"Hesitant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sufficiently into consideration these difficulties, when he threatened Alexander with war, unless he fell in with his wishes; although, when he learned of the losses and reverses suffered in Spain and Portugal, he seemed hesitant to engage in a conflict the outcome of ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... bland man, as zestfully as before. "But now the Interstellar Medical Service sends someone before whom I should bow! Someone whose knowledge and experience and training is so infinitely greater than mine that I become abashed! I am timid! I am hesitant to offer an opinion ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... would have boasted of having "bummed" his way to Faribault. His hesitant speech was a proof of the embarrassment his new respectability sometimes inflicted ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... mind. For, like some poisons, an atom of suspicion is as fatal as the largest quantity, Nay, perhaps, even more surely so, for against great suspicion the mind often takes arms and makes valiant head; but a little doubt, by its timid and hesitant demeanor, disarms opposition, and is readily entertained. And all that night, lying awake, and knowing that Silas was sleepless just the other side of the partition, and that the fungus of suspicion was moment by moment overgrowing his mind, he could hardly wait for morning, ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... queen's command. There lay the reason why Dolores so placidly turned her back to men whose dearest ambition would have been realized by the plunge of steel between her shoulders at that moment. Milo walked around to the rear of the hesitant mob, and without a word gripped the hindmost in his two great hands and hurled him bodily over the heads of his ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... lecturer Huxley was facile princeps, and only those who were privileged to sit under him can form a conception of his delivery. Clear, deliberate, never hesitant nor unduly emphatic, never repetitional, always logical, his every word told. Great, however, as were his class lectures, his working-men's were greater. Huxley was a firm believer in the "distillatio per ascensum" of scientific knowledge and culture, and spared no pains ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... but with a touch of wistfulness; and the girl came to him, laying her hand upon his arm, surprised into a sort of hesitant affection. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... The large red and gold letters stared at him proclaiming arrogantly: "Every day is the best day of the year." And was it not true? Yesterday had proved indeed a day of destiny. It had brought him the assurance of a hope, the confirmation of a hesitant belief that the owners of the lost Mariposa were within reach and, better still, were not entirely masters of the situation. And yesterday, too, he had met Ydo; and, perhaps, Hayden's thoughts had been as much occupied with her as with ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Doctor Wilson would soon assert his leadership over the party and take his proper place at the head of those who worked to make the preferential vote an effective instrumentality. Frankly, though I did not give expression to my doubts, I was profoundly and deeply disappointed at the apparently hesitant, uncertain attitude of the Governor-elect. Feeling certain that popular opinion would be with him in case he decided to lead in this struggle, I was convinced that the delay in announcing his attitude toward the Smith-Nugent "defi" was dampening ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... his rage fade out of him and leave his mind limp. He had been violently angry, because this house had made him feel hesitant, wary. He did not like to be wary. He liked to feel confident, sure. So he had kicked the door open, and had been prepared to march in like a soldier ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... embarrassment, but looked at her with the hesitant yet sympathetic attentiveness of a ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... nature of the world. Why this ever failing, but never ending struggle against unseen odds to grasp and understand and live with the Divine? Why, between the two, the absolute and the changeless spirit, unseen but felt, and the hesitant and timid spirit of a man, would there seem to be a great gulf fixed? Because we are wrong. Because man finds the gulf within himself. He chafes at the limitations of time and space? Yes; but he chafes more at the mystery and weakness, the mingled deceitfulness and cunning ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... slow and hesitant. It spoke volumes for Miss Stone's state of mind. Hours of Greek history were in it, and long rows of tombs and temples—the Parthenon of gods and goddesses, with a few outlying scores of heroes and understudies. "The—Greek," she ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... at Juba and felt at her forehead. "Perhaps it is forcing you too soon," she said with a hesitant frown which for a moment made her look like someone else. "It is not too late, Juba, to ...
