"Unwillingness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... morning hymn and our familiar talk, in which we always "outlined the policy" of the new day; for the children were apt to be angelic and receptive at nine o'clock in the morning, the unwillingness of the spirit and weakness of the flesh seldom overtaking them till an hour or so later. It chanced to be a beautiful day, for Helen and I were both happy and well, our volunteer helpers were daily growing more zealous and efficient, ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... relations, choosing by preference for these visits the times when carpets had been sent away to be cleaned, or the maids granted days off to visit relations in the country. Then Lady Hayes would appear, announce her intention of staying a couple of nights, declare her unwillingness to give the slightest trouble, and proceed to request that her maid should be accommodated with a room next to her own, and that they should both be supplied with a vegetarian diet, supplemented by glasses ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... expressed or unexpressed. In so far as a man consents to be taught by children, does he not only remain young, but he frees himself from the habit of impeding his own progress. This is a great impediment, this unwillingness to be taught by those whom we consider more ignorant than ourselves because they have not been in the world so long. Did no one ever take into account the possibility of our eyes being blinded just because they had been exposed to the dust ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... Benches. Moreover, the native chivalry of his disposition, the curious simplicity which has remained his central characteristic, in spite of all the experiences of the baser side of human nature which must have been crowded into all that half a century of official and Parliamentary life—that unwillingness to see anything but deplorable error in his most rancorous, meanest, and most malignant opponent—all these things make it difficult for him to understand the ugly realities whose serpent heads show themselves plainly to almost ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... dangerous vice of baulking, or jibbing, as it is called in England, by improper management. When a horse jibs in harness, it is generally from some mismanagement, excitement, confusion, or from not knowing how to pull, but seldom from any unwillingness to perform all that he understands. High-spirited free-going horses are the most subject to baulking, and only so because drivers do not properly understand how to manage this kind. A free horse in a team may be so anxious to go, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... colleagues to represent to the King that his mother was so unpopular that, even if the Lords should pass the bill in such a form as rendered her eligible for nomination, the Commons would introduce a clause to exclude her by name. With great unwillingness, and, it is said, not without tears, George III. consented to the bill being so drawn as to exclude her, and it passed the Lords in such a form. But when it reached the Commons it was found that if the leaders of the Opposition hated Bute much, they ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... fortnight. There was so much plausibility in the speech of the Quaker, and his appearance and behaviour were so perfectly respectable, that my friend felt almost ashamed of the suspicion which at first he had entertained of him, though, at the same time, he felt an unaccountable unwillingness to let the man depart without some further interrogation. The landlord, however, who did not wish to disoblige one who had been, and might probably be again, a profitable customer, declared that he was perfectly satisfied; that he had no wish to detain the note, which he made no doubt the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... in mediaeval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Moliere. Yet French novels usually immoral, and why. Remarks on Popery. To be avoided. Morality of Richardson and of Sir Walter Scott. Impropriety re-introduced by Charlotte Bronte. Unwillingness of Lecturer to dwell on this Topic. The Novel is now the whole of Literature. The people have no time to read anything else. Responsibilities of the Novelist as a Teacher. The Novel the proper vehicle of Theological, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... put it off some time longer. A severe fit of the gout, during which Isabella attended him with the most assiduous and unremitting affection, had also operated as a powerful auxiliary to her wishes. Pressing her affectionately to his bosom one day, the old governor declared his unwillingness to part with her; and, "upon this hint she spake," and easily obtained from him a promise not to trouble her with any matrimonial schemes till she had completed her twenty-second year, and even then, if she felt disinclined to the holy state, she should ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... pardon!" replied Irene, briskly. "If I don't want to ride, no company can make the act agreeable. Why can't people learn to leave others in freedom? If Hartley had shown the same unwillingness to join this riding party that I manifested, do you think I would have uttered a second word in favor of going? No. I am ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... into my hand, at the time of their first removal from Winter Island, a dirty crooked model of a spear, so shabbily constructed that it had probably been already refused as an article of barter by many of the ship’s company. On my accepting this, from an unwillingness to affront them, they were uneasy and dissatisfied till I had given them something in return, though their hands were full of the presents which I had just made them. Selfishness is, in fact, almost without exception their universal characteristic, and the main-spring of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... when she and George visited Crawley and his wife at these quarters, that they had very nearly come to their first quarrel; that is, George scolded his wife violently for her evident unwillingness to go, and the high and mighty manner in which she comported herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and Amelia did not say one single word in reply; but with her husband's eye upon her, and Rebecca scanning her as she felt, was, if possible, more bashful and awkward ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old hag uttered in praise of her she called my mother went like a knife to my heart; I longed to fall upon her and tear her to pieces, and only refrained from unwillingness that death should find her in such a wicked state. Finally she told me that she intended to anoint herself that night and go to one of their customary assemblies, and inquire of her master as to what was yet to befal me. