"Vacillating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by an effort of attention to fix the vision for a longer and a longer time, and when they waxed faint and nearly vanished, he had the power of recalling them into light and substance, until at last their vacillating indistinctness became less and less, and they assumed a permanent ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the grass. They think I'm an earless freak, maybe. She told him that dear Peggy was growing into such a strong, splendid woman; that she'd been talking to her, and she thought the child would be able to give up her weak, vacillating lover with hardly a pang, because she realized that he was unworthy of her; that Peg had said she couldn't marry a man she didn't admire—and wasn't that noble of her? Noble, your grandmother—to give up a perfect ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... occasional feeble and vacillating current of warm air from the register, I was forced at times to wear my overcoat as I read, and at night I spread it over my cot. I did not see the sun for a month. The wind was always filled with rain or sleet, and as the lights in Bates' Hall ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and inspiration of woman, man becomes a cold, dry petrifaction, constantly obeying the centripetal force of his being, and adoring self. Without his basal firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger, remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... these bills created intense indignation. All felt that it was a piece of treachery and fraud, those who gave the queen any credit for good intentions looking upon her as weak and vacillating and utterly under the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... have here to the peace and quiet of the city. The leading men of the convention—King, Cutler, Hahn, and others —have been political agitators, and are bad men. I regret to say that the course of Governor Wells has been vacillating, and that during the late trouble he has shown very little ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... submitted to the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... barometer registered fair. At that moment streams of chilly rain-water were coursing down across the dial of the barometer, but it registered fair even then. He said—the American did—that it was the most stationary barometer he had ever seen, and the most reliable—not vacillating and given to moods, like most barometers, but fixed and unchangeable in ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... lie difficulties, which Smith, though not blind to their existence, treated in a vacillating and inconsistent fashion. Variations of supply and demand cause fluctuations in the price; but what finally determines the point to which the fluctuating prices must gravitate? We follow the process by which one wave propagates another; but there is still ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... secret—he did not care for unpopularity in the least. His great aim was to fight—at whatever odds— for whatever he felt by dogged conviction. He was often wrong; but never cowardly, never philandering, never vacillating. "I am anti-everything," as he said humorously of himself. And so he was. He was, in a sense, "anti-everything," and though, sometimes through the training of previous environments, sometimes through other reasons, he was "anti" things that were right and of good report, he was ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the snow-covered ice. A few people with torches began to travel up and down the ice, a lit circle travelling along with them over the snow. A gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the promontory, among perturbed and vacillating clouds. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evidently a man of great moral intrepidity and firmness. He kept his black, unquailing eye fixed upon the judge while he spoke, but betrayed not a single symptom of a timid or vacillating spirit. When the sentence was pronounced, he looked with an expression of something like contempt upon those who had broken out, as usual, into those murmurs of compassion and satisfaction, which are sometimes uttered under circumstances ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... a gentleman addressed at the same time one lady who was rich and plain, and one who was poor and very beautiful; and they, by chance becoming acquainted, exhibited to each other their correspondence with the vacillating lover, and one of them invited him to a meeting, in which after joining in reproaches, they dexterously each deprived him ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... This impels him, constituted as he is, to strive that he shall stand well with all. This almost necessitates that he shall be kindly, genial, loving; enjoying the joy and well-being of all around him, and therefore lovable. But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his paltering with it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it. The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... brought cannon to bear upon the place. Yakoob Khan, in his palace close by, heard the roar of the battle, but made no movement. Some of his councillors urged upon him to call out the loyal regiments at Bala Hissar, and to suppress and punish the mutiny. But the Ameer remained vacillating and sullen until the terrible night was over, and the last of the defenders, after performing prodigies of valour, and killing many more times than their own number of the enemy, succumbed to the attack, the British officers rushing out and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... the problem that most distressed Lane. She had her good qualities, and through them could be reached. But she was thoughtless, vacillating, and wilful. She had made him promises only to break them. Lane had caught her in