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More "Wavering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to escape knowing more about the universal panacea. And when he turned for the last time the sea and tower and man were blotted out by wavering ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... restless under useless expenditure. It was the man's fault and not misfortune that he had failed so signally in securing trade from the South, and, while they had paid him but a small salary, his ill-directed and wavering efforts had involved them in considerable expense. Asking the physician to remain, they summoned Mr. Jocelyn to the private office, and directly charged him with the excessive and habitual ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the scene (Cicero, Ad Att. XV, II) at which Brutus and Cassius together with their wives, Porcia and Tertia, and Servilia, the mother of Brutus, discussed momentous decisions with Cicero. When Brutus stood wavering, Cicero avoiding the issue, and Cassius as usual losing his temper, it was Servilia who offered the only feasible solution, and it was her program which they adopted. Is it surprising that Greek historians like Plutarch could never quite comprehend the part in ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... lines constantly; fresh troops took the places of the fallen; we might slay and slay, but the number of our enemies never seemed to lessen. And in the midst of the terrible uproar a cry arose that our centre was wavering. For an hour or more a battle of giants had been taking place there. In front of our infantry the dead lay piled in a heap, but for every royalist who ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... silent. After a while he took the arm of the laborer, turned him so that the light of the moon struck his face squarely, and examined him with care. It was evident that he was wavering in spirit whether to inquire further and bring everything out with clearness, or for that time to stop with what he had ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... retreated; the British guns were pushed forward, opening a destructive fire, first from one distance, then from another, upon the wavering enemy. The Dost's army was soon broken to pieces, and the British cavalry were then let slip in pursuit. Following the disorded masses of the enemy for some miles along the defile, they cut down large numbers, and dispersed them in all directions. The defeat of the Dost's ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the glimmer of the candle I could see that the man had changed; his big pale face was grim with some determined purpose, and there was about him the courage and the authority of one who, after long wavering, at last hazards a desperate venture. He broke the glass box and put ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... has gathered his armful, he turns and flings it down behind him, so that it lies spread out, covering when fallen the same space it filled while standing. And so he crosses the broad acres, and so each of the big black followers, stepping one by one to a place behind him, until the long, wavering, whitish green swaths of the prostrate hemp lie shimmering across the fields. Strongest now is the smell of it, impregnating the clothing of the men, spreading far ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... not yet decided on her line of action when Brooklyn is reached. She is still wavering, even when Letitia, drawing, her into the parlor, closes the door, and, having kissed ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Sherwen's voice, and bidden to come directly up. No time, on this occasion, for Miss Polly to escape. She decided in one breath to ignore the man entirely; in the next to bow coldly and walk out; in the next to—He was there before the latest wavering decision could ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were also issued, declaring the whole of Griqualand West, except Kimberley and Mafeking and the districts four miles around each of these places, to be Free State territory. In the face of these energetic movements action on the part of the British was necessary to restore the confidence of the wavering people, and consequently the following telegram was despatched by the General Commanding in Chief to ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... moment, one of the drawing-room doors opened and old Morestal appeared on his wife's arm. Dressed in a pair of trousers and a waistcoat, bare-headed, tangle-haired, with a handkerchief fastened round his neck, he staggered on his wavering legs. Nevertheless, a sort of gladness, like an inward ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... be a lesson to the afflicted, afford hope to the despairing, fortitude to the wavering, and humanise the hearts of kings. Joyfully do I journey to the shores of death. My conscience is void of reproach, posterity shall bless my memory, and only the unfeeling, the wicked, the confessor of princes and the pious impostor, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... gleam o'er the mountains Goes wavering from sight, And the quiet moon enhances The loveliness ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... of a great system had been withdrawn from him. He still felt himself neither man nor priest—wavering in ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to his shoulder and its sharp crack woke the echoes in the little wood. "It's a deer and I have got it," he exclaimed, dashing off after the animal which was staggering and wavering as it ran. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... some time ago, by a solemn paragraph, in Mr. Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other than Mr. John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... witnessed. We could see the smoke and dust of battle, and hear the shout of the charge, and the roar and rattle of cannon and musketry. But Breckinridge's division continued to press forward, without wavering or hesitating. We can see the line of dead and wounded along the track over which he passed, and finally we see our battle flag planted upon the Federal breastworks. I cannot describe the scene. If you, reader, are an ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... circumstances and the object of his quest were forgotten. Visions, momentary but very vivid, crowded upon him, and among them, one of a girl whom he had kissed in the face of death. That girl—Yes, there was something. His mind asserted itself again, his purpose dominated his wavering faculties, and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... flag-ship Benton leading. The heights above the city were crowded by the citizens of Memphis, awaiting with eager hope the result of the fight. The ram attack was unexpected, and, by its suddenness and evident determination, produced some wavering in the Confederate line, which had expected to do only with the sluggish and unwieldy gunboats. Into the confusion the Queen dashed, striking the Lovell fairly and sinking her in deep water, where she went down out of sight. The Queen herself was immediately rammed ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... almost seem to have been written with a supernatural knowledge of what was passing in Gylingden, and was certainly well contrived to prevent the vicar from wavering. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lip The smile late wavering, on she moves; And seems through deepening tides to step Of steadier joys ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals of holiness, introducing a gleam of sanity even in that insanest of institutions—the herding together ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... told whether her "Meredith Barrett" at the bottom of the page was as firmly penned as ever. To him it was now wavering from one misty letter to the next. Slowly he made a business of folding the sheet into a neat square of paper which he could fit into the safe pocket under his belt. A crack was forming in the shell he had started to grow on the night he first rode out of Red Springs, and he now feared losing ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... vantage brought a cross fire to bear on Clark's detachment. As their direct attack developed itself it encountered from the conical hill a heavy rifle fire, and shells at short range tore through the loose rush of ghazees, but the fanatics sped on and up without wavering. As they gathered behind a mound for the final onslaught, Captain Spens of the 72d with a handful of his Highlanders went out on the forlorn hope of dislodging them. A rush was made on him; he was overpowered and slaughtered after a desperate resistance, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... government, every where, and against every person, without limitation or restriction.—Count Mansfeld, now "factotum at Brussels," had taken the oath with great fervor. So had Aerachot, Berlaymont, Meghem, and, after a little wavering, Egmont. Orange spurned the proposition. He had taken oaths enough which he had never broken, nor intended now to break: He was ready still to do every thing conducive to the real interest of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thus, in the same year: "Quite a number of Mohammedans have renounced Islam, and become true Christians; many more are soberly inquiring after the truth; and many others are turning, unsatisfied, from a religion which cannot save, or wavering in a merely nominal devotion to Islamism. That which is most striking is the clear evidence, often, of the work of God's Spirit in individual cases, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... one or other of them, not both together. His imagination will therefore waver; and, with the imagination of future evenings, he will associate first one, then the other—that is, he will imagine them in the future, neither of them as certain, but both as contingent. This wavering of the imagination will be the same, if the imagination be concerned with things which we thus contemplate, standing in relation to time past or time present: consequently, we may imagine things as contingent, whether they be referred ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... arm and practised skill, went clean home in the packed ranks of the foe, but they caused no more than a second's wavering, as the dead went down and their fellows crowded on straight over them. A second volley from the grimly silent fighters on the plateau had somewhat more effect. Driven low, and at shorter range, every jagged ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... women are wanton, free to every conqueror, and her men unstable." "I am not from thence, but from Damascus," cried the youth." "Then," said Hyjauje, "thou art from a most rebellious place, filled with wretched inhabitants, a wavering race, neither Jews nor Christians." "But I am not from thence," replied the youth, "but from Khorassan." "That is a most impure country," said Hyjauje, "whose religion is worthless, for the inhabitants are of all barbarians the most savage. Plunderers of flocks, they know not mercy, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... it at home, wailed pitifully or spitefully till it was coaxed or scolded still; now and then some one coughed. The air was thick; a bat scandalized the assemblage by flying in at the open door, and wavering round the tallow candles on the pulpit; one of the men beat it down with his hat, and then picked it up and crowded his way down the aisle, out into the night with it. When he came back it was as if he had found the stranger whom they were all consciously expecting, and had brought him in ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Brooks had several barns, the gables and roofs of which looked like a little settlement in the starlight, not far off; but this particular barn stood alone, and was probably known to the country people from former occasions; for they streamed towards it and filed in without any wavering or question. So Eleanor followed, trembling and wondering at herself; passed the curtain that hung at the door, and went ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... blessed it there, From all the fiends of upper air; Then round him cast the shadowy shroud, And tied his steed behind the cloud; And pressed his hand as she bade him fly Far