a Gascon chateau, arrogant and threadbare, which had never cried out at a wound, nor suffered the indignity of a patch. About it and through it, hundreds of swallows, its natural inheritors, crossed and recrossed in their vacillating flight. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... to an absolute rupture. He was naturally disposed, and was moreover led by circumstances, to make it a leading rule of conduct, to adhere immovably to principles which he had once espoused, and never to lose sight of them; but, having done this, to appear vacillating and irresolute in matters of detail. His position abroad involved the same apparent contradiction. Placed in the midst of great rival powers, and never completely certain of the obedience of his subjects, he sought to ensure the future for himself by crafty and hesitating conduct. All the world ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... belonged to her, and that she had lost it in the car. Of course, I had to give it up." After vacillating in delicate hesitation she went on. "I did n't mind losing the ring so very much, since it was really hers, but I was a little hurt that you did n't buy ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... walketh with a vacillating gait," continued Fakrash, as though he had not been interrupted, "the willow branch itself ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Lord Salisbury, so gossip says, that as quite enough has been heard of this Boxer business it must cease at once. Is not the South African War still proceeding, and has England not enough troubles without this additional one? It is almost pathetic, this peremptory order from a vacillating Foreign Office that never knows its own mind—this Canute-like bidding of the angry waves of human men to stand still at once and be no more heard of. People in Europe will never quite understand the East, for the East is ruled by things which ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... her own happiness that was in question, her own conduct, her own greatness, she would not have dreamed of having an opinion of her own. She would have consulted the Doctor, and simply have done as he directed. But all this was for her child, and in a vague, vacillating way she felt that for her child she ought to be ready with ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... my dear mother took to the notion of our going to Crayshaw's only set seals to our fate, and the manner of her protests was not more fortunate than the matter. She was timid and vacillating from wifely habit, whilst motherly anxiety goaded her to be persistent and almost irritable on the subject. Habitually regarding her own wishes and views as worthless, she quoted the Woods at every turn of her arguments, which was a mistake, for ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... remarkable; but Alfred saw only the radiant young creature in flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... are steed-like in other respects: any timid and vacillating course with them is sure to get you into trouble. One must strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying; the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but farther off than you think, and if you do not ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... was vacillating with more of weakness than would have been expected from a man who had generally been so firm in the affairs of his life. He had been quite clear about George Hotspur, when those inquiries of his were first ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... "This vacillating policy," he swept on, "annoys me. For my part, I should like to see so firm a stand taken on all questions that in any part of the world, whenever a man, and wherever a man, said 'I am an Englishman? everybody else would ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... happiest day of my life, Diana. We are going to be great friends, are we not! And the philosophers tell us that friendship is the most soul-satisfying of all human relationships. I have been very vacillating in my attitude to you, since you came to Washington. But I cannot lose the feeling that those wise, wistful eyes of yours have seen my trouble and understood. I wonder how soon I can see you again. I'm rather proud of my ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the judge incredulously. He was so unaccustomed to seeing his ailing, vacillating wife do anything on her own initiative and responsibility that it seemed impossible. "You cabled ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... is going to become a great woman of business. But for that, and—I think—a curious streak of fidelity to her vacillating architect ('How happy could I be with either,' don't you know, he seems to feel—just now they say he is living steadily at Storrington with his wife No. 1, who is ill, poor thing) ... but for that and this, I think Beryl would enjoy a flirtation with me. She can't quite make me out, and my unwavering ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and grammar, and thus a little of everything. How many times have I regarded with poignant compassion that sad work of nature, mutilated by society! How many times have I followed in the darkness the pale and vacillating gleams of a spark flickering in abortive life! How many times have I tried to revive the fire that smouldered under those ashes! Alas! her long hair was the color of ashes, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... well-regulated society. Passion predominated above reason, and received its impulse solely from casual circumstances. It was, in fact, accidental, whether it should operate amiably or malignantly; and the felicity of one half of the human species depended upon the precarious and ever vacillating humour of the other. Virtue was scarcely seen upon the earth, except at occasional and often distant visitations, or as she shed a fitful and flickering light into the retreats of systematic philosophy. Woman was ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... to the horses. They were all there, standing now, alert and tense. Wheeling, he stared after the Indians. They were speeding away like the wind, close huddled, fleeing in a panic. He watched them, dazed, saw them ascend a rise, become a vacillating speck in the moonlight, and drop from view in a hollow beyond the rise. He turned to the men. All stood in mute helplessness, only half comprehending. He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so there came ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... Church. Charles, in terror of the Puritans, declared that it was a purely malicious invention, but none the less he continued to temporise, and the court to regulate its conscience according to his vacillating example. Some of the nobility were received into the Church, and among them Lord Boteler and Lady Newport. Mass was again said in the houses of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... was briefly this: Charles Albert's heart was with the growing cry for independence, but he wished for independence without liberty. This was the "secret of the king" which has been sought for in all kinds of recondite suppositions: this was the key to his apparently vacillating and inconsistent character. Yet he revealed it