falsehoods. And upon being called to account she had told him that if he didn't like it he could "lump" it. Of late she had grown ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... when he became Triumvir,—when he made a bargain that he never meant to keep with Octavius and Lepidus for a division of the Empire between them,—would not spare such an enemy as Cicero. The broken-hearted patriot fled mechanically, with a vacillating mind, when his proscription became known to him,—now more ready to die than live, since all hope in his country's liberties was utterly crushed. Perhaps he might have escaped to some remote corner of the Empire. But he did not wish for life, any more than did Socrates when summoned ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the most perfect fruit of his talents. Nor can we here speak of Cicero as a man. He has his admirers and detractors. He had great faults and weaknesses as well as virtues. He was egotistical, vain, and vacillating. But he was industrious, amiable, witty, and public spirited. In his official position he was incorruptible. He was no soldier, but he had a greater than a warrior's excellence. In spite of his faults, his name is one of the brightest of the ancients. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... blasphemous, ribald fool!" The words leaped from the lips of Ralph Bastin, in a tone of command that literally awed the interrupter. The effect, too, upon the hesitating, vacillating mass of people was, for the moment at least, to arouse their sympathy with Ralph, and a little murmur ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... translated Darwin into Danish, no doubt came by his "advanced views" at first hand. In the case of Schandorph it is more difficult to judge. He is an excellent linguist, and may have had access to the same sources from which Brandes drew his strength. Drachmann is so vacillating in his tendencies that he refuses to be permanently classified in any school of art or thought. Of the three, Schandorph seems altogether the maturest mind and furnishes the most finished and satisfactory work. In his novel "Without a Centre" (Uden Midtpunkt) the reader feels himself ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... worth the candle after all?" she thought. "Ah me! what a miserable, vacillating creature I am. Whatever comes—the worst or the best—there is nothing for it now but to ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... cause that he was restless and disturbed; within the last three days he had by his own instability of purpose, and vacillating tastes and temper brought himself down from as enviable a position as well can be imagined, to one as insecure, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... House, Mr. Caryll had left a scene of strife between Lady Ostermore and her son on one side and Lord Ostermore on the other. Weak and vacillating as he was in most things, it seemed that the earl could be strong in his dislike of his son, and firm in his determination not to condone the infamy of his behavior toward ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... have been most amusing, if the salvation of the country had not been at stake. The President himself not only still hoped, but believed, that there would be no war; and notwithstanding all the abuse that had been heaped upon Mr. Buchanan by the Republicans for his feeble and vacillating course, and especially his denial of the right of the government to coerce the recusant States, the policy of the new Administration, up to the attack upon Sumter, was identical with that of his predecessor. In Mr. Seward's official letter to Mr. ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Montrose against surrendering to the demands of Parliament, overpowered the advice of his wiser counselors. At the end of twenty days the negotiations ceased, and the commissioners of Parliament returned to London, convinced that there was no hope of obtaining a permanent peace with a man so vacillating ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... it is permissible to shift patriotism from one country to another. Such a change of loyalty is, in times of war, called treason, and naturally evokes the resentment of the deserted side. Even as impartial judges, we are properly suspicious of such action, as denoting a vacillating nature, devoid of the true spirit of loyalty, or as indicative of a selfishness that follows its own personal advantage. And so far as that suspicion is well founded, we must condemn the traitor. But certainly, if a man experiences a sincere change of conviction, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... is not too vacillating of me," he said, "and I may be forgiven, I think I will change my mind and go. I have no business to break up your party, and besides, I shall probably not have another opportunity—I should rather like to go. To ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... always to be in a state of perfect health two things are necessary. Deny the power of disease over yourself. In the unyielding will is health. In the weak, vacillating, fearful mind is disease and death. At the same time always be in perfect magnetic trim with the physical laws of health. A knowledge of the latter and the ascension of a fearless mental attitude will open up hitherto unrecognised channels of physical and mental expression. Physiological researches ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... wonder that the measures of such a congress, when not vacillating, were weak. If the time demanded anything, that demand was the promptest organization of an army, with an immediate basis of foreign credit, to arm, equip and clothe it. Next to this was the urgent ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mine to use—O senseless cataract, Bearing all down in thy precipitancy— And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows And mine is living