— Step IV • Rosel George Brown
... and echo among the crags above him. It was a good three hours' walk whither he was bound, but in less than an hour he stopped where a brook tumbled noisily from a steep ravine and across the road—stopped and looked up the thick shadows whence it came. Hesitant, he stood on one foot and then on the other, with a wary look down the road and up ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... sunlight makes more strangely fair Each shining street, each steeple where it stands, Something like Spring is blowing down the air, Touching the Town with light, transforming hands. Half-shy and hesitant, a Something stays One trembling instant where the sun is sweet,— A quickening presence on these winter ways, Haunting and swift—and gone on ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... preoccupied with her back hair and prepared mutinously to ignore anything remotely resembling a belated customer whose demands might busy her beyond the closing hour, and the other had a merry eye and a receptive smile for the hesitant little man with the funny clothes and the quaint pink face of embarrassment. In most abject consternation, P. Sybarite turned ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... said in a hesitant tone, "it's a shame to think I'm nobody but just Nate, when they've made such a fuss! Be we goin' to git married, or ain't we? I s'pose we ought to, if I'm goin' to look after you and the babbies, and it seems as if ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... of deportment marks, those who stood highest for the day passing out ahead. Among this small number was Polly. When she reached the street door she was dismayed to see that it was raining, and she stood hesitant on the sill, having neither raincoat, overshoes, nor umbrella. Indifferently she noticed a limousine waiting at the curb, and wondered for ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... Ne vinolenti quidem quae faciunt qua' sobrii, hesitant, revocant se interdum, usque quae videntur, imbecillius ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... long since declared war against the genius of the American people, who believed in God and the art of leisure. Hamilton believed in God and a cabinet of zealous ministers. He was already a thorn in the side of estimable but hesitant patriots, and in times to come his unremitting and remorseless energy was to be a subject of reproach by associates and enemies alike. Even Jefferson, that idol of the present as of the past democracy, had timidly declared against separation in 1774, while Hamilton, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the village to post a very important letter—so important that her hand stayed hesitant over the slit in the box for a moment or two while she made up her mind all over again. Then, with a gasp, she pushed the letter through and heard it fall with a faint thud to the bottom of the box. The last chance was still ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... throat. With a hesitant manner he recited the discovery of the queer light in the deserted house, its unaccountable disappearances their failure to find ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... it was about my writing-case," said the corporal, in low and hesitant voice. "I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company chest, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... they carry off all well, and to their respective friends approve themselves good, sociable, jolly companions. Thus Homer makes aged Nestor famed for a smooth oily-tongued orator, while the delivery of Achilles was but rough, harsh, and hesitant; and the same poet elsewhere tells us of old men that sate on the walls, and spake with a great deal of flourish and elegance. And in this point indeed they surpass and outgo children, who are pretty forward in a softly, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... campaigning on the Continent had given me the French speech, or so much of it as the clumsy tongue of me could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... happening, and while at Skinyer and Beatem's they worked with frantic pens and clattering type there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure of "the man ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... to duplicate the ships' method of attack, but failed. They were too slow. Not slow, exactly, either, but hesitant; as though it required whole seconds for the commander—or operator? Or remote controller?—of each skeleton to make it act. The ships ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... thou shouldst so lightly be appalled: go we now, and see who it is that has given thee this childish fright." So, with a blaze of torches, the abbot, attended by his monks, entered the church, and espied this wondrous costly bed whereon the knight slept, and while, hesitant and fearful, daring not to approach the bed, they scanned the rare and splendid jewels, it befell that, the efficacy of the potion being exhausted, Messer Torello awoke and heaved a great sigh. Whereat the monks and the abbot quaking and crying ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... up the stoop and rang the bell. A servant opened the door, showed him into the dimly lighted parlor, and went up the stairs with his name. He heard her footsteps, light, hesitant. She appeared before him, pale and sick ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... the blessed woman of to-day, it must be said truthfully that she can neither leap a creek nor surmount some such obstacle as a monster tree trunk with a close approach to the ease and grace of this mother who came bounding through the forest. There was nothing unknowing or hesitant about her movements. She ran swiftly and leaped lightly when occasion came. She was lithe as the panther and as careless of where her brown feet touched ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... towels and soap. The day would have made countless insinuations to a normal man. To some, it said golf; to others, a motor trip out to where a plethora of such bounties as it suggested might be available; and to others less fortunate—why, there was the "Ferry" just opening to hesitant crowds, with its band stand, its scenic railway, its forty-five minutes of vaudeville that was anything but mentally exhausting. It was an eloquent morning. But Joe ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... from the boys in the front row, his seat a little raised and the notes before him made plain by a narrow light-well, which in the Holden of those days opened over the teacher's head to a sky-light in the roof. Gray's utterance was rather hesitant. He would catch for his word often, reiterating meanwhile the article, "the-a, the-a, the-a," his gaze meanwhile fixed upon the sky-light, and a nervously gyrating forefinger raised high and brightly illuminated. The thought suggested was that he had a prompter ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... us belong to that school of thought which is hesitant about altering the fundamental law. I think our tax problems, the tendency of wealth to seek nontaxable investment, and the menacing increase of public debt, Federal, State and municipal-all justify a proposal to change the Constitution so as to end the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... spite of this divergence of opinion, ten minutes later the three passed through the door into the back apartment—Carroll still hesitant, Orde in triumph, Gerald as ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White |