to the verge of the northern sky, For by its wane and wavering light There was a star would ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... from her—it seemed as though he were drawing her soul out from her body—and then, just as sheer consciousness itself was wavering, he took his mouth from hers, and she could see his face, white ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... willing to be bereft of even the Heaven-sent consolation for the sake of the beloved, in whom may she find not only the earthly mate-fellow, but the kindred soul. For, all-pitying Mother of Mercy! should she, too, be doomed to stake all upon a wavering, unstable, headlong Richard, what will ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... rustling the branches of the trees, and causing a loose rose-branch to tap carelessly against the window panes. It sounded like the knock of someone anxious to come in. The candles flickered and guttered in the draught; the wavering light cast strange shadows over the dead man's face. You might have thought that his features moved from time to time; that now he frowned at the intruders, and now he smiled at them—a terrible, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... moments Lord Ferriby was silent. Cornish watched him across the table. He knew that his uncle was no fool, although his wisdom amounted to little more than the wisdom of the worldly. Would Lord Ferriby recognize the situation in time? There was a wavering look in the great man's eye that made his nephew suddenly anxious. Then Lord Ferriby rose slowly, to make the shortest speech that he had ever made ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Over the million intricate threads of life wavering and crossing, In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, perplexing, ensnaring, Rises ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... feeble monarch had for some time been supported by the counsels of his queen, Annabella, a daughter of the noble house of Drummond, gifted with a depth of sagacity and firmness of mind which exercised some restraint over the levities of a son who respected her, and sustained on many occasions the wavering resolution of her royal husband. But after her death the imbecile sovereign resembled nothing so much as a vessel drifted from her anchors, and tossed about amidst contending currents. Abstractedly considered, Robert might be said to doat upon his son, to entertain ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... discover ugly and active defects in you than that beautiful impassiveness. Besides, as I have told you many a time, the excellence that seems to me ideal has its weaknesses. It is rather a way of perfection for our poor humanity, a way that is all the better because it is adapted for our feeble and wavering steps!... ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a deeper knowledge of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... must use his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to be at the Echo offices that day with copy for the next issue of his paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter's private room opened and the great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on his return from the elevator his eye fell ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... impress of its environment as easily as wax takes the impress of a seal. In two passages where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied women altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced to be incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion is a main constituent of woman's being; women are not responsible for the sins they commit nor ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Hence action should under no circumstance be deferred. When all the votes of the provinces unanimously recommending the enthronement shall have reached Peking, the Government will, of course, ostensibly assume a wavering and compromising attitude, so as to give due regard to international relations. The people, on the other hand, should show their firm determination to proceed with the matter at all costs, so as to let the foreign powers know that our people are of one mind. If ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and slightly wavering voice appealed to all that was tender and loving in his cold undemonstrative nature, and he was strongly tempted to take her in his arms, and tell her the truth, which every day he found it more difficult ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... flight, and, high up on the hillside in an opening among the trees, saw the trunk of a fallen pine. Continuing the moose's flight in his mind he saw that it must pass the trunk. He resolved on one more shot, and in the empty air above the trunk he aimed and steadied his wavering rifle. The animal sprang into his field of vision, with lifted fore-legs as it took the leap. He pulled the trigger. With the explosion the moose seemed to somersault in the air. It crashed down to earth in the snow beyond and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... In spite of her habit of reserve and repression she had a passionate heart, and this fact had been forced upon her by vain and continuous struggles. Had he the penetration to learn the truth? She could not tell, and this uncertainty touched her pride to the very quick. After hours of wavering purpose, impulses to ignore him and his request, moments of tenderness in which will, pride, and every consideration were almost overwhelmed, she at last arrived at a fixed resolution. "I will see him," she murmured. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... glow of the lantern. He stood with hands gripping, and the muscles of his bare arms writhed beneath the skin with the force with which they clenched. He was strung to an emotion such as the Padre had never before seen in him, and it left the older man wavering. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... this parade was the gleam of the sun upon the long line of bayonets,—the sheen of all that steel appearing like a wavering fringe of light upon the dark masses of troops below. It was very fine. But I was glad when all was done, and I could go back to the mess-room, whither I carried an excellent appetite for luncheon. After this we ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... note in memory—and when I got up I was driven to the table absolutely, as if, after ripe consideration, I had made the irrevocable resolution to write that name on the fateful paper. All thought of risk, of consequence, had disappeared—there was no wavering—it was almost as if I were fulfilling a precious duty—and I wrote. [Springs to his feet.] What can such a thing be? Is it inspiration, hypnotic suggestion, as it is called? But from whom? I slept alone in my room. Could it have been my uncivilized ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... gentleness of Beulah, or the beauty, spirit, and generous impulses of Maud. In a word, the captain, when he went forth to review his men, who were now all assembled under arms within the palisades for that purpose, went to meet a wavering, rather than a positively disaffected ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... at a time when you were wavering between detestable principles and the impulses of a generous heart I saw that you were inclining towards justice and honesty. And I love you now, because I see that you are triumphing over these vile principles, and that your evil inspirations are followed by tears of honest regret. This ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... was thoroughly in earnest, Curly said no more, but stood there with his eyes fixed straight forward. The only time Glen spoke was whenever she detected his look wavering in the slightest degree. Then she called him sharply to attention, and warned him to be mindful of what he ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... until the other had passed on, then turned aside, and went with faster steps and less wavering, till she came in view of Utrovand, away down by the little stream that turns old Sveggum's ribesten. Up above the dam she waded across the limpid stream, for deep-laid and sure is the instinct of a wild animal to put running ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... usually interferes when violence goes to that length; but in its unwillingness completely to repress disorder, on the one hand, or to leave it wholly unopposed, on the other, a local government pursues a wavering policy, now repressing anarchy and again leaving it to gather headway. It seldom affords full protection to the non-union men who work during a strike. Moreover, it is the habit of state governments not to interfere with local affairs until the public peace is endangered, and therefore ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... listened, Fielding had not inaptly described them—now spoke, and spoke vigorously; enthusiasm, too, rode on his voice, deepening its tones—not enthusiasm of the febrile kind which sends the speech wavering up and down the scale, but enthusiasm with sobriety as its dominant note concentrated into a level flow of sound. His description had all the freshness of an immediate occurrence. Compared with the ordinary style of reminiscence ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... few seconds, wavering. He did not shed a tear. He took one glance more at the blanket with the little form beneath it, and then turned suddenly to the ladder and climbed down again. A silence fell once more in the room as he entered. He went straight to the door, passed ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... him. The officers of his staff fell all round him. His coat was pierced by several bullets. All was in vain. His infantry was driven back with frightful slaughter. Terror began to spread fast from man to man. At that moment, the fiery cavalry of Laudohn, still fresh, rushed on the wavering ranks. Then followed an universal rout. Frederic himself was on the point of falling into the hands of the conquerors, and was with difficulty saved by a gallant officer, who, at the head of a handful of Hussars, made good a diversion of a few ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ocean, or rising in an exhalation till they reached a sun-beam, they thus re-visited the haunts of men. These were the guardian angels, who in soft whispers restrain the vicious, and animate the wavering wretch who stands suspended between virtue ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... interrupted by outcries which seemed drawing near to the camp. In spite of the terrifying words of the old shepherd, his sang froid in the greatest perils and his resolution full of consoling fatalism, sustained the more wavering ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... meadow, and the stepping stones, to the wood. He had noticed a log lying in the path as he descended the hillside. With the toe of his boot he kicked a patch of bark from the log, and thereby lay bare the wavering trail of a busy grub. Following the trail he quickly found the fat, juicy insect, which immediately took the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... anxiety for his poor converts kept him awake in the few hours when he might have snatched some sleep. He was here, there, everywhere at once, it seemed, writing letters to encourage the Christians in distress, visiting those who were wavering to strengthen their faith, teaching his students, praying, preaching, night and day, he never ceased; and always the mob surged about him threatening ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... salient littered with their killed and wounded. That torrent of shells, which should have killed every one of the slender garrison of Frenchmen, had failed in its effect; while the hope of gaining Verdun, the capture of which was to influence the whole world, and particularly wavering neutrals, was as far away as ever. That desperate attack made during the darkness broke down as others had done, and the Germans—those who were left of them—fled to the cover of the evergreen pine-trees, leaving the poilus ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... and fastened under the chin with a gold button, and an embroidered alms-purse, completed the costume. The other ladies of the party were attired as carefully, and the dress of the men was as rich and brilliant as that of the women. They passed through the wavering light and shadow of the woodlands like a covey ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... fly and be followed to the last moment; though I am upon the very verge of matrimony, I expect you should solicit me as much as if I were wavering at the grate of a monastery, with one foot over the threshold. I'll be solicited to the ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... I was among the tiers of shipping. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw their countless masts looming up as far as eye could see in the dim light, and their lamps flickering and wavering upon the water. I rowed about a score of strokes, and then stopped. Why go further? This place would serve as well as any other. No one was likely to hear my splash as I went overboard, and even if heard it would not be interpreted. I was still near enough to the Middlesex bank to be ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of imagery in his soul was stirred by something in the romantic unreality of his surroundings—the rude, yet interesting room which served all family purposes save that of slumber; the mellow radiance from a crude lamp and the ever-changing light of the open fire; the long, wavering shadows within the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... The fighting was severe and deadly, for we were now within easy musket range. At one time I trembled for Burnside's lines, and I saw one of his aides gallop furiously to the rear for help. It came almost immediately in the form of a fine body of regulars under Major Sykes; and our wavering lines were rendered firm and more aggressive than ever. At the same time it was evident that our forces were going into action off to the right of the Sudley Road, and that another battery had opened on the enemy. I afterward learned that they were Rickett's guns. Under this increasing and relentless ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... on. The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket—an open fire, she saw at length. Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze. Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic. This endured but a few seconds. All that she knew or ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the two and a half gees seemed to bother him very little. I could barely stand under it, holding on. Thomas saw my wavering step and jumped to help me. He boosted me into the chamber of the converter and pointed out an opening near the top, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... by the Mongol Tartars (1258), the barrier of fanatic hatred was weakened, and Central Asia became an attraction to Christendom instead of a dim horror, without form and void, except for Huns and Turks and demons. The Papal court sent mission after mission to convert the Tartars, who were wavering, as men supposed, between Islam and the Church, and with the first missionaries to the House of Ghenghiz went the first Italian merchants who opened the court of the Great Khan ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... outline of the Louvre seemed to frown sarcastically on her weakness, the silent river to mock her and her wavering purpose. The man beside her had wronged her and hers far more deeply than the Bourbons had wronged their people. The people of France were taking their revenge, and God had at the close of this last happy day of her ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the vast arch was momentarily wavering, trembling, and changing colour, and the brilliant streamers which fringed its edge swept back and forth in great curves, like the fiery sword of the angel at the gate of Eden. In a moment the great auroral rainbow, with all its wavering streamers, began to move ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Heroes, he said, always deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothing could be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could do things, he intimated—each man, like one little wave on the world, wavering up to the shore ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... breeze contended with the mist, intrenched in the stronghold of the valley. From the east the red orb began its attack; out of the west rode the swift-moving zephyrs, and, vanquished, the wavering vapor stole off into thin air, or hung in isolated wreaths above the foliage on the hillside. Soon the conquering light brightly illumined a medieval castle commanding the surrounding country; the victorious breeze whispered loudly at its gloomy casements. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... drawers and shutting them, pausing for a moment to listen, then coming out, closing the door, listening again, then stepping downstairs, pausing for a moment in the hall to lay something on the table, then stepping out into the green wavering evening light? Or did the flames make pictures for him of the deserted railway-station, the long platform, lit only by one lamp, two figures meeting, exchanging almost no word, pacing for a little in silence the dreary spaces, stepping back as the London express rolled in—such a safe ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... still considering how to overcome the wavering and perturbation of the psychic nature, which make it quite unfit to transmit the inward consciousness and stillness. We are once more told to use the will, and to train it by steady and persistent work: by "sitting close" to our work, in the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... and beeches still wore their liveries of rustling amber, the short grass on hill-side pastures was intensely green, flocks of thistle-birds disguised in demure russet passed in wavering flight from thicket to thicket, and over all a hot sun blazed in a sky of sapphire, linking summer and autumn together in the magnificence of a ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... understand you better than you do yourself, for I have been with many and many dreamers at the same cross-ways. You have shut away the world and gathered the gods about you, and if you do not throw yourself at their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering purpose, for a man must forget he is miserable in the bustle and noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek a mystical union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he murmured something I could ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... Except for the wavering smoke from the stovepipe, the place might have been deserted. The house was one with the pervading hush of the valley. Hollister grew numb. But he held his post. And at last the door opened and the woman stood ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... effect of a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; his troopers now turned the noses of their pistols downwards; one troop came off entire to Ingoldsby; the rest broke up and fled. But Lambert himself was Ingoldsby's mark. Dashing up to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... perpetual night. This was the Fountain of Oblivion. Upon its brink the Student paused, and gazed into the dark waters with a steadfast look. They were limpid waters dark with shadows only. And as he gazed, he beheld, far down in their silent depths, dim and ill-defined outlines, wavering to and fro, like the folds of a white garment in the twilight. Then more distinct and permanent shapes arose,—shapes familiar to his mind, yet forgotten and remembered again, as the fragments of a dream; till at length, far, far below him he beheld the great City of the Past, with ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led A hundred maids in train across the Park. Some cowled, and some bare-headed, on they came, Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them went The enamoured air sighing, and on their curls From the high tree the blossom wavering fell, And over them the tremulous isles of light Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche At distance followed: so they came: anon Through open field into the lists they wound Timorously; and as the leader of the herd That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, And followed ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... shell—on, on, in spite of the fact that he was wounded, and the loss of blood made him weak, while the crippled wing retarded the swiftness of his flight. Still he carried on—his stout heart never wavering, until, in the distance, his keen eyes detected the tall shape of the new Campanile. Then, on and on, in spite of the great ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... pray for her grandfather's soul, but she could not. Her one cry was for Otto, that he be saved and brought back. In the study she had found the burntwood frame, and she held it hugged close to her with its broken-backed "F," its tottering "W," and wavering "O", with its fat Cupids in sashes, and the places where an ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was there one so inevitably his own frustration. This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days, and wondered how far he was conscious or unconscious of the thing. At times it appeared to her that he was in a state of unrest—that he was as a man wavering between lines of action, swayed at one moment by one thought, at another by an idea quite different, and that he was harried because he could not ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... he spoke. In times of terror Oft a brave word at the right time Can work wonders; many cowards From example drink in courage; And one single iron will leads Oft along the wavering masses. Thus the council looked up strengthened To the Baron's gray moustaches. "Yes, this is just our opinion, We'll defend our city bravely, And the Baron shall command us; For he knows well how to do it. Death to all these cursed peasants!" Through the streets th' alarm is sounded ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... fascinated,—that high, wide white forehead, that weak chin, those soft, tremulous lips, on which a faint smile would so often play, and those great, wide eyes of blue that now looked purple in the lamp-light. And then, gradually, I saw, as I watched, an expression I had never seen there before; the wavering suggestion of the smile left the lips and they fell apart, loose and bloodless, with a glimpse of the missing front tooth. It was an expression that lasted but the fraction of a second, but it stamped her whole countenance with ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... have gone down to meet him with her head up. Suppose she found him broken, aged, with a dumb need for her crying out in his eyes, what would she do? What could she trust herself not to do? But just in human mercy to him she mustn't let him see she was wavering. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... sleeping in their arms, threw their hands in agony, for the small limbs started at that hiss. And as when above a pile of smouldering wood countless eddies of smoke roll up mingled with soot, and one ever springs up quickly after another, rising aloft from beneath in wavering wreaths; so at that time did that monster roll his countless coils covered with hard dry scales. And as he writhed, the maiden came before his eyes, with sweet voice calling to her aid sleep, highest of gods, to charm the monster; and she cried to the queen of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... whimsical pranks with these outpost hills. They became, in turn, cones, pyramids, boxes, benches, chimney stacks, hourglasses. Sometimes they soared high in air, like the kites of a baby god; and, beneath, the unbroken desert stretched afar, wavering, misty, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... I understood and felt at the time. Perhaps that is not quite possible, in the light of subsequently acquired knowledge and experience. This much I can say: there was no hint at this time of any wavering or diminution in the almost worshipful regard I ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... that ends our friendship," he said, with a wavering smile. "Lost my head altogether. Couldn't help it. I looked at you and—and it just happened. All my will and sense vanished in an ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... willing to believe in promises which she was convinced were made with entire sincerity; and when her affections had been wrought to this point, when her resolution was once determined, she never afterwards tormented the man to whom she was attached, with wavering doubts ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... resting on the back of the chair. "Why do you hold me off with such stubbornness? Why continue to be so unnatural a child, so incomprehensible a woman?" Even now he did not forget to measure his sentences, but with the depth of his earnestness his voice was wavering, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... snow has settled our minds, which have been long wavering about future plans, and we leave this for Menaggio, Hotel Vittoria, on Thursday next, 6th. [He did not ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... stage, the audience, the amazing gleam and scintillation of the Opera, faded. He heard only the voice and saw only the purple shadows in the temple at Rangoon, the oriental sunset splashing the golden dome, the wavering lights of the dripping candles, the dead flowers, the kneeling devotees, the yellow-robed priests, the tatters of gold-leaf, fresh and old, upon the rows of placid grinning Buddhas. The vision was of short duration. The sigh, which had been so long repressed, escaped; ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... to the rightful owner for his property, rents, and profits. In due season courts will be established to execute the laws, the confiscation act included, when we will be relieved of this duty and trust. Until that time, every opportunity should be given to the wavering and disloyal to return to their allegiance to the Constitution of their birth or adoption. I ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... doubt, I shall desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as [176] Cyprian adviseth Donat, "supposing himself to be transported to the top of some high mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of this wavering world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it." S. Hierom out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness, conceived with himself, that he then saw them dancing in Rome; and if thou shalt either conceive, or climb to see, thou ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... unprofitable morning amidst the greasy ooze of his claim. Yet the glitter of the mica-studded quartz on the hillside, the bright-green and red-brown shading of the milky-white stone still dazzled his mental sight. There was no wavering in his belief. These toilsome days were merely the necessary probation for the culminating achievement. He assured himself that gold lay hidden there. And it was only waiting for the lucky strike of his pick. He would find it. It was just a matter ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... iron ribs are knit, Whose thunders strive to quell The bellowing throats, the blazing lips, That pealed the Armada's knell! The mist was cleared,—a wreath of stars Rose o'er the crimsoned swell, And, wavering from its haughty peak, The ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... each other a hand, and on that account do not produce resolution as a result. The forerunner of resolution is an act of the mind making evident the necessity of venturing, and thus influencing the will. This quite peculiar direction of the mind, which conquers every other fear in man by the fear of wavering or doubting, is what makes up resolution in strong minds; therefore, in our opinion, men who have little intelligence can never be resolute. They may act without hesitation under perplexing circumstances, but ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... if we will, love Dora in the Spartan simplicity of her soldierly adornments, and none the less love and cherish the woman who now lies upon the very spot, where, but a year ago, lay little Sunshine, wavering between this life and a better. For some reason unknown to herself, Mrs. Legrange had, from the first, felt a strong affection for this chamber, haunted, though she knew it not, by the presence of the beloved child; and she had taken much pleasure in its ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... at your nature and fashions; breeding, nourishing and fortifying such instruments as are most factious against you; repulses and scorns of your friends and dependents that are true and steadfast; winning and inveigling away from you such as are flexible and wavering; thrusting you into odious employments and offices to supplant your reputation; abusing you and feeding you with dalliances and demonstrations to divert you from descending into the serious consideration of your own ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of faith. James makes this clear to us. "Let him ask in faith nothing wavering." God cannot bestow a blessing upon us if we doubt Him. If a neighbor doubts your character, how much of your heart do you let him see? If a fellow-preacher imputes selfish motives to your acts, how often do you go to him and pour your heart out to him? ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... face, and his black eyes held a strange light. He stared vacantly at the landscape until he suddenly noted the slender wavering pillar of smoke beyond ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... had been wavering before as to what he should do, which had often seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a relation might settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy as dignity unblemished could make him. In that case he would return no more. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... other like scentless roses, that are ever blooming. Save me from the excitement which brings exhaustion, and from the passion that procreates remorse. Give me the luminous mind, where recognised and paramount duty dispels the harassing, ascertains the doubtful, confirms the wavering, sweetens the bitter. Give me ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... missed a victory, and that in the actual posture of affairs nothing but a great victory could have saved the king. For the day which witnessed the triumphant return of Essex witnessed the solemn taking of the Covenant. Pym had resolved at last to fling the Scotch sword into the wavering balance; and in the darkest hour of the Parliament's cause Sir Harry Vane had been despatched to Edinburgh to arrange the terms on which the aid of Scotland would be given. First amongst these terms stood the demand of a ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... at the paper, a minute, as though quite unable to decipher a word. Through a kind of wavering mist that seemed to swim before her eyes, she vaguely saw the words: "Socialist White Slaver!" but that these bore any relation to the man she remembered, back there at the sugar-house, had not yet occurred ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... away—somewhere—for just now, till we can think up something to do. Father will find some way of making everything all right, won't you, Paw? He always does, you know. Don't be scared, my boy. We must keep very calm." Her hands were wavering over him in a palsy. "Where can he go, Paw? Where's the best place for him to go? I'll tell you, Steve. Is ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was silent. She could not speak. She was so deadly pale, and her face had such an expression of misery, that the boys felt their resolution wavering. ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... divines are models of careful penmanship, and may be examined with interest by a student of chirography. The letters are cramped and crabbed, like the lives of many of the writers, but the penmanship is methodical, clear, and distinct, without wavering lines ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently to the door. Lydia ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Braganza in Charles the Second's day, so the son felt pity and gave what support he could to poor bullied and bewildered Queen Anne. To him her queenship was truly the lesser thing, her helpless, somewhat heavy-witted and easily wavering womanhood the greater; and there were those who feared him, for such reasons as few men in his position ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... can see; darkly, as through the foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, who has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by the living ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Raoul, wavering like a drunken man between what he had seen with his own eyes, and the imperturbable faith he had in a man who had never told a falsehood, bowed, and simply answered, "Go, then, Monsieur le Comte; I will await your return." And he sat down, burying his face in his hands. Athos dressed, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Scotland was thus wavering it seemed almost madness for the little army to advance into England. The greater portion of the Highlanders had from the first objected strongly to leave their country, and upwards of a thousand had deserted and gone home on the march down from Edinburgh. They had started less than six thousand ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... with uninterrupted success. Dick caught a big fellow too, and so did Pennington. Fortune, after wavering in her choice, decided to favor all three about equally, and they were content. The silvery heaps grew and they rejoiced over the splendid addition they would make to their mess. The colonels would enjoy this fine fresh food, and they were certainly ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... burnt by their order. Among these was Bartholomew Hector, a bookseller and stationer of Turin, who was brought up a Roman catholic, but having read some treatises written by the reformed clergy, he was fully convinced of the errors of the church of Rome; yet his mind was, for some time, wavering, and he hardly knew ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... from the novelty and importance of the event he was about to celebrate, or from some presentiment, occasioned, as he would fain believe, by the mournful and sudden change in the atmosphere, an embarrassment, a wavering, a fear, very unwonted to the calm and stately self-possession of Eugene Aram, made itself painfully felt throughout his frame. He sank down in his chair and strove to re-collect himself; it was an effort in which he had just succeeded, when a loud knocking was heard at the outer door; it swung ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... send thee forth with joy that gladdens my bosom, Nor will I suffer thee show boon signs of favouring Fortune, But fro' my soul I'll first express an issue of sorrow, Soiling my hoary hairs with dust and ashes commingled; Then will I hang stained sails fast-made to the wavering yard-arms, 225 So shall our mourning thought and burning torture of spirit Show by the dark sombre-dye of Iberian canvas spread. But, an grant me the grace Who dwells in Sacred Itone, (And our issue to guard and ward the ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... thee for help, that I may make more of my life. Steady me, that I may know its value without wavering, and the loss it sustains from wasted days. I pray that I may live more in thy commandments, and with my work accept the joy of thy ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... on the bank and he concluded to stop. Pulling in shore, he was bewildered to find only the mud bank. This discovery startled him into a realization that something was wrong with his brain. The mind was wavering between the hallucinations of a fever, and lucidity. Vagaries occasioned by a high temperature, would suddenly vanish as the struggling mind briefly asserted itself. As he resumed paddling, some swaying willows ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... he did not know he was going when he said good-night. He remained with Captain Palliser talking for some time." Miss Alicia's eyes held wavering and anxious question as she looked from one to the other. She wondered how much more than herself her visitors knew. "He found a telegram when he went to his room. It contained most disquieting news about ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... miseries of the former anarchy was now passing away, and to some of the feudal lords order doubtless seemed the greater ill. The new king too had lavished promises and threats to win the English nobles to his side. "There were few barons in England who were not wavering in their allegiance to the king, and ready to desert him at any time." The more reckless eagerly joined the rebellion; the more prudent took refuge in France, that they might watch how events would go; there was a timid and ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... words he turned, the harshness dropping from his face like a discarded mask; the lines of determination wavering. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of wind and spitting rain, was walking over the lawn the centre of a large group, with Marsham beside her. Her white serge dress and the blue shawl she had thrown over her fair head made a brilliant spot in the dark wavering line. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our nation are being decided,—on the spots whither all eyes are turned, and towards which all our hopes and prayers go forth. It is work surrounded by every element of pathos and tragic interest. The wavering fortunes of the fight, the heroic courage which sustains a doubtful conflict, the masterly skill that turns disaster into triumph, the awful carnage, the terrible suffering, the manly patience of the wounded, all combine to fix the attention there and upon everything, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... upon the shabby red sofa and looked about her. What a horrible room! Its darkness was tainted with a creeping coldness that seemed to steal in wavering gusts from wall to wall. The carpet was faded to a nondescript colour and was gashed into torn strips near the fireplace. No pictures were on the walls from which the wall-paper was peeling. He had done nothing whatever to make ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... almost awe. The head stood out in the darkness with startling distinctness. It had the effect of being bathed in moonlight, although much more brilliant than even the light of the full moon. It seemed to him, indeed, almost as if a faint wavering light played around it, giving the stern face of the old Roman a sardonic ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of red and brass broke through the gaps in the rail fence, and the sunlight rippled along a wavering line of British bayonets. They crept nearer, nearer, until Jabez could see the grim ferocity, the bared teeth, the staring eyes ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... fixed the wavering mind of the countess of Essex. Voluptuous and self-willed in her disposition, she would hear of no one but Carr. But her opportunities of seeing him were both short and rare. In this emergency she applied to Mrs. Turner, a woman ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Darkness, I turned my spy-glass upon the Giants' Pit, which lay to the South of the Giants' Kilns. And these same Kilns were tended by the giants, and the light of the Kilns was red and fitful, and threw wavering shadows and lights across the mouth of the pit; so that I saw giants crawling up out of the pit; but not properly seen, by reason of the dance of the shadows. And so, because ever there was so much to behold, I looked away, presently, to that which ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... words came in a low tone of voice as the boat glided nearer and nearer to where the shark was swimming slowly and wavering to and fro, and in my excitement I drew back, raising the lance high, and just as the monster was about to dash off in a fresh direction I threw myself forward, driving the point of the lance right into the soft flesh, forgetful of my instructions about ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... characteristic of the New Learning was the intellectual pressure it strove to bring to bear on the wavering Pope. Cranmer was still active in the cause of Anne Boleyn; he had just published a book in favor of the divorce; and he now urged on the ministry an appeal to the learned opinion of Christendom by calling for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... your luck, Trib. I'll tote your trunk up garret for you again; for of course you won't go," Tom remarked, with the disdainful pity which small boys affect when they get into their teens. I was wavering in my secret soul, but that settled the matter, and I crushed him on the spot ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... tongue, take what is called a 'practical' view of a question, adopt what is called an 'independent tone,' reanimate confidence in ministers, check mutiny, and set a bright and bold example to the wavering. A man of his property, and high character, and sound views, so practical and so independent, this was evidently the block from which a Baronet should be cut, and in due ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Wavering Tlascala decided for Cortes and he was received with generous, royal and munificent hospitality, which accorded him everything he asked. Messengers were despatched to Hispaniola for reinforcements and every preparation made for the renewal of the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... life and happy love, the Monsignor might have had enhanced honor from the church into whose coffers he could have turned great revenues. But instead each responds in turn to Pippa's songs; Sebald gains a true view of sin, Jules gets a new conception of service and attainment, Luigi's wavering purpose of self-sacrifice for his country's good is strengthened, the Monsignor is held back from connivance at a crime. In all these cases the external loss is as nothing compared to the gain ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... occult student will find it difficult to fully grasp how to set about such an exercise. This is because man is used to permitting his inner life to be governed by outward impressions, and thus falls immediately into uncertainty and wavering when now he must unfold in addition a soul life which has freed itself from all ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... the same time that treaties have been provisionally concluded and other proper means used to attach the wavering and to confirm in their friendship the well-disposed tribes of Indians, effectual measures have been adopted to make those of a hostile description sensible that a pacification was desired upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... took his place. The others drew back along the walls of the room. Kilduff took the lamp from the table and held it high above his head. Even then the light was dim and uncertain and the draughts set the flame wavering so that the place was shaken with shadows. The moon sent a feeble shaft of ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... A wavering glare came from under the arch, and, through the open gate, I saw the bulky shape of the bishop's coach waiting outside in the moonlight. A strip of cloth fell from step to step down the middle of the broad white stairs. The ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and our yellow headlights, wavering in concentric arcs with each turn of the course, almost seem to glint on the helmets and shields of the spear-bearing legionaries that marched that very way to force a southern culture on the Gauls. We slow down to pass through the rock-hewn gate that once was the Roman aqueduct bringing water ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... but ill, my sovereign. I should have calmly yielded to the Prince Who is most wonderfully versed in war. The Swedes' left wing was wavering; on their right Came reinforcements; had he been content To bide your order, they'd have made a stand With new intrenchments in the gullies there, And never had you gained ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... then sufficed, it is evident that they are far from sufficing to-day: we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the movement which, a long time wavering and suppressed, has just manifested its irresistible power in the United States. We have recognized in it the hand of the Gospel; and this is no indifferent matter, for if the Gospel had no part in it, such a movement would ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... crowd was making a wavering dance about the two men. "Look out, ducky!" the young fellow shouted to John. The warning came too late—John went reeling ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the heavens above the earth," Isa. lv. 8. This is the rule of a believing soul's conceiving of God, and expecting from him; and when a soul is thus placed on God, by trusting and believing in him, it is fixed; "His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord," Psal. cxii. 7. O how wavering and inconstant is a soul, till it fix at this anchor, upon the ground of his immutable promises! It is tossed up and down with every wind, it is double-minded; now one way, then another, now in one ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... on the hall table and slipped softly up-stairs. As she sat down at her desk she looked at the clock and hesitated. It was not so late as she had thought, only quarter of nine. There was still time to go back to the Belden. But after a moment's wavering Betty began getting out of her dress and into a kimono. Since the day of the basket-ball game she had honestly tried not to let the little things interfere with the big, nor the mere "interruptions" that were fun and very little more loom too large in her ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... groping in the abysmal slime, A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... offer the least trace; the second was stifled in him by the continual mistrust of men and things, which was awakened by the remembrance of an unhappy past; the last was denied him by his uncertain character, wavering always between good and evil, between to do and not to do, between daring and not daring. In his youth, a thought, not of virtue, but of Italian ambition—the ambition however which may be profitable to nations—had passed through ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Olimpia shiver, the prison silences made her afraid. The wavering moan of the page-boy, who had been tumbled on to a straw bed after his first bout of the question, drove home the reality of her situation, and made her sick. Olimpia was one of your snug pretty women; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... utmost dexterity to kill or dislodge the bold savage. The power of powder in the hands of skillful men soon began to assert its superiority in the battle, and when once the Indians commenced to waver, it was all over with them. Their first wavering soon broke into a complete rout, when they ran for their lives. As they scattered in every direction, the pursuit which followed was short. In this battle the trappers considered that they had thoroughly settled all outstanding accounts with the Blackfeet ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... give it his best energies and thought. The whole current of his life is setting in that direction. Of course he must ever be under the restraints of good sense and refinement. A man's life without a hobby is a weak and wavering line of battle indefinitely long. One's life with a hobby is ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... as though all of the fruits of the world had been crushed together into a syrup; then a mist surged all about me, the cabin became darker, the captain seemed to grow vast, till his body filled the room. My legs melted from me. I was one little wavering flame blowing about on great waves. Something was hard upon my head. The captain's hand (I could feel) was lifting my eyelid. I heard him say "That's got him." Instantly a choir of voices began to chant "That's got him," ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... to be seen that she was wavering. Billy, watching the little scene, with mingled emotions, saw the glance with which the girl swept the bare little room; and she knew that there was not a patch or darn or poverty spot in sight, or out of sight, which ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... we yet be possessed by the spirit of God, led by His will in ours. For all things in a man, even those that seem to him the commonest and least uplifted, are the creation of Thy heart, and by the lowly doors of our wavering judgment, dull imagination, luke-warm love, and palsied will, Thou canst enter and glorify all. Give us patience because our hope is in Thee, not in ourselves. Work Thy will in us, and our prayers are ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... on the back of the chair. "Why do you hold me off with such stubbornness? Why continue to be so unnatural a child, so incomprehensible a woman?" Even now he did not forget to measure his sentences, but with the depth of his earnestness his voice was wavering, "You know——" ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Do not bind the counsels of the Lord our God: for God is not as man, that he may be threatened; neither is he as the son of man, that he should be wavering. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... all things beside. It was means and resources both; for both are at the command of him who knows how to command them. But though the will stand firm, it may stand very bare of cheering or helping thoughts; and so did Winthrop's that live-long night. There was no wavering, but there was some sadness ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... European tribes had done, and forming themselves into separate and independent states. A ruler with progressive ideas, one who had any perception of the internal prosperity which alone can render an empire stable, would have made the attempt to weld his loose and wavering domination together by encouraging and working for the prosperity of its component peoples, so that he might, though late in the day, give birth to a Turkey that was strong, because its citizens were prosperous and content. Not so did Abdul Hamid; the Turkey that ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... rounds from the Mountain battery, and the fact that their rear was threatened and their retreat about to be cut off, soon produced signs of wavering amongst the Afghans. Their Artillery fire slackened, their Infantry broke, and about 2 p.m. Drew and Hugh Gough found it possible to make a move towards the Peiwar Kotal. Gough was the first to reach the crest, closely followed by Lieutenant Brabazon, his orderly officer, and a fine plucky ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of the battle. They were bound together in a great book, and each day had a fresh page. The German Army was black. The French was red. Page after page I lived that battle, the black line advancing, the blue of the British wavering against overwhelming numbers and ferocity, the red line of the French coming up. "The Man of Ypres," they call General Foch, and well ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... McNamara. "He's in town yet. Just let me land him in jail on some excuse! I'll hold him till snow flies." Struve sank into a chair and lit a cigarette with wavering hand. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... third baseman saw that the second Kingston runner had also been wavering uncertainly between second and third, ready to reach third if Sleepy threw for home, and to return to second if he threw to third. The third baseman started toward the runner, making many pretenses of throwing the ball, and keeping the ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... had had any wine that evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languid summer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve. But the head nurse understood well that such a wavering of will or muscle must not occur again, or the hairbreadth chance the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... muttering with their mouths, and striking upon the ground with their hands. Then they bade him with the two guns go out of the ring again; which he did, a little way. Then they called him in again, but he made a stand. So they called him with greater earnestness; but he stood reeling and wavering as if he knew not whither he should stand or fall, or which way to go. Then they called him with exceeding great vehemency, all of them, one and another. After a little while he turned in, staggering as he went, with his arms stretched out, ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... prospect for a chase to be lost; and, halting for a few moments, the hunters were brought up and saddled, and Kit Carson, Maxwell, and I, started together. They were now somewhat less than half a mile distant, and we rode easily along until within about three hundred yards, when a sudden agitation, a wavering in the band, and a galloping to and fro of some which were scattered along the skirts, gave us the intimation that we were discovered. We started together at a hand gallop, riding steadily abreast of each other; and here the ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... part made their author either vulgar or flat, sometimes both. Probably no better rule can be laid down for the translator of the present day, than that he should try to follow the ordinary language of good society, wavering and uncertain as that standard is. I do not mean so much the language of the better sort of light literature as the language of conversation and of familiar letter-writing. Even some of the idiomatic blemishes of conversation may perhaps, in such ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... thrown up in the sky and distorted into the most fantastic shapes. They climb, trembling, upwards, spreading out into long lines at different levels, then contract and fall down, leaving nothing but an uncertain, wavering smudge which comes and goes. Presently the smudge swells and grows, taking shape until it presents the perfect inverted reflection of a berg on the horizon, the shadow hovering over the substance. More smudges appear at different points on the horizon. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Angel of the Earth! That glidest through the storm-tost world, And bearest Blessings of peace and rest unto the weak, Giddy and faint within its vortex whirled; O! fairest, Sweetest Pilot of the wavering soul Through the wide-yawning gulfs and shoals of crime, Whence issue siren-spells that seek To sink the wayward in their noxious slime; Emblem of Purity! That like the star of Bethlehem dost lume The wise of heart through ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... I made a prayer to God and there appeared one, having two garments in his hands, who answered, 'A good praise, with a wavering mind.' ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... on Clark's detachment. As their direct attack developed itself it encountered from the conical hill a heavy rifle fire, and shells at short range tore through the loose rush of ghazees, but the fanatics sped on and up without wavering. As they gathered behind a mound for the final onslaught, Captain Spens of the 72d with a handful of his Highlanders went out on the forlorn hope of dislodging them. A rush was made on him; he was overpowered and slaughtered ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... fear of wavering in his resolution he went round the room once more, rubbing up the cheap furniture till it shone, and ending with polishing up the very hearth that had served as the sacrificial altar to his beloved Newgate Calendar only a few days before. There was little or ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... You have failed to believe. Ask, then, for what you will! Ask, and at once return thanks for what you have asked! In the asking and believing is the thing itself made manifest. Declare that it is yours! Expect it! Believe it! Hold to it without wavering—no matter how empty your hands may seem! It is yours, and God's infinite creation shall lapse into nothingness; His stars shall fall from high Heaven like withered leaves sooner than that you shall fail to obtain ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... express and the stage coach which made history and romance for a generation. Feverishly, boisterously, a strong, rugged, womanless population crowded westward and formed the wavering, now advancing, now receding line of the great ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... see the social order completely subverted and mob rule substituted, and it usually interferes when violence goes to that length; but in its unwillingness completely to repress disorder, on the one hand, or to leave it wholly unopposed, on the other, a local government pursues a wavering policy, now repressing anarchy and again leaving it to gather headway. It seldom affords full protection to the non-union men who work during a strike. Moreover, it is the habit of state governments not to interfere ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... buttons on her soft white gloves and pulled the fingers off, slipping her hands out and letting the glove hands hang limp at her wrists. Then with a quick glance backward at a flicker of light that appeared wavering beyond the glass door, she gathered her draperies again and fled down the long stone walk. Silently, lightly as a ghost she passed, and crouched at the gate as she heard footsteps, her heart beating so loudly it seemed like a bell calling attention ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... joyfully before, the Moose galloping at top speed, the stars sliding overhead. On past the Browns' noisy corral, past Falkner's brightly lighted cabin, and up the lifting trail to the Pass. The broken black line of the Pass, usually so clean-cut against the stars, looked wavering and uncertain. Douglas dropped forward and put his arms about ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... person that Mr. Stanhope was a gainer of the 250,000l. which lay in the hands of that firm to his credit. He was, however, acquitted by a majority of three only. The greatest exertions were made to screen him. Lord Stanhope, the son of the Earl of Chesterfield, went round to the wavering members, using all the eloquence he was possessed of to induce them either to vote for the acquittal, or to absent themselves from the House. Many weak-headed country gentlemen were led astray by his persuasions, and the result was as already stated. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... unexpectedly appearing before her, of our protector with his air of authority, of the policeman, who, contrary to instructions, introduced himself at the open door, Mrs Ragg rose with a wavering cry that was like a whine, from her seat. She sucked in her cheeks till they met, and with her claw-like hands grabbed her shabby frock where it ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... good sailor is never quite free from painful memories of moments on the voyage, over which he might have had to draw a veil, so this lady had to be constantly on her guard against recurrent images of her historical precedent, during her periods of wavering between her two suitors. Could she not remember—could she ever forget rather?—Romeo's passionate epistles and Juliet's passionate answers, during that period of enforced separation; when the latter had not begun to cool down, and was still able ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... garnished, was still awaiting the touch of winter's hand. The air was crisp yet passive, and abundant sunshine flooded alike the heights and hollows of the rolling uplands that spread through various shades of subdued umber and meditative blue toward the confines of a wavering, indeterminate horizon. The Giles homestead stood high on a bluff; and above the last of the islands that cluttered the river beneath it the spires of the village appeared, a mile ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... in the car began to realize that something else was occurring. Somehow, they could feel the accommodation car wavering as if on the brink of a precipice. Then it began to settle slowly and the mystified performers and car hands thought it was going to rest where it ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... individuals in the House of Commons, there are several who have long been wavering, and who have sent the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... along behind a waggon, white-faced men with uneasy smiles on top of the waggons. A little farther back those who are trying to catch up: these are tragic figures, breaking into breathless little runs, but with a fine wavering attempt at striding out, as though they might be connecting files, when they march through a town or past ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... and my hands adore [thee] when thou settest as a living being. [Footnote: i.e., "because when thou settest thou dost not die."] Behold, thou art the everlasting creator, and thou art adored [as such when] thou settest in the heavens. I have given my heart to thee without wavering, O thou who art mightier than ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... ancient art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl to-day there is a moment when, by a secret atavism, she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... duke's domain. In particular the viscounty of Bearn, now held by the Count of Foix, repudiated all allegiance to its English overlord. Even a thoroughly Gascon seigneur, such as the lord of Albret, was wavering in his fidelity to his duke. It was no longer safe for Gascons to risk the hostility of the king ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... woman was running a band of sheep very close to the border of Tim Sullivan's lease. All afternoon Mackenzie had heard the plaint of lambs; they had lifted their wavering chorus all during Joan's lesson, giving her great concern that Carlson designed attempting a trespass on ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... unaware of the contents or full significance of the document, which certainly is not the very brief writing to which she set her mark. Her voices recalled her to her duty, for them she went to the stake, and if there was a moment of wavering on the day of her doom, her belief in the objective reality of the phenomena remained firm, and she recovered her faith in the agony of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... will march in your midst!—As a waving banner, though weaponless, leads on a gallant army of warriors, so shall my spirit hover, like a flame, over your ranks, while love and courage shall unite the dispersed and wavering multitude into ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... to the port, Beneath the watch-tower's wall, We heard the clash of the atabals, And the trumpet's wavering call. ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to Mecca with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy city; and that his Englishman had lied to him. His first impulse was to have Dicky seized and cast to the crowd, to be torn to pieces. Dicky's eyes met his without wavering—a desperate yet resolute look—and Ismail knew that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half a chance. He also saw in Dicky's eyes the old honesty, the fearless straightforwardness—and an appeal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he had lighted the candle which stood on the table by his bed, was the barely furnished room which, even in this poor and wavering light, had so ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... in every science. In the hands of the theologian, logic, or the art of reasoning, was nothing more than an unintelligible jargon, calculated to support sophism, to countenance falsehood, to attempt to prove the most palpable contradictions. Morality, as we have seen, became wavering and uncertain, because it was founded on ideal systems, never in harmony with themselves, which, on the contrary, were continually contradicting their own most positive assertions. Politics, as we have elsewhere said, were cruelly perverted by the fallacious ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... the rocks to the pool's edge he bent down and caught her by the shoulder. At that moment he could have strangled her with his hands, so abhorrent to him was the touch of her flesh; but as he cried out on her, heaping her with cruel names, he saw that her eyes returned his look without wavering; and suddenly it came to him that she was dead. Then through all his anger and fear a great pang smote him; for here was his work undone, and one he had loved in Christ laid low in her sin, in spite ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... dearest joys, and nearest friends, The partners of our blood, How they divide our wavering minds, And leave but half ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... with his lifted spear. The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice, Turns, here and there, into a Jason's fleece; Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp'd their gowns of green, And vanish'd into earth, And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth, Stand full-array'd, amidst the wavering shower, And perfect for the Summer, less the flower; In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark, Thou canst not miss, If close thou spy, to mark The ghostly chrysalis, That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark; And the flush'd Robin, in the evenings hoar, Does of Love's Day, as ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... then his only child, his elder treasures having been laid, one after another, in distant graves. Her mother was a tranquil, quiet woman, and still retained the traces of a beauty which must once have been remarkable. She was a person of placid temper and mediocre mind, but wavering in judgment, and not in the least calculated to control the impetuosity, or guide the enthusiasm of her ardent and reckless child. This Mr. Germaine seemed acutely to feel; and I could read his fears in the fixed gaze of prophetic anxiety which he would often rivet on the varying countenance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... women have fantastic constitutions, Inconstant in their wishes, always wavering, And never fixed. Was it not boldly done, Ev'n at first sight, to trust the thing I loved (A tempting treasure, too,) with youth so fierce And vigorous as thine? but ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... he entered, and he could not draw them away till hers, wavering before him, showed him he was daring. He turned and shook hands with the General, and muttered some commonplace, then back again he came to that pleasant face so like and yet so unlike the face he had known when ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... time passed, and still the squatter vouchsafed no answer. He was evidently wavering, as to the nature of the response he ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and there was Flora's name scored with wavering strokes, but the ink had run as if it had been mingled ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... policy, sent back to Panama a large quantity of the gold, no less than twenty thousand castellanos in value, in the belief that the sight of so much treasure, thus speedily acquired, would settle the doubt of the wavering, and decide them on joining his banner.19 He judged right. As one of the Conquerors piously expresses it, "It pleased the Lord that we should fall in with the town of Coaque, that the riches of the land might find credit with the people, and that ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... successfully resisted the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah gave vent to his despairing sentiments, and held out no hope. When Elijah had appealed to the people to choose between Jehovah and Baal, he was successful, because they were then undecided and wavering in their belief, and it required only an evidence of superior power to bring them back to their allegiance. But when Jeremiah appeared, idolatry was the popular religion. It had become so firmly established by a succession of wicked ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... new construction, we must clearly conceive what is aimed at. Where we have a very distinct and intelligible model before us, we are in a fair way to succeed; in proportion as the ideal is dim and wavering, we stagger or miscarry." Maudsley says: "We cannot do an act voluntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and we cannot know exactly what we are going to do until we have taught ourselves to do it." Carpenter says: "The continued concentration of attention upon a certain idea ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... not exactly, but you know how those things go, and he always stays after we come up when she is at home." To which her husband vouchsafed no reply, but began a protracted wavering as to the advisability of leaving the steam on or turning it off for the night, which was a cold one—a dilemma which, involving his personal welfare or comfort at the moment, permitted no consideration of other ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... Towards the end of his life he sometimes wondered, very sadly and pitifully, whether he had not asked too much of his followers. I think, to mention only one particular, that he was wavering as to his ban upon tobacco. He was so certain of the happiness and joy which come from Salvation, that he had no patience with the trivial weaknesses of human flesh, which do not really matter. Let us remember that he had seen thousands of men and women ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... themselves, for months coming; nor will ever know what perspicacity, patience of scanning, sharpness of discernment, dexterity of management, were required at Friedrich's hands;—and under what imminency of peril, too; victorious deliverance, or ruin and annihilation, wavering fearfully in the balance for him, more than once, or rather all along. But it is certain the deeper one goes into that hideous Medea's Caldron of stupidities, once so flamy, now fallen extinct, the more is one sensible of Friedrich's difficulties; and of the talent for all kinds of Captaincy,—by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and the racket they kicked up in trying to fly from us was terrific; but it was too late. The moment we saw that they had discovered us, our guns poured forth their contents, and two out of the flock fell with a lumbering smash upon the ground, while a third went off wounded, and, after wavering in its flight for a little, sank slowly to ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... that night and they smashed out to the fishing-grounds ahead of a cracking breeze, and had their trawls down in the early dawn. At sundown, trailed by a wavering banner of screaming gulls who gobbled the "orts" tossed over by the busy crew cleaning their catch, they were docking ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the hall with heavy steps, then becomes composed and speaks in a more unconcerned manner). Will you take off your things, Hella? (rises, wavering). I don't know, I ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... accompany us up the mountain and help to carry the loads from the point where the mules would have to stop; but they declined absolutely and positively. I think one of the men might have gone, but as soon as his quiet, well-behaved wife saw him wavering she broke out in a torrent of violent denunciation, telling him the mountain would "eat him up" and that unless he wanted to go to heaven before his time he had better let well enough alone and stay where he was. Cieza de ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... a wavering, evanishing thing. Deep in the night, from behind a stiffened wave of earth, rose and dashed a mounted band of Bedouin robbers. Yusuf the Red and other watchers had and gave some warning. Zeyn al-Din's voice was presently ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... to possess very much; that I might make him the owner of it all. And instead, I was going to give him as poor a wife as ever he could have picked up in the farm-houses of the North. Yes, I cared. I found I cared much. And though there was not, of course, any wavering of my judgment as to what was right, I found that to do the right would cost me something; more than I could have thought possible; and to tell Mr. Thorold of it all, was the same as doing it. I walked down a good many bitter ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... it is since I began asking the Lord for means for the building and fitting up of an Orphan House. Day by day have I, by his grace, since that time, continued to bring this matter before him. Without one moment's doubt, or misgiving, or wavering, have I been enabled to trust in God for the means. From the beginning, after I had once ascertained the will of God concerning this work, have I been assured that he would bring it about; yea, as sure have I been from the beginning ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... upon the scene I look, The azure grave of many a Roman; Where stern Ambition once forsook His wavering crown to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... enemy, their attention being turned away from the thought of danger. This onset, which was almost frantic at first, threw the enemy into disorder; then the cavalry charging them whilst thus disordered, made them turn their backs. The dictator himself, when he saw their line wavering in one direction, carries round some troops to the left wing, where he saw a crowd of the enemy collected, and gave to those who were on the mountain the signal which had been agreed on. When a new shout ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... said to the mockers in a wavering voice, "I will now present to you the concluding item of my entertainment. I will cause this lady to disappear under your very eyes, without the aid of any mechanical contrivance or artificial device." This was the merest showman's patter, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... to drink from a stream which crossed their path. Carter, glancing in the direction of its source, saw that a heavy limb had fallen from a dead tree, blocking the passage of what had otherwise been but a wavering string of water. Restrained, however, it had mounted higher and higher, until at last, broadened, strengthened, and deepened, it had swept triumphantly over the dam and kept on its way. He felt that he ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... he did not want the office of President. Perhaps that was an exhibition of political coyness, for he was in the lists just the same! He had 33 votes on the first ballot, of which only 14 came from the South. President Pierce, who was running again, met a wavering fortune. On the sixteenth ballot he had not a vote. Douglas had 121 votes; a certain Mr. Buchanan had 168. On the seventeenth ballot this Mr. Buchanan was nominated. Who was this ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Finding the higher Orders wavering and undecided, the leaders of the Revolution advanced still further in their requirements, and at last demanded that all classes alike, the Priests and the Women not excepted, should do homage to Colour by submitting to be painted. When it was objected that Priests and Women ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... blood have watered the red-hot chains, and still the fetters are not broken; nay—it is our lot to have borne its burning heat—it is our lot to grasp with iron hand the wheels of its crushing car. Destiny—no; Providence—is holding the balance of decision; the tongue is wavering yet; one slight weight more into the one, or into the other scale, will again decide the fate ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... David up to Hebron with one single purpose in their hearts. They had no sidelong glances to their own self-interest, they had no wavering loyalty, they had no trembling fears, so we may take their spirit as expressing generally the deepest requirements ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... her fellow-sufferers arrived—singing, as they walked, a hymn which begins with, "When our hearts are troubled," and ends with, "Then remember us." Ramatoa raised her voice and joined them. There was no wavering or shrinking from the fiery ordeal. When all was ready the martyrs quietly suffered themselves to be bound to the stakes, and, strange to say, when the flames roared around them, the song of praise still went on, and the voices of praise and prayer did not cease until ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... I should gain anything by the attempt to assume a character which is not mine. My wavering manner, born of doubt and scruple, has at least the advantage of rendering all the different shades of my thought, and of being sincere. If it were to become terse, affirmative, resolute, would it not ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... relief giving me impudence, and liking her looks I spoke to her about the things in the windows. At first I got no reply, and she walked on. "Come with me, and I'll give you a sovereign." "You can buy it then." What it was I don't recollect. She seemed uneasy and wavering, yet made no reply. I repeated my offer (it was just then money beyond my means, but I had hot desire on me). She looked up the street in both directions, and asked, "Will it be far?" I took her at ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... fickle and wavering is the mind of man, even in our greatest fury and strongest inclinations. For while I was taking this march, my resolution began to abate, not through fear of their numbers, who were a parcel of naked unarmed wretches, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... ambassador of the wavering and shaking young Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. He comes, he says, upon a secret mission, and pretends to have discovered a sort of conspiracy that ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... hammered the stirrup, with his iron grey head held high in the air, looking away over the hickory ridge across the blue hills, to the dim wavering face of the mountains. He was almost seventeen hands high, with deep shoulders, and flat legs trim at the pastern as a woman's ankle, and a coat dark grey, giving one the idea of good blue steel. He ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... leaping the low brown parapet; and if it would not be like Dick to go over after her; if there would be a chance for them, even should he swim from the banks; how soon the icy current would paralyze him; how sweet it would be to chill to death there in his arms; how all this wavering and pain would be over; how Del would look when they dragged them out down below ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... to have been written with a supernatural knowledge of what was passing in Gylingden, and was certainly well contrived to prevent the vicar from wavering. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... too much of this spirit in the army, and one who can read between the lines will see it in the history of many a campaign. It did not necessarily mean wavering loyalty. It was sometimes the mental indecision or timidity which shrinks from responsibility. It was sometimes also the result of education in an army on the peace establishment, where any spontaneity was snubbed as an impertinence ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the years go round, call up to our minds these dark and bloody times, and give thanks for the great redemption. Were Probus but with you, and to be with you, Piso, your cup were full. And he had been here, but for the voice of one, who just as the third lion had been uncaged, fixed again the wavering mind of Aurelian, who then, madman-like, set on him that forest-full of beasts. At that moment, I found it, Piso, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... division, and at once placed himself at its head and led an onslaught on a Japanese regiment. A wild melee ensued in the darkness, and, although only a few hundred riders remained in their saddles, the attack had cleared the atmosphere and the wavering battalions ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... priest to tell him whether he might justly allow the maiden to give her life for his, instead of showing him how wicked such an action would be and that it would be far better in God's eyes that he should bear his sufferings uncomplainingly, the evil spirit persuaded the wavering youth that the deed was right and necessary and had the ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... rubbing the back of his black-brown hand over his mouth to help him in his smiling. Then he was thinking, and he frowned and rubbed his head hard, to help him in his thinking. Then he smiled again, but now his smiling was not very pleasant. His smile was now wavering on the edge of scorning. His smile changed more and more, and then he had a look as if he were deeply down, all disgusted. Now his face was darker, and he was bitter in his smiling, and he began, without looking from the fire, to talk to ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... and presently she and Miss Raymond strolled out together to see the fun. They were greeted with a shout of joyous welcome from a noisy group in the farthest corner of the lawn, who immediately joined hands and came in a long, wavering ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... tendency towards it; and, as Dr Clarke observes, may soon be driven into it. And as to Mr. Booth, though he was in his heart an extreme well-wisher to religion (for he was an honest man), yet his notions of it were very slight and uncertain. To say truth, he was in the wavering condition so ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... flash. The air grew thick and hot, until I seemed To breathe but flame. I staggered to a loop. Dancing around with flourished tomahawks I saw my horrid foes. But ha! that glimpse! Again! oh can it be my wavering sight! No, no, forms break from out the forest depths, And hurry onward; gleaming arms I see. Joy, joy, 't is coming succor! Swift they come, Swift as the wind. The swarthy warriors gaze Like startled deer. Crash, crash, now peal the shots Amongst them, and with looks of fierce ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... failure, as we needed here the men who were sent on it. We save or lose Ticonderoga by fighting at Ticonderoga itself and by nothing else. I thank you, Colonel de St. Luc, for your gallant and timely words, I have been wavering and they have decided me. We stay here and await the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hopper. Some bars which were verry wild, but few Birds. a number of ground Lizards; Some fiew Pigions plainly See a rainge of mountains which bore S. E. & N. W. the nearest point south about 60 miles, and becoms high toward the N. W. The plaines on each Side is wavering. Labiesh killed 2 gees & 2 Ducks of the large kind. at two oClock we loaded & Set out, our Powder & Provisions of roots not Sufficently dry. we Shall put them out at the forks or mouth of this river which is at no great distance, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... spread fanwise over the heavens. They quivered and sank, and flared again, and broke into innumerable rippling waves; they hung, broad banners of light, athwart the skies, then slowly faded, to give place to a wavering interplay of ghostly beams that sought the darkest places beyond the moon: celestial fingers whiter than the white glow ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... got something else—a mental thrust so quick and sharp it was as if a sword had cut through the daze of fatigue to reach his brain. Yet that had not come from Sssuri, for it was totally alien, wavering on a band so near the extreme edge of his consciousness that it pricked, receded, and pricked again as ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... the full force of the wrench come upon him, and he was conscious of a lump in his throat as he thought of Alice, first always, then of Mr. Gorham, and last of the city itself. During the months since he had accidentally met Alice in Washington, there had never been a wavering of his purpose. She was the one girl to him among the many he met during the social rounds into which he had plunged while living in New York. He had been undaunted by her attitude, undismayed by the seeming hopelessness of it all—but now her very sympathy proved to him the necessity ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... tiny trenches, in our day, and the stone walls mere stone facings): there are the Pandours crouched, and give fire in a kneeling posture when you approach. Lower down, near Lobositz itself, flickerings as of Horse squadrons, probably Hussar parties, twinkle dubious in the wavering mist. Problem wrapt in mist; nothing to be seen; and all depends on judging it with accuracy! Seven by the clock: Deploy, at any rate; let us cover our post; and be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
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