blood: thou dost His will, The Maker's, and not knowest, and I that know, Have strength and wit, in my good mother's hall Linger with vacillating obedience, Prisoned, and kept and coaxed and whistled to— Since the good mother holds me still a child! Good mother is bad mother unto me! A worse were better; yet no worse would I. Heaven yield her for it, but in ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return. His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 1817, he had written from Marlow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but sixty-five hundred men available for service in the field, and even this number was subsequently diminished by the vacillating ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... in capable statesmen; it was even more conspicuously wanting in the class of serviceable and intelligent agents of Government of the second rank. Its monarch, Alexander II., humane and well-meaning, was irresolute and vacillating beyond the measure of ordinary men. He was not only devoid of all administrative and organising faculty himself, but so infirm of purpose that Ministers whose policy he had accepted feared to let him pass out of their sight, lest in the course of a single journey or a single interview ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... religion, nor the father who had led his child into distress by holding before her her sinful condition, could offer any genuine comfort. Miss Earle has summarized with briefness and force the results of such training: "A frightened child, a retiring girl, a vacillating sweetheart, an unwilling bride, she became the mother of eight children; but always suffered from morbid introspection, and overwhelming fear of death and the future life, until at the age of thirty-five her father sadly wrote, 'God ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... been carried too far against the earl to admit of his speedy restoration to favor, whatever might be the secret sentiments of her majesty in his behalf; and her conduct respecting him preserved a vacillating and undecided character which marks the miserable perplexity of her mind, no longer enlightened by the clear and dispassionate ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... time things went well. Pretorius was Commandant General in Natal, Potgieter Chief Commandant in the allied Western Districts. The legislative power was in the hands of a Volksraad of twenty-four members, whose ways were more vacillating and erratic than advantageous. "Every man for himself and God for all" seemed to be the convenient motto of this assembly, except perhaps on urgent occasions, when Pretorius and Potgieter were called upon as joint dictators to settle some knotty ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... conservative reply from a knot of twelve bishops who had met to consecrate a new church for Basil of Ancyra. But its weight was far beyond its numbers. Basil's name stood high for learning, and he more than any man could sway the vacillating Emperor. Eustathius of Sebastia was another man of mark. His ascetic eccentricities, long ago condemned by the council of Gangra, were by this time forgotten or considered harmless. Above all, the synod represented ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... in other respects: any timid and vacillating course with them is sure to get you into trouble. One must strike out boldly, and not be disturbed by the curveting and shying; the valley you want lies squarely behind them, but farther off than you think, and if you do not go for it resolutely, you will get bewildered and the mountain ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to come!—a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted—every one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the pretence—oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my mother, the face, the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream leaves ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... himself. Had it been her own happiness that was in question, her own conduct, her own greatness, she would not have dreamed of having an opinion of her own. She would have consulted the Doctor, and simply have done as he directed. But all this was for her child, and in a vague, vacillating way she felt that for her child she ought to be ready with ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... sufficient to justify a trial. But all that arose from my lord's ignorance of the administration of the laws of his country. He was very ignorant,—puzzle-pated, as you may call it,—led by the nose by his wife, weak as water, timid and vacillating. But he did not wish, I think, to be insolent. It was Mrs Proudie who told me to my face ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... she married. It was, of course, a failure. Her vacillating nature was such that she could not be absolutely true to the man to whom she had given her life, and, after several bitter experiences, she had the horror of seeing him kill himself in front of her. There ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... was unbounded. The frontiersman was always ready for a fight, and just now he especially wanted a fight with England. He resented the insults that his country had suffered at the hands of the English authorities and had little patience with the vacillating policy so long pursued by Congress and the Madison Administration. Other grievances came closer home. For two years the West had been disturbed by Indian wars and intrigues for which the English officers and agents in Canada were held largely responsible. ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Duck-billed Platypus A sad example sets for us. From him we learn how indecision Of character provokes derision. This vacillating beast, you see, Could not decide which he would be— Fish, flesh or fowl—and chose all three. The scientists were sorely vexed, To classify him so perplexed Their brains that they with rage at bay Called him a horrid name one day, A name that baffles, frights and shocks ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... about a quarter to twelve, noon—see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that by this exile the Parliament would be punished, but would be neither conciliated nor tamed into submission. To make matters worse, Blois was given up, and Pontoise was substituted for it! This latter town being close to Paris, the chastisement became ridiculous, showed the vacillating weakness of the Regent, and encouraged the Parliament to laugh at him. One thing was, however, well done. The resolution taken to banish the Parliament was kept so secret that that assembly had not the slightest ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... policy which in the end was responsible for most of the terrible excesses of the French Revolution, by insisting that troops should be called to restrain the Assembly, and that Necker should be banished. Louis showed the same vacillating spirit now that he had displayed in yielding to the Assembly, and assented. The noble officers had lately shown themselves untrustworthy, and the men in the ranks refused to obey when called to fight against the people. The baser social elements of the whole country had long since swarmed to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... away from sin; for I tell you of a truth, by whatever temptation a man is assailed, if he turns not from it heartily, but stands in it vacillating, he has no wholehearted desire to leave his sins by God's will, and without doubt the evil spirit is close upon him, who may make ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... "at homes" have so little judgment in the matter of departure that experience never serves them in good stead. They are nervous and vacillating when they should be neither; they linger and know not how to get themselves gracefully away, and usually succeed in making an abrupt exit. They know the right moment at which to leave, but fail to put this knowledge into practice. "Almost think it is time to go now," or "I wonder whether I ought ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... further course of a war in 1881 is a matter of speculation, what we all know for certain is, first, that the conditions which led to war were produced by seventy years of vacillating policy, and, second, that war itself would have been a useless waste of life and treasure, unless success in it had been followed, as in 1906, by the grant of that responsible Government which all along ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... vacillating conduct of his allies, had already passed from Africa into Sicily, where he spent the following winter. In the early part of the year 1271, he set sail for Acre, where he landed at the head of only one thousand men; but so high ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... should he also have sacrificed wife, faith, and crown? If yes, then was he wholly in the wrong; if no, he was partly—for once at least—in the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacillating, obstinate, unable to lead or to be led; superstitious, heedful of omens; unsympathetic and reserved where he did not love; intolerant of opposition to his will. But he was a good husband, a good father, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... walked into a small cell, dimly lighted by a little metallic lamp standing on a low bunk. The cell was cold and there was an odor of dust, dampness and tobacco. The tin lamp threw a bright light on those around it, but the bunks were in the shade and vacillating shadows moved along the walls. In the small room were all the prisoners, except two men who had gone for boiling water and provisions. There was an old acquaintance of Nekhludoff, the yellow-faced and thin Vera Efremovna, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... your vacillating 'yes' has rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas! that bearded men,"—Tom's face was covered with hair—"Alas, alas! that ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... gave new life to the Collection of Antiquities, and what was more than life, the hope of recovering their past importance; but the events of 1815, the troubles of the foreign occupation, and the vacillating policy of the Government until the fall of M. Decazes, all contributed to defer the fulfilment of the expectations of the personages so vividly described by Blondet. This story, therefore, only begins to shape itself ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... The effect verges on the grotesque. The balance of Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch the Prophets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, the Church looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensation has not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the old gives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies of Frenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the Church, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... putting an end to the import of opium, and so checking the practice of opium-smoking, which was already assuming dangerous proportions; and in this he was backed up by Captain Elliot (afterwards Sir Charles Elliot), now Superintendent of Trade, an official whose vacillating policy towards the Chinese authorities did much to precipitate the disasters about to follow. After a serious riot had been provoked, in which the foreign merchants of Canton narrowly escaped with their lives, and to quell which it was necessary to call out the soldiery, the Emperor ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... the presentation of the doctrine will be faulty and cold and lifeless, or weak and vacillating, or harsh and sharp and severe. With the