himself in some words spoken to Roberto d'Azeglio, the elder brother of Massimo. "Marquis d'Azeglio," he said, "I desire as much as you do the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is for that reason, remember well, that I will never give a constitution ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... who wrote it does not seem to me to understand his trade very well; he ought to put himself to school," writes she, and proceeds with analysis so convincing and exhortation so invigorating that even the vacillating Gregory must have been magnetized afresh with power to resolve. One feels in the letter that Catherine is as near impatience with him and with the situation as is permitted to a saint. Gregory must have felt the sting ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... small needle in her left hand, and a very thick piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the said thread to her lips, and then—her eyes fixed on the novel—made a blind, vacillating attack at the eye of the needle. But a camel would have gone through it with quite as much ease. Nor did the novel alone engage Mrs. Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself to scold the children, to inquire ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wilhelm II had magnetized the vacillating, timorous Nicholas. Count Buelow had courted the Russian Foreign Office with the assiduous arts of a lover, and his wooing had been crowned by complete success. Through Petrovitch the grand dukes had been indirectly bribed, and the smaller ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... necessitates that he shall be kindly, genial, loving; enjoying the joy and well-being of all around him, and therefore lovable. But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his paltering with it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it. The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... that Sandy Morley owed him a great deal and that he was conferring a mighty honour upon the young man by accepting his hospitality. No doubt arose as to his right in sharing Sandy's home, but as time went on he did, as all weak and vacillating natures do, resent young Morley's strength of character, simplicity and capacity for winning to himself that which Lans felt belonged to him by inherent justice. It had been one thing to know that his Uncle Levi Markham had taken another young ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory. George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his unconstitutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his Commons and his Ministers. Lord Eldon as Chancellor, but with as nearly the control of a Premier as the King would allow, was the staunch upholder of all things that have since been disproved and discarded. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... actually waited for the shock of another line charging with the bayonets. Even then the Russians gave way before the moral and not before the physical impulse. They were already disconcerted, wavering, worried, hesitant, vacillating, when the blow fell. They waited long enough to receive bayonet thrusts, even blows with the rifle (in the back, as at ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... The vacillating emperor was affected by the attitude of his suite, and by their varying representations. There is no actual proof of French interference, but French agents had been seen in the city, and might have had ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... inevitable to the vacillating state of his being that, finding Savina in an exceptionally engaging black dress with floating sleeves of sheer lace and a string of rare pearls, he should forget all his doubts in the pleasure of their intimacy. Even now, in response to his gaze, her face lost its usual composure and became pinched, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mind, and made him tremble for the consequences to himself. He evidently believed that Agnes knew more about him than he thought. Or perhaps it was that mysterious influence which a positive mind in motion—like Miss Arnold's—wields over a vacillating temperament like ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... necessary in a nation and in the government of a nation so that all that admits of precision shall not be smothered by that which is confused; so that what is exact shall not be obscured by what is vague, and so that its firm resolves shall not be shaken by vacillating and ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... another review in "La Presse" equally favorable. All seem to see the truth about American slavery much plainer than people can who are in it. If American ministers and Christians could see through their sophistical spider-webs, with what wonder, pity, and contempt they would regard their own vacillating condition! ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... and One.[67] The change, in this respect, between the opinions which prevailed, respectively, at the era of the first and that of the second Revolution, is at once striking and instructive. It shows how variable and vacillating is the wretched creed of Infidelity, and how the firm maintenance of truth will eventually compel the homage, even where it may not succeed in carrying the convictions, of speculative minds. That Religion in all its successive forms, from the rudest Fetishism up ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the thus called good one, is vacillating. Best of all, and almost not vacillating, is the New York Evening Post. I do not speak of principles; but the papers vacillate, speaking of the measures and ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... that the Mormons were sincere in their intention to depart, and the county meetings of the year before were reassembled to warn the Mormons that the citizens stood ready to enforce their order. The vacillating course of Governor Ford did not help the situation. He issued an order disbanding Major Warren's force on May 1, and on the following day instructed him to muster it into service again. Warren was very outspoken in his determination to protect the departing Mormons, and in a proclamation which ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... hopes on the propitious star of Prussia," exclaimed Schill, enthusiastically, "on the future, on the wrath and grief which will awake now in all Prussian hearts, arousing the sluggards, strengthening the vacillating, and urging the timid. I base my hopes on the tears of Queen Louisa, which will move Heaven to help us and awaken avengers on earth. And, for ourselves, comrade, with our wounds, with our disgrace, we must be like the spirits ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... eminently dexterous in being always strong upon the strongest, and safe upon the safest side. There was a tolerably numerous party ready, in times so dangerous, to attach themselves to Barrere, as a leader who professed to guide them to safety if not to honour; and it was the existence of this vacillating and uncertain body, whose ultimate motions could never be calculated upon, which rendered it impossible to presage with assurance the event of any debate in the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... floor, the crack of a bony joint, breathing, another crack, and then—was it my own excited imagination—or the disturbing influence of the atmosphere—or the uncertain twilight of the chamber that produced before me, in the stygian darkness of the recess, the vacillating and indistinct outline of something luminous, and horrid? I would gladly have risked futurity to have looked elsewhere—I could not. My eyes were fixed—I was compelled to gaze ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... then proceeded; but as it would prove, probably, rather tiresome to the generality of our readers, we shall not give it at length. It was quite evident, however, that the plaintiff and defendant both were well acquainted with the vacillating and timid character of the magistrate, who in the case before us was uniformly swayed by the words of the last speaker; and it was equally evident that each speaker so shaped his arguments as that they might the more effectually ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... answer from Aranjuez, where the vacillating, terrified, and disunited court now was. One day followed another, and the streets of that town swarmed with angry men whose pride and scorn found expression in calls for Godoy's death. On the evening of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Prussian armies to the frontier; a majority of the clergy had identified themselves with the reaction, were breaking down the revolution among the people, and were producing a reversionary tendency to absolutism. The king was vacillating and timid, but the queen had all the spirit and courage of her mother, Maria Theresa. It is very evident from Madame Roland's memoirs and letters, that these two women felt that they were in actual collision. It is a strange contrast; the sceptered wife, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... question whether Europe was to be ruled for a century by Christianity or Infidelity. The irresolution of Robespierre lost to us the victory of the first passage of arms, equally as decisive as Lafayette in 1830, and Lamartine in 1848, being Liberals, lost in each case the social Republic by their vacillating policy. The true Freethinkers of that age were the Girondists. With their heroic death, the last barrier to despotism disappeared; the Consulate became the only logical path for gilded chains and empire. With the ostracism of the Republicans by ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... decision the cause he secretly advocated. He reminded him that it was no mean honor to have been among the first fruits of the revival of truth in France. He urged him to put an end to his inordinate hesitation, by the consideration of the number of those who were still vacillating, but who would forthwith imitate his example if he forsook the enemy's camp for the fold of Christ. Letter of Calvin to Salignac, Nov. 19, 1561, Calvini Opera, ix. 163; Calvin's Letters (Bonnet), iv. 239-241. Salignac's reply, from ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... all that, the line he took was strong; he showed how Charnock's embarrassments prevented his offering her comforts she would find needful and saving her from the monotonous toil an impoverished farmer's wife must undertake. In the meantime, but unconsciously, he threw some light on Charnock's vacillating character. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... of faint articulate laughter or spoken words. But towards morning a certain monotonous grating on the sand, that had for many minutes alternately cheated and piqued the ear, asserted itself more strongly, and a moving, vacillating shadow in the gloom became an opaque object ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... to Salt Lake Valley. Thus the weary column toiled along until it reached the spot where it expected to be joined by Colonel Smith's battalion, about fifty miles up Ham's Fork. The very next day snow fell to the depth of more than a foot. Disheartened, vacillating, and perplexed, Colonel Alexander called another council of war, and, acting on its judgment, resolved to retrace his steps. An express reached him that same day, from Colonel Smith, by which he was informed of the approach of Colonel Albert S. Johnston, of the Second Cavalry, who had been detailed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... fact that its own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own. The force of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose it; and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last. On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating will-power residing in a weak and undeveloped physical frame, may be so reinforced by some unsatisfied desire—the Ichcha (wish)—as it is called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother's heart-yearning to remain and support her fatherless children)—as to keep down and ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... abrupt question, Dr. Sommers was taken at once into a kindly intimacy with the Hitchcocks. Not long after this chance meeting there came to the young surgeon an offer of a post at St. Isidore's. In the vacillating period of choice, the successful merchant's counsel had had a good deal of influence with Sommers. And his persistent kindliness since the choice had been made had done much to render the first year in Chicago agreeable. 'We must start ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... her plan was not so easy as the good lady had, at the first blush of the thing, imagined it would be. In the first place, like other heroes and heroines, she experienced the enervating effects of opposition and vacillating purpose ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... by Jeremiah. The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance of Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the Prophets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, the Church looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensation has not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the old gives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies of Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... weakness! I used to pride myself on my strength of mind, but I'm weak. I'm weaker than a woman. I'm a poor reed—vacillating, uncertain, purposeless. I don't know my own mind. I haven't the courage to act according to my convictions. I'm afraid to give pain. They all think I'm brave, but I'm simply ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... hope and courage, and yet in the time of her trial he basely deserted her. No, there is no excuse except that at the King's side there were many men jealous of the success and military glory of Jeanne, to whisper tales in his ear. He was a weak and vacillating creature, at the best, ready to follow the last person who talked to him, and he probably believed some of the stories told him about the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... by an effort of attention to fix the vision for a longer and a longer time, and when they waxed faint and nearly vanished, he had the power of recalling them into light and substance, until at last their vacillating indistinctness became less and less, and they assumed a permanent ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the