experience, the preaching of the doctrine will be with great joy and assurance, and will be strong and searching, but at the same time warm ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... annoyed at these delays. Political events in England swayed the destiny of Ireland then as now. The poor vacillating, double-dealing king was delivered to the Puritans, tried, and executed. But before Cromwell came to smash the confederation and everything papal in Ireland, the Irish chief gladdened the hearts of his countrymen by the glorious victory of Benburb, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... opposition to sexuality, directly a synthesis had been effected, Christianity should have drawn the obvious conclusion from its fundamental principle and acknowledged love, which united the hostile elements. Protestantism did so, half-heartedly. Luther's vacillating attitude towards sexuality is typical of this indecision. At heart he could not justify sexuality; he regarded it, in the same way as did the Fathers of the Church, as an evil with which one had to make terms. His sanction of marriage was nothing ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, even though handicapped by a vacillating governmental policy regarding the Indians, we muddled through these great Indian wars of the frontier, our soldiers doing their work splendidly and uncomplainingly, such work as no other body of civilized troops has ever been asked to ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... was ever vacillating between the two parties. The Duke of Guise was the great idol of the Catholics. Henry of Navarre was the acknowledged leader of the Protestants. The king feared them both. It was very apparent that Henry III. could not live long. At his death his brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, would ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... aristocrat; while the man who had squandered away his patrimony, sought to restore himself from his fallen position in society, by assuming principles of patriotism which in his heart he despised. Moreover, the conduct of their rulers, which had been too frequently vacillating and manifestly corrupt, taught the great body of the people to look upon them with suspicion and distrust. Talk they as loud as they might of honesty of intention, of unimpeachable integrity, and of pure patriotism, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The Rollestons, vacillating between Tadousac, the Falls, a trip in the "Algoma," and a journey to Boston, their large party being an objection to each and all, were finally attracted by an advertisement of a fishing-lodge to be let or sold on ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... end. He never committed himself to a position of the security of which he was not sure; and he carried this spirit of caution to such an extremity that many of the early years of his reign present a succession of timid and vacillating movements, that more nearly resemble the subterfuges of a coward than the crafty artifices ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... government and of well-regulated society. Passion predominated above reason, and received its impulse solely from casual circumstances. It was, in fact, accidental, whether it should operate amiably or malignantly; and the felicity of one half of the human species depended upon the precarious and ever vacillating humour of the other. Virtue was scarcely seen upon the earth, except at occasional and often distant visitations, or as she shed a fitful and flickering light into the retreats of systematic philosophy. Woman was at the mercy of every wind—to-day honoured—to-morrow despised—now ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Mr. Parton is, to say the least, vacillating, because he fails to exhibit any platform upon which we may combat those who support early prejudices and justify their continuance from the mere fact of their existence. We never expect Mr. Gayarre and Mr. Henry Watterson ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... peremptorily required it of him. It is a plot of all the Swedish wellwishers, all the anti-imperialists of this court, believe me. They wish to place the Electoral Prince at their head, and hope by this means to bring it about that the weak and vacillating Elector shall secede from the Emperor and ally himself with the Swedes. They teased and goaded the Elector, until he even sent his Chamberlain von Schlieben to The Hague in order to fetch the Prince, and the latter has but to-day returned ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... change of position, she sat vacillating pitiably. The knowledge that in a single moment he would have begun to speak spurred her to a fever of alarm, while a terrible nervous incapacity chained her ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... States would or would not permit the United States Government to do. Even a Cabinet officer, of whom better things might have been expected, and by whom better things are now nobly said and done, allowed himself to fall into the error of explaining to the vacillating Governor of Maryland that the intentions of the National Administration were purely defensive. While such language is current at home, it is not strange that foreigners should find themselves in a state of hopeless confusion about us. Few European writers, except De Tocqueville, have ever shown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... do?" As he asked this question, he approached her and put his arm round her waist. This he did in momentary vacillating mercy,—not because of the charm of the thing to himself, but through his own inability not to give ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... title, and agreeable person of the Marquis, she almost disdains herself for hesitating to prefer him to Clermont. Her life is the tragedy of a soul too indolent to swim against