grass. They think I'm an earless freak, maybe. She told him that dear Peggy was growing into such a strong, splendid woman; that she'd been talking to her, and she thought the child would be able to give up her weak, vacillating lover with hardly a pang, because she realized that he was unworthy of her; that Peg had said she couldn't marry a man she didn't admire—and wasn't that noble of her? Noble, your grandmother—to give up a perfect ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... occasional feeble and vacillating current of warm air from the register, I was forced at times to wear my overcoat as I read, and at night I spread it over my cot. I did not see the sun for a month. The wind was always filled with rain or sleet, and as the lights in Bates' Hall ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and inspiration of woman, man becomes a cold, dry petrifaction, constantly obeying the centripetal force of his being, and adoring self. Without his basal firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger, remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... these bills created intense indignation. All felt that it was a piece of treachery and fraud, those who gave the queen any credit for good intentions looking upon her as weak and vacillating and utterly under the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... have here to the peace and quiet of the city. The leading men of the convention—King, Cutler, Hahn, and others —have been political agitators, and are bad men. I regret to say that the course of Governor Wells has been vacillating, and that during the late trouble he has shown very little ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... submitted to the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... barometer registered fair. At that moment streams of chilly rain-water were coursing down across the dial of the barometer, but it registered fair even then. He said—the American did—that it was the most stationary barometer he had ever seen, and the most reliable—not vacillating and given to moods, like most barometers, but fixed and unchangeable in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... lie difficulties, which Smith, though not blind to their existence, treated in a vacillating and inconsistent fashion. Variations of supply and demand cause fluctuations in the price; but what finally determines the point to which the fluctuating prices must gravitate? We follow the process by which one wave propagates another; but there is still ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... secret—he did not care for unpopularity in the least. His great aim was to fight—at whatever odds— for whatever he felt by dogged conviction. He was often wrong; but never cowardly, never philandering, never vacillating. "I am anti-everything," as he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He was, in a sense, "anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that were right and of good report, he was ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the snow-covered ice. A few people with torches began to travel up and down the ice, a lit circle travelling along with them over the snow. A gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the promontory, among perturbed and vacillating clouds. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evidently a man of great moral intrepidity and firmness. He kept his black, unquailing eye fixed upon the judge while he spoke, but betrayed not a single symptom of a timid or vacillating spirit. When the sentence was pronounced, he looked with an expression of something like contempt upon those who had broken out, as usual, into those murmurs of compassion and satisfaction, which are sometimes uttered under circumstances ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... a gentleman addressed at the same time one lady who was rich and plain, and one who was poor and very beautiful; and they, by chance becoming acquainted, exhibited to each other their correspondence with the vacillating lover, and one of them invited him to a meeting, in which after joining in reproaches, they dexterously each deprived him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... This impels him, constituted as he is, to strive that he shall stand well with all. This almost necessitates that he shall be kindly, genial, loving; enjoying the joy and well-being of all around him, and therefore lovable. But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his paltering with it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it. The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... brought cannon to bear upon the place. Yakoob Khan, in his palace close by, heard the roar of the battle, but made no movement. Some of his councillors urged upon him to call out the loyal regiments at Bala Hissar, and to suppress and punish the mutiny. But the Ameer remained vacillating and sullen until the terrible night was over, and the last of the defenders, after performing prodigies of valour, and killing many more times than their own number of the enemy, succumbed to the attack, the British officers rushing out and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the problem that most distressed Lane. She had her good qualities, and through them could be reached. But she was thoughtless, vacillating, and wilful. She had made him promises only to break them. Lane had caught her in falsehoods. And upon being called to account she had told him that if he didn't like it he could "lump" it. Of late she had grown ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... when he became Triumvir,—when he made a bargain that he never meant to keep with Octavius and Lepidus for a division of the Empire between them,—would not spare such an enemy as Cicero. The broken-hearted patriot fled mechanically, with a vacillating mind, when his proscription became known to him,—now more ready to die than live, since all hope in his country's liberties was utterly crushed. Perhaps he might have escaped to some remote corner of the Empire. But he did not wish for life, any more than did Socrates when summoned ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the most perfect fruit of his talents. Nor can we here speak of Cicero as a man. He has his admirers and detractors. He had great faults and weaknesses as well as virtues. He was egotistical, vain, and vacillating. But he was industrious, amiable, witty, and public spirited. In his official position he was incorruptible. He was no soldier, but he had a greater than a warrior's excellence. In spite of his faults, his name is one of the brightest of the ancients. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... blasphemous, ribald fool!" The words leaped from the lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating mass of people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with Ralph, and a little murmur ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... translated Darwin into Danish, no doubt came by his "advanced views" at first hand. In the case of Schandorph it is more difficult to judge. He is an excellent linguist, and may have had access to the same sources from which Brandes drew his strength. Drachmann is so vacillating in his tendencies that he refuses to be permanently classified in any school of art or thought. Of the three, Schandorph seems altogether the maturest mind and furnishes the most finished and satisfactory work. In his novel "Without a Centre" (Uden Midtpunkt) the reader feels himself ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... worth the candle after all?" she thought. "Ah me! what a miserable, vacillating creature I am. Whatever comes—the worst or the best—there is nothing for it now but to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one as insecure, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... House, Mr. Caryll had left a scene of strife between Lady Ostermore and her son on one side and Lord Ostermore on the other. Weak and vacillating as he was in most things, it seemed that the earl could be strong in his dislike of his son, and firm in his determination not to condone the infamy of his behavior toward ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... have been most amusing, if the salvation of the country had not been at stake. The President himself not only still hoped, but believed, that there would be no war; and notwithstanding all the abuse that had been heaped upon Mr. Buchanan by the Republicans for his feeble and vacillating course, and especially his denial of the right of the government to coerce the recusant States, the policy of the new Administration, up to the attack upon Sumter, was identical with that of his predecessor. In Mr. Seward's official letter to Mr. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Montrose against surrendering to the demands of Parliament, overpowered the advice of his wiser counselors. At the end of twenty days the negotiations ceased, and the commissioners of Parliament returned to London, convinced that there was no hope of obtaining a permanent peace with a man so vacillating ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... it is permissible to shift patriotism from one country to another. Such a change of loyalty is, in times of war, called treason, and naturally evokes the resentment of the deserted side. Even as impartial judges, we are properly suspicious of such action, as denoting a vacillating nature, devoid of the true spirit of loyalty, or as indicative of a selfishness that follows its own personal advantage. And so far as that suspicion is well founded, we must condemn the traitor. But certainly, if a man experiences a sincere change of conviction, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... is not too vacillating of me," he said, "and I may be forgiven, I think I will change my mind and go. I have no business to break up your party, and besides, I shall probably not have another opportunity—I should rather like to go. To ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... always to be in a state of perfect health two things are necessary. Deny the power of disease over yourself. In the unyielding will is health. In the weak, vacillating, fearful mind is disease and death. At the same time always be in perfect magnetic trim with the physical laws of health. A knowledge of the latter and the ascension of a fearless mental attitude will open up hitherto unrecognised channels of physical and mental expression. Physiological researches ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... wonder that the measures of such a congress, when not vacillating, were weak. If the time demanded anything, that demand was the promptest organization of an army, with an immediate basis of foreign credit, to arm, equip and clothe it. Next to this was the urgent ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mine to use—O senseless cataract, Bearing all down in thy precipitancy— And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows And mine is living blood: thou dost His will, The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall Linger with vacillating obedience, Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to— Since the good mother holds me still a child! Good mother is bad mother unto me! A worse were better; yet no worse would I. Heaven yield her for it, but in ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 1817, he had written from Marlow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but sixty-five hundred men available for service in the field, and even this number was subsequently diminished by the vacillating ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... in capable statesmen; it was even more conspicuously wanting in the class of serviceable and intelligent agents of Government of the second rank. Its monarch, Alexander II., humane and well-meaning, was irresolute and vacillating beyond the measure of ordinary men. He was not only devoid of all administrative and organising faculty himself, but so infirm of purpose that Ministers whose policy he had accepted feared to let him pass out of their sight, lest in the course of a single journey or a single interview ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... religion, nor the father who had led his child into distress by holding before her her sinful condition, could offer any genuine comfort. Miss Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children; but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father sadly wrote, 'God ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... been carried too far against the earl to admit of his speedy restoration to favor, whatever might be the secret sentiments of her majesty in his behalf; and her conduct respecting him preserved a vacillating and undecided character which marks the miserable perplexity of her mind, no longer enlightened by the clear and dispassionate ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... conservative reply from a knot of twelve bishops who had met to consecrate a new church for Basil of Ancyra. But its weight was far beyond its numbers. Basil's name stood high for learning, and he more than any man could sway the vacillating Emperor. Eustathius of Sebastia was another man of mark. His ascetic eccentricities, long ago condemned by the council of Gangra, were by this time forgotten or considered harmless. Above all, the synod represented ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... in other respects: any timid and vacillating course with them is sure to get you into trouble. One must strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying; the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but farther off than you think, and if you do not go for it resolutely, you will get bewildered and the mountain ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to come!—a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted—every one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the pretence—oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my mother, the face, the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream leaves ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... himself. Had it been her own happiness that was in question, her own conduct, her own greatness, she would not have dreamed of having an opinion of her own. She would have consulted the Doctor, and simply have done as he directed. But all this was for her child, and in a vague, vacillating way she felt that for her child she ought to be ready with ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... sufficient to justify a trial. But all that arose from my lord's ignorance of the administration of the laws of his country. He was very ignorant,—puzzle-pated, as you may call it,—led by the nose by his wife, weak as water, timid and vacillating. But he did not wish, I think, to be insolent. It was Mrs Proudie who told me to my face ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... she married. It was, of course, a failure. Her vacillating nature was such that she could not be absolutely true to the man to whom she had given her life, and, after several bitter experiences, she had the horror of seeing him kill himself in front of her. There ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... was unbounded. The frontiersman was always ready for a fight, and just now he especially wanted a fight with England. He resented the insults that his country had suffered at the hands of the English authorities and had little patience with the vacillating policy so long pursued by Congress and the Madison Administration. Other grievances came closer home. For two years the West had been disturbed by Indian wars and intrigues for which the English officers and agents in Canada were held largely responsible. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Duck-billed Platypus A sad example sets for us. From him we learn how indecision Of character provokes derision. This vacillating beast, you see, Could not decide which he would be— Fish, flesh or fowl—and chose all three. The scientists were sorely vexed, To classify him so perplexed Their brains that they with rage at bay Called him a horrid name one day, A name that baffles, frights and shocks ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... about a quarter to twelve, noon—see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that by this exile the Parliament would be punished, but would be neither conciliated nor tamed into submission. To make matters worse, Blois was given up, and Pontoise was substituted for it! This latter town being close to Paris, the chastisement became ridiculous, showed the vacillating weakness of the Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to laugh at him. One thing was, however, well done. The resolution taken to banish the Parliament was kept so secret that that assembly had not the slightest ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... policy which in the end was responsible for most of the terrible excesses of the French Revolution, by insisting that troops should be called to restrain the Assembly, and that Necker should be banished. Louis showed the same vacillating spirit now that he had displayed in yielding to the Assembly, and assented. The noble officers had lately shown themselves untrustworthy, and the men in the ranks refused to obey when called to fight against the people. The baser social elements of the whole country had long since swarmed to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... away from sin; for I tell you of a truth, by whatever temptation a man is assailed, if he turns not from it heartily, but stands in it vacillating, he has no wholehearted desire to leave his sins by God's will, and without doubt the evil spirit is close upon him, who may make ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... "at homes" have so little judgment in the matter of departure that experience never serves them in good stead. They are nervous and vacillating when they should be neither; they linger and know not how to get themselves gracefully away, and usually succeed in making an abrupt exit. They know the right moment at which to leave, but fail to put this knowledge into practice. "Almost think it is time to go now," or "I wonder whether I ought ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that responsible Government which all along ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... should he also have sacrificed wife, faith, and crown? If yes, then was he wholly in the wrong; if no, he was partly—for once at least—in the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacillating, obstinate, unable to lead or to be led; superstitious, heedful of omens; unsympathetic and reserved where he did not love; intolerant of opposition to his will. But he was a good husband, a good father, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... walked into a small cell, dimly lighted by a little metallic lamp standing on a low bunk. The cell was cold and there was an odor of dust, dampness and tobacco. The tin lamp threw a bright light on those around it, but the bunks were in the shade and vacillating shadows moved along the walls. In the small room were all the prisoners, except two men who had gone for boiling water and provisions. There was an old acquaintance of Nekhludoff, the yellow-faced and thin Vera Efremovna, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... your vacillating 'yes' has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,"—Tom's face was covered with hair—"Alas, alas! that ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... gave new life to the Collection of Antiquities, and what was more than life, the hope of recovering their past importance; but the events of 1815, the troubles of the foreign occupation, and the vacillating policy of the Government until the fall of M. Decazes, all contributed to defer the fulfilment of the expectations of the personages so vividly described by Blondet. This story, therefore, only begins to shape itself ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance of Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the Prophets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, the Church looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensation has not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the old gives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies of Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the Church, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... putting an end to the import of opium, and so checking the practice of opium-smoking, which was already assuming dangerous proportions; and in this he was backed up by Captain Elliot (afterwards Sir Charles Elliot), now Superintendent of Trade, an official whose vacillating policy towards the Chinese authorities did much to precipitate the disasters about to follow. After a serious riot had been provoked, in which the foreign merchants of Canton narrowly escaped with their lives, and to quell which it was necessary to call out the soldiery, the Emperor ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... the presentation of the doctrine will be faulty and cold and lifeless, or weak and vacillating, or harsh and sharp and severe. With the experience, the preaching of the doctrine will be with great joy and assurance, and will be strong and searching, but at the same time warm ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... annoyed at these delays. Political events in England swayed the destiny of Ireland then as now. The poor vacillating, double-dealing king was delivered to the Puritans, tried, and executed. But before Cromwell came to smash the confederation and everything papal in Ireland, the Irish chief gladdened the hearts of his countrymen by the glorious victory of Benburb, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... opposition to sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, Christianity should have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. Protestantism did so, half-heartedly. Luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is typical of this indecision. At heart he could not justify sexuality; he regarded it, in the same way as did the Fathers of the Church, as an evil with which one had to make terms. His sanction of marriage was nothing ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of civilized troops has ever been asked to ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... was ever vacillating between the two parties. The Duke of Guise was the great idol of the Catholics. Henry of Navarre was the acknowledged leader of the Protestants. The king feared them both. It was very apparent that Henry III. could not live long. At his death his brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, would ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... aristocrat; while the man who had squandered away his patrimony, sought to restore himself from his fallen position in society, by assuming principles of patriotism which in his heart he despised. Moreover, the conduct of their rulers, which had been too frequently vacillating and manifestly corrupt, taught the great body of the people to look upon them with suspicion and distrust. Talk they as loud as they might of honesty of intention, of unimpeachable integrity, and of pure patriotism, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The Rollestons, vacillating between Tadousac, the Falls, a trip in the "Algoma," and a journey to Boston, their large party being an objection to each and all, were finally attracted by an advertisement of a fishing-lodge to be let or sold on ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... end. He never committed himself to a position of the security of which he was not sure; and he carried this spirit of caution to such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... government and of well-regulated society. Passion predominated above reason, and received its impulse solely from casual circumstances. It was, in fact, accidental, whether it should operate amiably or malignantly; and the felicity of one half of the human species depended upon the precarious and ever vacillating humour of the other. Virtue was scarcely seen upon the earth, except at occasional and often distant visitations, or as she shed a fitful and flickering light into the retreats of systematic philosophy. Woman was at the mercy of every wind—to-day honoured—to-morrow despised—now ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Mr. Parton is, to say the least, vacillating, because he fails to exhibit any platform upon which we may combat those who support early prejudices and justify their continuance from the mere fact of their existence. We never expect Mr. Gayarre and Mr. Henry Watterson ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... peremptorily required it of him. It is a plot of all the Swedish wellwishers, all the anti-imperialists of this court, believe me. They wish to place the Electoral Prince at their head, and hope by this means to bring it about that the weak and vacillating Elector shall secede from the Emperor and ally himself with the Swedes. They teased and goaded the Elector, until he even sent his Chamberlain von Schlieben to The Hague in order to fetch the Prince, and the latter has but to-day returned ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... change of position, she sat vacillating pitiably. The knowledge that in a single moment he would have begun to speak spurred her to a fever of alarm, while a terrible nervous incapacity chained her ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... States would or would not permit the United States Government to do. Even a Cabinet officer, of whom better things might have been expected, and by whom better things are now nobly said and done, allowed himself to fall into the error of explaining to the vacillating Governor of Maryland that the intentions of the National Administration were purely defensive. While such language is current at home, it is not strange that foreigners should find themselves in a state of hopeless confusion about us. Few European writers, except De Tocqueville, have ever shown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... do?" As he asked this question, he approached her and put his arm round her waist. This he did in momentary vacillating mercy,—not because of the charm of the thing to himself, but through his own inability not to give ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... title, and agreeable person of the Marquis, she almost disdains herself for hesitating to prefer him to Clermont. Her life is the tragedy of a soul too indolent to swim against the current of events. Mrs. Haywood managed to give extraordinary vividness and consistency to the character of the vacillating Henrietta by making the plot depend almost entirely upon the indecision of the heroine. Consequently none of the author's women are as sharply defined as this weak, pleasure-loving French girl. The character drawing, though too much subordinated ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... who had fought heroically with their mouths inveighing with bitter invective against the weak and vacillating policy of the President in temporizing with the South were busy packing their goods and chattels to fly ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... afterwards that no incident of those tumultuous hours surprised her more than the way in which Lady Hermione received her unbidden and unwelcome visitors. The instant before their arrival she was an irresponsible and doubting and vacillating girl, torn by emotion, and swayed hither and thither by gusts of perplexity which ranged from half-formed hope to blank despair, but now she came from her bedroom without a second's hesitancy, and faced her father and the lawyer with a proud serenity ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... with a hissing noise, as well in the flame of oxidation as in that of reduction. There is formed a clear bead which, with a certain degree of saturation, is clear when cold, but appears milk-white when overcharged, and of an opal, enamel appearance, when heated intermittingly, or with a vacillating flame, that changes frequently from the oxidating to the reducing flame. Baryta and its compounds produce the same ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... Veranderlichkeit der Naturwesen".), went the length of admitting (in 1762) that new species might arise by intercrossing. Buffon's position among the pioneers of the evolution-doctrine is weakened by his habit of vacillating between his own conclusions and the orthodoxy of the Sorbonne, but there is no doubt that he had a firm grasp of the general idea of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... the noble Mexican Gulf has separated from us. Let us exert every power we possess to bring them all back to the fold. Why should we not? Every motive of interest or patriotism should induce us to do so. Suppose the States were vacillating and in doubt where to go. Suppose they were set up for sale in market overt, and the States of Europe were to bid for them—for this, not only the richest portion of our own country, but of the world—because this ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... preparing for another invasion. Soulouque, who had attained the presidency of the black republic, made a sudden incursion and marched victoriously as far as Azua. The Dominican government observed a vacillating policy which provoked general distrust and protests from the friends of Santana, whose partisans in the Congress called on him to take command of the army. Jimenez at first demurred but finally consented, and Santana, emerging from retirement, collected a few hundred ragged troops at ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... up and eyed me for a moment as steadily as his vacillating glance would permit him, then he held ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the Dissenters, he issued a declaration in favour of liberty of conscience, the seal to which he afterwards broke with his own hands,[273] but he could not prevent a considerable degree of religious liberty arising from such vacillating conduct. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as that is just what the Lord said to Eve, she must have had the capacity to understand it. But all speculations as to what Eve thought in that eventful hour are vain. Clarke asserts that Cain and Abel were twins. Eve must have been too much occupied with her vacillating joys and sorrows to have indulged in any connected train of thought. Her grief in the fratricidal tragedy that followed can be more easily understood. The dreary environments of the mother, and the hopeless prophesies ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and in the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta, and leaving the handful of republicans to defend themselves as best they might against the vast majority of the nation that supported the cause of the king. Against such odds, the enthusiasm of the liberals, ill assisted by a feeble and vacillating government, was unable successfully to contend. Nevertheless, they still struggled on; fresh troops were raised, and in a sort of sacred battalion, composed of officers, young Pepe, who had just completed his sixteenth year, was appointed serjeant-major. In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... a profound silence, which struck us as very singular; but then we did not know that a new ruler was on his way to Australia, and that the home government had got most heartily tired of the vacillating policy of Mr. Latrobe, and that the several gentlemen who surrounded him were aware of it, and were all ready to pay court to the rising star, as soon as he ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... written to you before in: but my Letter must wait till I return to Woodbridge, where your Address is on record. I have thought several times of writing to you since this Year began; but I have been in a muddle—leaving my old Markethill Lodgings, and vacillating between my own rather lonely Chateau, and this Place, where some Nieces are. I had wished to tell you what I know of our dear Donne: who Mowbray says gets on still. I suppose he will never be so strong again. Laurence wrote me that ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... architects, but furnishers of bricks, nails and laths. But it is our hope that what we thus rake up and pile into a rough heap may yet serve the purposes of an organizer, and so help toward the establishment of the dim and vacillating truth, and rid the scene of, at all events, the worst and most obvious of its present accumulation ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... sensitiveness and sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd, vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness. She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity, so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of religion than ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the editor of the 'Morning Breakfast Table' would be powerful for all things, brought new doubts to her mind. But she could not convince herself, and when at last she went to her bed her mind was still vacillating. The next morning she met Hetta at breakfast, and with assumed nonchalance asked a question about the man who was perhaps about to be her husband. 'Do ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head. My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation, and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no doubt, and the pen once more couched. You must not expect a letter under these circumstances, but be very thankful for a note. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Napoleonic Period.*—By reason of the vacillating policies of her sovereign, Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstaedt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... miseries I thought of that were common in my country. There were those we love. Some who are woven into our lives and affections by the kinship of blood; who grow up weak and vacillating, and are won away, sometimes through vice, to estrangement. Our hearts ache not the less painfully that they have ceased to be worthy of a throb; or that they have been weak enough to become estranged, to benefit some ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... lay to the charge of Mohammed Ahmed all the blood that was spilled. To my mind it seems that he may divide the responsibility with the unjust rulers who oppressed the land, with the incapable commanders who muddled away the lives of their men, with the vacillating Ministers who aggravated the misfortunes. But, whatever is set to the Mahdi's account, it should not be forgotten that he put life and soul into the hearts of his countrymen, and freed his native land of foreigners. The poor miserable ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate on matters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in its grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring cleaning" could never ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... mutable, variable, inconstant, unstable, unsteadfast, reversible, alterable, revocable, mobile, convertible, transmutable, commutable, kaleidoscopic, transformable, impermanent; volatile, fickle, mercurial, protean, irresolute, capricious, vacillating, fitful, inconstant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... is an invalid, and is very nervous. If he were in perfect health he would have more force of character and firmness. He is under the impression that he has heart disease, and it makes him timid and vacillating." ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... mind was a turbid chaos of reflections upon the past and the future, in which selfishness, disappointed vengeance, terror, hypocritical policy, and every feeling that could fill the imagination of a man possessed of a vacillating, cowardly, and cruel heart, with the exception only of any thing that could border upon penitence or remorse. That Miss Folliard was not indifferent to him is true; but the feeling which he experienced towards her contained only two elements—sensuality ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
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