the current of events. Mrs. Haywood managed to give extraordinary vividness and consistency to the character of the vacillating Henrietta by making the plot depend almost entirely upon the indecision of the heroine. Consequently none of the author's women are as sharply defined as this weak, pleasure-loving French girl. The character drawing, though too much subordinated ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... who had fought heroically with their mouths inveighing with bitter invective against the weak and vacillating policy of the President in temporizing with the South were busy packing their goods and chattels to fly ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... afterwards that no incident of those tumultuous hours surprised her more than the way in which Lady Hermione received her unbidden and unwelcome visitors. The instant before their arrival she was an irresponsible and doubting and vacillating girl, torn by emotion, and swayed hither and thither by gusts of perplexity which ranged from half-formed hope to blank despair, but now she came from her bedroom without a second's hesitancy, and faced her father and the lawyer with a proud serenity ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... with a hissing noise, as well in the flame of oxidation as in that of reduction. There is formed a clear bead which, with a certain degree of saturation, is clear when cold, but appears milk-white when overcharged, and of an opal, enamel appearance, when heated intermittingly, or with a vacillating flame, that changes frequently from the oxidating to the reducing flame. Baryta and its compounds produce the same ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... Veranderlichkeit der Naturwesen".), went the length of admitting (in 1762) that new species might arise by intercrossing. Buffon's position among the pioneers of the evolution-doctrine is weakened by his habit of vacillating between his own conclusions and the orthodoxy of the Sorbonne, but there is no doubt that he had a firm grasp of the general idea of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... myself in the wrong with regard to Beauclerk," she continued quietly. "That is merely fair to him. Every one shall know that I have been weak and vacillating. May God forgive me and humble me—for I shall not be understood, even by many good people. But the next worst thing to making an error is to abide by it. Dear David, try to follow my feeling. It has all passed ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the noble Mexican Gulf has separated from us. Let us exert every power we possess to bring them all back to the fold. Why should we not? Every motive of interest or patriotism should induce us to do so. Suppose the States were vacillating and in doubt where to go. Suppose they were set up for sale in market overt, and the States of Europe were to bid for them—for this, not only the richest portion of our own country, but of the world—because this ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... preparing for another invasion. Soulouque, who had attained the presidency of the black republic, made a sudden incursion and marched victoriously as far as Azua. The Dominican government observed a vacillating policy which provoked general distrust and protests from the friends of Santana, whose partisans in the Congress called on him to take command of the army. Jimenez at first demurred but finally consented, and Santana, emerging from retirement, collected a few hundred ragged troops at ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... up and eyed me for a moment as steadily as his vacillating glance would permit him, then he held ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the Dissenters, he issued a declaration in favour of liberty of conscience, the seal to which he afterwards broke with his own hands,[273] but he could not prevent a considerable degree of religious liberty arising from such vacillating conduct. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as that is just what the Lord said to Eve, she must have had the capacity to understand it. But all speculations as to what Eve thought in that eventful hour are vain. Clarke asserts that Cain and Abel were twins. Eve must have been too much occupied with her vacillating joys and sorrows to have indulged in any connected train of thought. Her grief in the fratricidal tragedy that followed can be more easily understood. The dreary environments of the mother, and the hopeless prophesies ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and in the fortresses of Capua and Gaeta, and leaving the handful of republicans to defend themselves as best they might against the vast majority of the nation that supported the cause of the king. Against such odds, the enthusiasm of the liberals, ill assisted by a feeble and vacillating government, was unable successfully to contend. Nevertheless, they still struggled on; fresh troops were raised, and in a sort of sacred battalion, composed of officers, young Pepe, who had just completed his sixteenth year, was appointed serjeant-major. In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... a profound silence, which struck us as very singular; but then we did not know that a new ruler was on his way to Australia, and that the home government had got most heartily tired of the vacillating policy of Mr. Latrobe, and that the several gentlemen who surrounded him were aware of it, and were all ready to pay court to the rising star, as soon as he ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... written to you before in: but my Letter must wait till I return to Woodbridge, where your Address is on record. I have thought several times of writing to you since this Year began; but I have been in a muddle—leaving my old Markethill Lodgings, and vacillating between my own rather lonely Chateau, and this Place, where some Nieces are. I had wished to tell you what I know of our dear Donne: who Mowbray says gets on still. I suppose he will never be so strong again. Laurence wrote me that ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... architects, but furnishers of bricks, nails and laths. But it is our hope that what we thus rake up and pile into a rough heap may yet serve the purposes of an organizer, and so help toward the establishment of the dim and vacillating truth, and rid the scene of, at all events, the worst and most obvious of its present accumulation ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... sensitiveness and sentimentalism of the most sanguine-nervous type. There is great charm in such a combination, especially to persons of a keen, alert nature. My sister was earnest, wise, resolute. John Gray was nonchalant, shrewd, vacillating. My sister was exact, methodical, ready. John Gray was careless, spasmodic, dilatory. My sister had affection. He had tenderness. She was religious of soul; he had a sort of transcendental perceptivity, so to speak, which kept him more alive to the comforts of religion than ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the editor of the 'Morning Breakfast Table' would be powerful for all things, brought new doubts to her mind. But she could not convince herself, and when at last she went to her bed her mind was still vacillating. The next morning she met Hetta at breakfast, and with assumed nonchalance asked a question about the man who was perhaps about to be her husband. 'Do ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a wonderful wreck; and now, Wednesday week, am a good deal picked up, but yet not quite a Samson, being still groggy afoot and vague in the head. My chess, for instance, which is usually a pretty strong game, and defies all rivalry aboard, is vacillating, devoid of resource and observation, and hitherto not covered with customary laurels. As for work, it is impossible. We shall be in the saddle before long, no doubt, and the pen once more couched. You must not expect a letter under these circumstances, but be very thankful for a note. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Napoleonic Period.*—By reason of the vacillating policies of her sovereign, Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstaedt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... miseries I thought of that were common in my country. There were those we love. Some who are woven into our lives and affections by the kinship of blood; who grow up weak and vacillating, and are won away, sometimes through vice, to estrangement. Our hearts ache not the less painfully that they have ceased to be worthy of a throb; or that they have been weak enough to become estranged, to benefit some ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... lay to the charge of Mohammed Ahmed all the blood that was spilled. To my mind it seems that he may divide the responsibility with the unjust rulers who oppressed the land, with the incapable commanders who muddled away the lives of their men, with the vacillating Ministers who aggravated the misfortunes. But, whatever is set to the Mahdi's account, it should not be forgotten that he put life and soul into the hearts of his countrymen, and freed his native land of foreigners. The poor miserable ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... (which I was temporarily occupying) and concentrate on matters in hand. What right, I said, has a Buddhist recluse, born either in 1281 or 1283, to harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in its grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... wife. It was obviously so with his eldest daughter. Many men as superficially affectionate as Colonel Bellairs, and at heart as callous, as exacting and as inconsiderate, have made endurable husbands. But Colonel Bellairs was not only irresolute and vacillating and incapable of even the most necessary decisions, but he was an inveterate enemy of all decision on the part of others, inimical to all suggested arrangements or plans for household convenience. The words "spring cleaning" could never ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... mutable, variable, inconstant, unstable, unsteadfast, reversible, alterable, revocable, mobile, convertible, transmutable, commutable, kaleidoscopic, transformable, impermanent; volatile, fickle, mercurial, protean, irresolute, capricious, vacillating, fitful, inconstant, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... vacillating, vain, Decaying victim of a race of kings, Swift Destiny shook out her purple wings And caught him in their shadow; not again Could furtive plotting smear another stain Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings Of sacrificial fires burst their rings And blotted out in smoke his lost domain. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... is an invalid, and is very nervous. If he were in perfect health he would have more force of character and firmness. He is under the impression that he has heart disease, and it makes him timid and vacillating." ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... despairing to think that women should be helpless—that they should need some man to protect them against some other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or she-wolf, they could not only defend ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... mind was a turbid chaos of reflections upon the past and the future, in which selfishness, disappointed vengeance, terror, hypocritical policy, and every feeling that could fill the imagination of a man possessed of a vacillating, cowardly, and cruel heart, with the exception only of any thing that could border upon penitence or remorse. That Miss Folliard was not indifferent to him is true; but the feeling which he experienced towards her contained only two elements—sensuality ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton |