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to abandon all lusts of the flesh whilst also consenting to endure any consequences of these lusts in ourselves and others, not in unwillingness to endure, which is resistance, but in submission. From consenting to abandon the delights of the flesh we advance to consenting to the withdrawal of all spiritual delights from us: enduring instead spiritual difficulties, standing ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... the son of the farmer; which accounted for the unwillingness of the latter to have the house searched by the soldiers; and, though Somers had a general contempt for deserters, he felt his indebtedness to this interesting family for the service they had unwittingly endeavored ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... thought so, and she gave it up; with a lingering unwillingness got off the bed and wrapped her furs round her. Mr. Linden put her into the sleigh, keeping Jerry back to let the doctor precede them; and when he was fairly in front, Faith was doubly wrapped up—as she had been ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... anticipations of the certainty of failure, let there be nothing wanting to the fair trial of the experiment. The change in their condition is the substitution of labor by contract for the status of slavery. The freedman can not fairly be accused of unwillingness to work so long as a doubt remains about his freedom of choice in his pursuits and the certainty of his recovering his stipulated wages. In this the interests of the employer and the employed coincide. The employer desires in his workmen spirit and alacrity, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... "With very great unwillingness I was obliged now to bring my last reserve into the field, and may tell you what that was, Sam my boy, now that the matter is so long passed. 'Madam,' said I, 'there's a matter about which I must speak, though ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mortification of an unsuccessful attempt to imitate it. Again, to the infinite horror of the Mandarins, he paraded himself one afternoon with decacuminated finger-nails, and came very near producing a riot by his unwillingness to permit them to grow again, besides calling forth another imperial decree, threatening ignominious death to all nobles throughout the empire who should encourage the practice. All these eccentricities served only to add to the consequence of the multipotent Mien-yaun. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... triumph in it, such as small souls show when they are on the point of proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna had been ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... four ale, and Mrs Crass had another threepennyworth of gin. Ruth protested that she did not want any more to drink, but the others ridiculed this, and both the Besotted Wretch and the Semi-drunk seemed to regard her unwillingness as a personal insult, so she allowed them to get her another half-pint of beer, which she was compelled to drink, because she was conscious that the others were watching her to see ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... I would have that love in spite of your unwillingness," said the woman doggedly. "You have scorned me, and I ought to have sufficient pride to let you go your own way. But I am such an infatuated fool that I am content to ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... found it difficult to secure exact information on the subject of the Imperial concubines (who, by the way, have a special name of honor), partly for the reason that this is not a matter of general information, and partly because of the unwillingness to impart information to a foreigner which is felt to tarnish the luster of the Imperial glory. A librarian of a public library refused to lend a book containing the desired facts, saying that foreigners might be freely informed of that which ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... admiring wonder that gave Sally her best tribute. Mrs. Perce, the expert, nodded. She had received a letter in the morning from Madame Gala. So to her all the news was known. All the same, Sally spent a happy couple of hours in the flat, and collected her outdoor clothes with unwillingness. Each time she had been to see Mrs. Perce she had felt more strongly than of old the contrast between her always-cheerless home and their warm, prosperity-laden atmosphere. The recognition acted powerfully upon her. It was the creation in her mind of a standard of physical comfort, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... return to the point from where we had set out without being killed, or, what was worse, taken prisoner, and yet, had I known for a certainty that such fate awaited us, I would not have let Sergeant Corney know of my unwillingness to follow him. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... to the introduction of a system of leases in Shetland, which, you say, would greatly improve the country?- There seems to be an unwillingness on the part of the proprietors to give lease. I have known several parties who have asked for leases ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... and between her and her grandparents. Her words to her grandfather sounded very different, repeated in her quiet, respectful tones; and when she added that if he would have allowed her, she was going on to explain that it was not any unwillingness to oblige Enna, but the fear of doing wrong, that led her to refuse her request, her father thought that after all she deserved ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... For, at this dreadful moment, when the eyes of every man in every ship was straining upon this execution, as the decisive struggle between authority and mutiny, as if it were destined that the whole fleet should see the hesitating unwillingness of the Marlborough's crew to hang their rebel, and the efficacy of the means taken to enforce obedience, by an accident on board the ship the men at the yard-rope unintentionally let it slip, and the turn of the balance seemed ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... of guilty beings, suddenly detected in the commission of some crime which involved the happiness of a common patron. At that instant, perhaps, Jasper himself was inclined to deny his passion, through an extreme unwillingness to grieve his friend; while Mabel, on whom this positive announcement of a fact that she had rather unconsciously hoped than believed, came so unexpectedly, felt her mind momentarily bewildered; and she scarcely knew whether to weep ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... plain enough, Sigismund followed her about as her betrothed, and the only question was whether, during the period of mourning, he should go back to his dominions to collect a train worthy of his marriage with a king's daughter; but this he was plainly reluctant to do. Besides the unwillingness of a lover to lose sight of his lady, the catastrophe that had befallen the sisters might well leave a sense that they needed protection. Perhaps, too, he might expect murmurs at his choice of a dowerless princess from his vassals of ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had died down to a silent, spasmodic catching of the breath, but she was still much unnerved, and she approached the bed with obvious unwillingness, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Ste. Marie pointed to an unframed photograph which was fastened to the wall by thumb-tacks, and his outstretched hand shook as he pointed. Beneath them the other man still writhed and tumbled ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice, the insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort is anywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the faintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness or inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom and pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Instead of exclaiming, with the majority ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... unwillingness of the larger part of the audience to listen further; but an approving buzz from the elder citizens announced that the fanaticism was not without its favourers. Thus stimulated and encouraged, the orator continued; and concluded an harangue, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I am puzzled, what advice to give in the matter; I am only doubtful, in what way, Athenians, to address you thereupon. For I have been taught both by hearsay and experience, that most of your advantages have escaped you, from unwillingness to do your duty, not from ignorance. I request you, if I speak my mind, to be patient, and consider only, whether I speak the truth, and with a view to future amendment. You see to what wretched plight we are reduced by some men haranguing ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... several times. Then he sent word to the castellan that he meant presently to do what would be pleasing to him. Certainly the Pope had no unwillingness to release me then; but Signor Pier Luigi, his son, as it were in the Pope's despite, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... bought it in, outbidding the most determined bidders (for "Gunn's" was much coveted); and paying finally a sum even larger than the farm was really worth. Dr. Eben was now a rich man, and free. The world lay before him. When all was done, he felt a strange unwillingness to leave Welbury. The travel, the change, which had looked so desirable and attractive, now looked formidable; and he lingered week after week, unable to tear himself away from home. One day he rode over to Springton, to bid Rachel Barlow ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... said Wilbur, sober again, for he shared with all of Boone's crew a deep-rooted unwillingness to press Red Pierre beyond a certain point. "The one subject I won't quarrel about is Jack, God ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... A propos of Mr. TOOLE, it has always been the wonder of his friends, to whom the quality of his vocal powers is so well known, that he has never been tempted to renounce the simple histrionic for the lyric Drama. It is said, and "greatly to his credit," that, had it not been for his unwillingness to rob his friend SIMS REEVES of the laurel-crown he wears as first English Tenor of his age, he would long ago have set up a most dangerous opposition to that sweet singer, and have ridden off victoriously with "My Pretty Jane" seated up behind him, pillion-wise, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... correspondence. He asked the Secretary to obtain from the Deputy Grey his confirmation in the post. He accused Ormond of compelling so long a delay before Ralegh could enter, that Barry had been able to dismantle the castle. He imputed the blunder either to covetousness, or to unwillingness that any Englishman should have anything. He contrasted the multiplication of traitors in Munster by a thousand in the two years of Ormond's rule with Gilbert's suppression of a previous rising in two months. 'Would God Sir ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... duties proposed to be levied were almost prohibitory in their character." The free-list offered by the United States reads like a diplomatic joke: "burr-millstones, rags, fire-wood, grindstones, plaster and gypsum." The real bar in this and subsequent negotiations, was the unwillingness of the Americans to enter into any kind of arrangement for extended trade. They did not want to break in upon their system of protection, and they did not set a high value on access to the Canadian market. ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... the course which they were constrained in conscience to pursue, they were subject to the reprobation of those whom they most highly honored as their brethren in the faith of Christ. Some of the most heartbreaking of their trials arose directly from the unwillingness of English Puritans to sustain, or ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... forecastle, and the sale began. The jackets and trousers in which we had seen him dressed so lately were exposed and bid off while the life was hardly out of his body, and his chest was taken aft and used as a store-chest, so that there was nothing left which could be called his. Sailors have an unwillingness to wear a dead man's clothes during the same voyage, and they seldom do so, unless they ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... holding the truth in unrighteousness? How else can I explain to myself the pride which revolts from censure, the touchy disposition, the self-justifying spirit, the jealousy of my reputation, the anxiety to keep up my character? How else can I explain the inaptitude for the divine, the unwillingness to have the veil quite lifted from my heart, to display it even to my own eyes? Ah! is it not that there is still a double mind and instability in all my ways, still a want of that simplicity of faith, that humility, and poverty, and meekness of ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... subject peoples. At least in Caligula's case the provinces were as peaceful and prosperous as at other times. It is true that the madman once meant to insist on the Jews putting up his own statue in the temple at Jerusalem, but this was because his vanity was aggrieved by their unwillingness. Under Nero the case is much the same. His tyranny for the most part took the shape of cruelty, insult, and plunder in Rome itself. It was only when he was becoming hopelessly in debt that he began to plunder the provinces as well as Italy by ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... doubt that he would have earned quite as much money with "Salome" and "Der Rosenkavalier" had they been works of high, artistic merit as he has earned with them in their present condition. The truth is that he has rationalized his unwillingness to go through the labor-pains of creation by pretending to himself a constant and great need of money, and permitting himself to dissipate his energies in a hectic, disturbed, shallow existence, in a tremor of concert-tours, guest-conductorships, money-making enterprises of all sorts, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... ready to carry out his plan. Hitherto it may be said the Suitors had a certain right, the right of suit, which, however, becomes doubtful through the uncertainty about the death of the husband, and through the unwillingness of the wife. But now their guilt is brought out in strong colors, there can be no question about it. They man a boat and lie in wait for their prey on a little island which the youth has to ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... at St. Ambrose's. The little Doctor was feverishly anxious to compass both ends for his pet and scholar. In her own interest no notice must be taken of her heart-broken looks, though it wrung a manly heart, in addition to the tender hearts of Mrs. Millar and Dora, to witness May's desperate unwillingness to depart. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... his money, and though, luckily, it was stipulated that he should never have possession till the whole was paid, the estate is still on my hands, and your brother consequently not less embarrassed than ever. This is the truth, and is all the excuse I can offer for inability, but not unwillingness, to serve you. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... must be mentioned. It is a defect in our thought which, in some quarters, has by itself almost cancelled all the advantages secured. I mean the exaggerated emphasis on uniformity or continuity; the unwillingness to rest any part of faith or of our practical expectation upon anything that from any point of view can be called exceptional. The high degree of success reached by naturalists in tracing, or reasonably conjecturing, the ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... diseases at once. But cheer up, thou grave, learned, and most melancholy jackanape! Hast thou not told me that a moderate portion of thy drug hath mild effects, no ways ultimately dangerous to the human frame, but which produces depression of spirits, nausea, headache, an unwillingness to change of place—even such a state of temper as would keep a bird from flying out of a cage were ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sank back on his seat in sickening despair. He knew enough of courts to be aware of the extreme unwillingness of juries to convict, even where the evidence is most clear, when the penalty of such conviction is death. At the period of the trial most condemnatory to the prisoner, he had repeated this fact to himself, in order ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... grown men, did lodge, or to climb into the dark loft, where was barely space for a bed,—which last I did make choice of, although the woman thought it strange, and marvelled not a little at my unwillingness to sleep in the same room with her husband and boys, as she called them. In the evening, hearing loud voices in a house near by, we inquired what it meant, and were told that some people from Providence were holding a meeting there, the owner of the house being accounted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... large bribe could Michael get over the unwillingness of the iemschik, for in this instance, as in many others, he did not wish to show his podorojna. The last ukase, having been transmitted by telegraph, was known in the Siberian provinces; and a Russian specially exempted from obeying these words would ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... by Hume, for his "evasions and delays" in granting his assent to the "Petition of Right;" but now, either the parliament had conquered the royal unwillingness, or the king was zealously inclined on reconciliation. Yet the joy of the commons did not outlast the bonfires in the streets; they resumed their debates as if they had never before touched on the subjects: they did not account for the feelings of the man whom they addressed as the sovereign. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Anne Woodford had kept Lucy Archfield's birthday with her, and there was no refusing now, though there was more and more unwillingness to leave Mrs. Woodford, whose declining state became so increasingly apparent that even the loving daughter could no longer be blind ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kind, entitled, the Literary Magazine; and wrote a dedication and preface for Payne's Introduction to the Game of Draughts, and an Introduction to the newspaper called the London Chronicle, for the last of which he received a single guinea. Yet either conscientious scruples, or his unwillingness to relinquish a London life, induced him to decline the offer of a valuable benefice in Lincolnshire, which was made him by the father of his friend, Langton, provided he could prevail on himself to take holy orders, a measure that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... soul, as much as for any form of bodily nourishment. Especially in the higher walks of society, where this unutterably miserable false shame of Protestantism acts in proportion to the general acuteness of the cultivated sensibilities, let no unwillingness to suggest the sick person's real need suffer him to languish between his want and his morbid sensitiveness. What an infinite advantage the Mussulmans and the Catholics have over many of our more exclusively spiritual sects in the way they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... is known as the Fire District was organized. Its territory consists of about two square miles of land, having the Park as a centre, and includes most of the buildings of the town. It originated from the unwillingness of the outlying districts to help support a suitable fire department, of which they, themselves, felt little need. Nevertheless, at its formation the town granted land and a sum of money. A Chief Engineer, with seven assistants and a prudential committee were ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... father was supposed to be a huge black and white Newfoundland that came over in a schooner from Miquelon. Perhaps it was from him that the black patch was inherited. And perhaps there were other things in the inheritance, too, which came from this nobler strain of blood Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other dogs when they made night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense of fair play; his love of the water; his longing ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... well, I will not say that he was a universal favourite. Men did not understand him: at that time of life (alas, why not always?) most of us are open and free-hearted; they did not relish his shy and reserved manner, his unwillingness to take the initiative in any social intercourse, his exigeance to a certain extent of those forms which the freedom of college friendship is apt to neglect. "Why didn't you turn into my rooms the other night, when you came in from Oriel?" said I to him early in our acquaintance. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Miss Mary Leavenworth, in a conversation with me, acknowledges that there is a secret in the family, and is just upon the point of revealing its nature, when Mr. Clavering enters the house. Upon his departure she declares her unwillingness ever to mention ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... the officer's unwillingness to take a chance on injuring her, leaped through a gap in a wall and sprinted through a garden smothered with thick, leathery-leaved weeds, some of them higher than her head. She almost laughed with relief, but as she ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... marked the opening of the preceding month. In the night of the 2nd, a boat was taken from Parramatta by some people who got unobserved out of the harbour. The three men who were put on shore from the Cumberland at the time she was seized upon, from an unwillingness to accompany them, being in this party, it was supposed they were connected in some way with those who were in that boat, and whom they might know where to find. An armed boat from the Supply was immediately ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... suspect, that your dislike of public praise is your true objection to granting my request. I have observed that you have, in common with my two other friends, an unwillingness to hear the least mention of your own virtues; that, as a great poet says of one of you, (he might justly have said ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... But I do not take my farewell without protesting, avec tout mon coeur, at the misunderstanding to which I am persistently subjected. The inevitable bitterness in my soul does not prevent me even now to forget the sweet hours of rest that I have enjoyed here. The unwillingness on your part, monsieur, to comprehend my position, does not interfere to stifle in my breast the consciousness but of honourable purpose. I make my ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... With great unwillingness the captain of the guard of Thrieve did as he was bidden. The Earl reversed it in his hand and held it by ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... which was to take place within a few days and in which both the Black Growler and the Varmint II were to be contestants was in the mind of every one. In spite of the unwillingness of Sam to express his opinion as to the outcome, Fred insisted repeatedly upon asking what he thought. Again and again Sam evaded a direct reply as in one form or another he explained that all he did know was that ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... sallow complexion and torpid liver, which are the result of my gross living; also my melancholy disposition and tendency to look on the dark side of life. To my son Samuel I give my love for alcoholic liquors and my irritable disposition; to my daughter Jane my coarseness of thought and my unwillingness to be restrained in my desires, and also my tendency ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... victory complete, the anti-slavery friends deemed it of the highest importance to have Jane Johnson in court, to face her master, and under oath to sweep away his "refuge of lies," with regard to her being "abducted," and her unwillingness to "leave her master," etc. So Mr. McKim and the friends very privately arranged to have Jane Johnson on hand at ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... misgivings, so Richard was never told of any, though there was a careful watch kept to see what were his first impressions. None transpired, except something about good nature, but it was shrewdly believed that Richard and George, being much alike in shy unwillingness to speak, had been highly satisfied with the little trouble they had caused to each other, and so had come to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... gone, John took up the task of drilling his young wife in the Hunter ways. To Elizabeth he was a model husband. She contrasted her father's stupid inability and unwillingness inside of his home with the orderly and systematic way in which John Hunter helped her. John took part in whatever household function was taking place in his presence. He wiped the dishes if she washed them; if a carpet was to be swept he handled the broom if he were ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... own calling was in no way the pulpit. But as he was bound, before all things in the world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that a refusal on his part would grieve her, he determined to give her no hint of his unwillingness to the clerical office; and it was in this unsatisfactory mood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation he should have at Castlewood ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be more tender and more prudent. We must also remember the girl's self-reliant temperament, and the general unwillingness of women—I mean women of sense—to make a fuss over matters of ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Secretary Welles thus guardedly commented upon it in his Diary: "It appears to me a mistake to fight the enemy in so strong a position. They have selected their own ground, and we meet them there." But it was McClellan's unwillingness to do the very thing that Burnside is censured for having done, and that proved so overwhelming a disaster, that was the occasion ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was secretly somewhat disquieted, and watched narrowly for the cedars which denoted the Wynns' land. He would have abandoned the ice-boat but for unwillingness to risk the fruit of their day's journey. They must be near the swamp and the creek now; it was scarcely possible they could have passed without recognising the cove whence they had issued in the morning; and yet there was a chance. For the weather was extremely thick, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... which we are expected, in all our teachings, to shun, or only to hint at: I mean the wickedness of an impure life. Though God thunders against this appalling iniquity from the heavens curse after curse, anathema after anathema, by our unwillingness to repeat the divine utterance we seem to say, "Lord, not so loud! Speak about everything else; but if this keeps on there will be trouble!" Meanwhile the foundations of social life are being slowly undermined; and many of the upper circles ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... to desire that alliance, it was evident that he would prefer, if possible, a less extreme resource. The pope had ceased to be an object of concern to him; but he could not contemplate, without extreme unwillingness, a separation from the orderly governments who professed the Catholic faith. The pope had injured him; Francis had deceived him; they had tempted his patience because they knew his disposition. The limit of endurance had been reached at length; yet, on the verge of the concluding rupture, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... on the subject of impressment, but Jay's failure on that point was just what was to have been expected in view of the unwillingness of the United States to defend its commerce. Impressment was not abandoned until many years afterwards, and then not through treaty stipulation but because the United States had a navy and could resist aggression on the seas. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... their power to put a stop to them, and allowed the ambassadors to use whatever terms they pleased in the name of the Signory, to command him to desist. Carlo complained that the Florentines, by their unwillingness to support him, had deprived themselves of a most valuable acquisition and him of great glory; for he could have insured them the possession of the whole territory in a short time, from the want of courage in the people and the ineffectual provision they had made for their defense. He then ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... piano without a smile. Her schoolmates took her unwillingness for modesty, but in her heart of hearts her main thought was: "Why should I help this new girl to show off?" She would have played accompaniments gladly for anybody else, but she considered that Bess had already received ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was no reason why the Bristol lectures of 1814 should be more successful than the London Institution lectures of 1808; nor were they, it appears, in fact. They are said to have been "sparsely attended,"—no doubt owing to the natural unwillingness of people to pay for an hour's contemplation of an empty platform; and their pecuniary returns in consequence were probably insignificant. Coleridge remained in Bristol till the month of August, when he returned ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... audience there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to solicit Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. And this desire was suddenly made known to his wife, who was then with child, and otherwise under so dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she professed an unwillingness to allow him any absence from her; saying, "Her divining soul boded her some ill in his absence;" and therefore desired him not to leave her. This made Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of the journey, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... the difference of the two policies in what may be called the personal character of the controversies of the time. When the Republican majority in Congress had already declared its unwillingness to accept President Johnson's leadership in the matter of reconstruction, a strong desire was still manifested by many Republican senators and members of the House to prevent a decided and irremediable breach with the President. Some of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and hostile. He spoke abruptly and with evident unwillingness. Misha looked on with curiosity. He liked Trirodov—he had already heard something about him which assured pleasant relations ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... thinking resentfully that the pretty young lady was afraid to trust her with her keys, while Dainty, whose only reason had been an unwillingness to expose her simple wardrobe, proceeded to lay out a gown for the evening—a delicately embroidered white cashmere that no one would have suspected had been cleverly made over ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... powers had previously determined to erect Greece into a monarchy, and had first offered the crown to Prince Leopold, afterward King of Belgium, who, having accepted the offer, soon after declined it on account of the unwillingness of the Greeks to receive him, and their dissatisfaction with the territorial boundaries prescribed for them. Finally, the boundaries of the kingdom having been more satisfactorily determined by a treaty between ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... made the whole Mongol regime hateful. Several tax farmers were removed from their posts, and punished with death, but their successors carried on the same system. The declining years of Kublai's reign were therefore marred by the growing discontent of his Chinese subjects, and by his inability or unwillingness to put down official extortion and mismanagement. But he had to cope with a still greater danger in the hostility of some members of his own family. The rivalry between himself and his brother Arikbuka formed one incident ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States, that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow-citizens. They concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they constitute ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... a long time. He kept thinking that he ought to go, and also that he was bored, and yet he felt a singular unwillingness to leave, possibly because of his sense that the visit was in a measure forbidden by prudence. The longer he remained, the prettier Ellen looked to him. New beauties of line and color seemed to grow apparent in the soft glow from the hideous lamp. There was a wonderful starry ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... blood of victims, introduced into the tomb the war-horses of the champions, and when these rites had been duly paid, the body of Assueit was placed in the dark and narrow house, while his faithful brother-in-arms entered and sat down by the corpse, without a word or look which testified regret or unwillingness to fulfil his fearful engagement. The soldiers who had witnessed this singular interment of the dead and living, rolled a huge stone to the mouth of the tomb, and piled so much earth and stones above the spot as made a mound visible from a great distance, and then, with loud lamentation for the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... hitherto, on the religious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... for extreme humanity. It is conjectured that his unwillingness to hurt a fellow-creature intentionally was the cause of his shutting his eyes when he arrived at the fatal spot; and that the circumstance of his eyes being closed, prevented his observing the very extraordinary and unaccountable demeanour of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... chambers, to make him determine that Miss Pomeroy should never come there. And she, being in this as unlike other, commonplace, young woman as she was in everything else, had never put him to the pain of finding an insincere excuse for his unwillingness to show her the place in which he lived ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... on my mind after thirteen months at the war. No one can conceive the strain which the daily routine of trench life entails, unless one has been among the men. They never show the slightest sign of unwillingness, and they do what they are told when and where they are told without questioning; no matter what the conditions or dangers, they come up smiling and cheery through it all—full of 'grouse,' perhaps, but that is the soldier's privilege!... It is, I think, what we all are feeling and are ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the church there were many serious defects. The meeting of the synods was very difficult, partly because of the suspicions of the government, and partly from the unwillingness of the communes to bear the expense connected therewith. Again, the synods themselves answered but imperfectly to the design of their institution, and their influence on the spiritual state of the church very small. The Table, in its turn, forgetting that its duties were essentially religious, sunk ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... felt great unwillingness for anyone to leave the brig, but at the end of forty-eight hours, during which no sign whatever had been seen of the enemy, he felt that some investigations must be made to see whether they had left the island or were lurking somewhere near, in one of the patches ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... deferred by the unwillingness of old Chapman, of whom even Griff was somewhat in awe. His fame as a sportsman had to be made, and he had had only such practice as could be attained by shooting at a mark ever since he had been aware of his coming greatness. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... danger of it, to "hold fast that which is good." Let us never be afraid of trying anything new, learnt from people of different opinions to our own. And let us never be afraid of changing our opinions. The unwillingness to go back from once declared opinion is a form of pride which haunts some powerful minds: but it is not found in great childlike geniuses. Fools may hold fast to their scanty stock through life, and we must be very cautious in drawing them ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... of Orleans sat weeping in her cabinet, and yet she had been several times reminded by her tire-women that monsieur awaited her in the drawing-room. She held in her hand a letter—the apparent cause of her unwillingness to move. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... direction he has been actuated by the same spirit. Neither his dispositions in the matter nor his opinion as to the propriety of that course has undergone any change. Should the fulfillment of his wishes be defeated, either by an unwillingness on the part of Her Majesty's Government to meet the offer of the United States in the spirit in which it is made or from adverse circumstances of any description, the President will in any event derive great satisfaction from the consciousness that no effort on his part ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... advancing toward her from a distance, and actually made up to him for the purpose, but with a hurried bow, and "I beg your pardon, miss!" he brushed past. Ellen almost burst into tears. She longed to turn and run out of the store, but a faint hope remaining, and an unwillingness to give up her undertaking, kept her fast. At length one of the clerks at the desk observed her, and remarked to Mr. St. Clair who stood by, "There is a little girl, sir, who seems to be looking for something, or waiting for somebody; she has been ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... only way of obtaining a really secure peace; secondly, the desire for Asiatic dominion, which is probably accompanied in the minds of some with dreams of sapphires and rubies and golden thrones and all the glories of their forefather Solomon. This desire produces an unwillingness to abandon the Eastern policy, although it is realized that, until it is abandoned, peace with capitalist England is impossible. I do not know whether there are some to whom the thought occurs that if England were to embark on revolution we should become willing to abandon ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum's triumphant surrebutter, showing ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... do—(for I confess to nothing of the kind), but if you should detect an unwillingness to write at certain times, what would that prove,—I mean, what that one need shrink from avowing? If I never had you before me except when writing letters to you—then! Why, we do not even talk ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... reasonably familiar; tenacious when sure of his position, but not hard to persuade or to convince in a cause having merit, I have good reason to be incredulous when I hear persons gabble about the unwillingness of President Wilson to seek counsel or accept advice. For a really great man who must be measurably conscious of his own intellectual power, he has repeatedly done both things in an astonishing degree during his Administration; and when ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... society. And we may believe that the five austere and lonely years at Tynemouth, with their evening outlook over the busy waters of the harbour-bar into the stern far-off sea, may have slowly bred in her an unwillingness to plunge again into the bustling triviality, the gossip, the distracting lightness of the world of splendid fireflies. To have discerned the Pale Horse so near and for so long a space awakens new ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... sent a glance at the letter while I was folding it evidently thinking my unwillingness to offer it a sign of bad news or fresh complications. She spoke of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... possible you are sure to carry off some of the poison. Though three minutes generally elapse before the convulsions come on in the wounded bird, still a stupor evidently takes place sooner, and this stupor manifests itself by an apparent unwillingness in the bird to move. This was very ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... should propose to unlace her stays for her. But he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. She tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking she might break them and accuse him of unwillingness to come to her ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... not fancy that job, and were willing to keep out of it. So they sauntered around, attending to a few ship's duties here and there, while now and then one or another of them might have been heard to grumble his unwillingness to ever again go to sea under an English captain. The truth was that they had excellent reasons for discontent concerning the scrape into which they had been led, and they were well aware that they had not yet by any means seen the end ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... Eliza, "whether it is ignorance in them, or unwillingness, that prevents them from telling you how soon one station is coming, or how long you are to stop, even if one asks ever so many times. It would be useful if they ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... breaks out in her agony, "passing through the rocks, I have thought, 'But for this child, I would lay my head on one of them, and never open my eyes again!'" The only particular in which he remained firm was his unwillingness to give a final decision in what, to her, was the one all-important matter. His vacillating behavior was heartless in the extreme. Her suspense became unbearable, and all her letters contained entreaties for him to relieve it. She was ready, once he said the word, to undertake to support her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... speechifying presently commenced. Raghe, in a lengthy harangue hoped that the tribe would afford us all the necessary supplies and assist us in the arduous undertaking. His words elicited no hear! hear!—there was an evident unwillingness on the part of the wild men to let us, or rather our cloth and tobacco, depart. One remarked, with surly emphasis, that he had "seen no good and eaten no Bori [34] from that caravan, why should he aid it?" When we asked the applauding hearers what they had done for us, they ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... newspapers called attention to the new problems that the Old World was thrusting upon the New: the poverty of the foreigner, his low standard of living, his illiteracy and slovenliness, his ignorance of American ways and his unwillingness to submit to them, his clannishness, the danger of his organizing and capturing the political offices and ultimately the Government. In addition to the alarmist and the prejudiced, careful and thoughtful citizens ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... universities. The enormous weight of social and family pressure that is brought to bear on a youth with reference to these matters must be my excuse for a year or two of hypocrisy that was extremely irksome to me; but besides this I have a still better excuse in a sincere unwillingness to give pain to my dear guardian, and in the dread lest the declaration of heresy might even be dangerous to one whom I knew to be suffering from heart disease. I therefore lived on as a young member of the Church of England who was studying for Oxford, when in fact I considered myself ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... must be, that the acceptance of one is no more than the refusal of the other, the cause of my election. But between the one and the other the difference is made by the willingness to receive, wrought by me through the offer, and the unwillingness to receive, wrought by the man himself in spite of the offer. Faith is not the cause of our general election. That must be admitted by all. But neither can it be the cause of our particular election, for the particular is only possible, and indeed only thinkable, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... world, maintaining the family relation so far as to educate children and transact business, but conforming to the Shaker rule of celibacy. This was allowed because of the difficulty of disposing of property, closing up business affairs, and perhaps on account of the unwillingness of husband or wife to follow the other partner into the Shaker family. There are still such members, but they are fewer in number than formerly. The Novitiate elders and elderesses keep some oversight, by correspondence and by personal visits, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... be read to the sepoys stating that I had seen their disobedience, unwillingness, and skulking, and as soon as I received the havildar's formal evidence, I would send them back. I regretted parting with the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... this juncture much occupied men's minds. And it was resolved among the most considerable of the country gentlemen to make some earnest and well-combined effort, during the recess, to induce Lord George Bentinck to waive the unwillingness he had so often expressed of becoming their avowed and ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... than where we sit is "that side," evidently originating from the viewpoint of a man to whom all the world lay either on this side or that side of the river that stretched before him. When you obtain credit from a Hudson's Bay store, you "get debt." A Factor's unwillingness to advance you goods on credit would be expressed thus, "The Company will give me no debt this winter." From here northward the terms "dollars" and "cents" are unheard. An article is valued at "three skins" ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... unwillingness &c. adj.; indisposition, indisposedness[obs3]; disinclination, aversation[obs3]; nolleity[obs3], nolition[obs3]; renitence[obs3], renitency; reluctance; indifference &c. 866; backwardness &c. adj.; slowness &c. 275; want of alacrity,want of readiness; indocility ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... kept an unwearied pace, each watching with a hunter's eye for the game that supplied their food. When hunger bade, they halted and prepared their meal on the bank of some unpolluted forest brook, which, as they knelt down with thirsty lips to drink, murmured a sweet unwillingness, like a maiden at love's first kiss. They slept beneath a hut of branches, and awoke at peep of light refreshed for the toils of another day. Dorcas and the boy went on joyously, and even Reuben's spirit shone at intervals with an outward gladness; but inwardly there was a cold cold ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exhausted the resources of Congress, and every winter saw the story of Valley Forge repeated. To secure supplies, Congress was driven to authorize seizure and impressment of food and payment in certificates of indebtedness. It was for this reason, as well as from the unwillingness of the Americans to enlist for the war, that the Continental forces dwindled to diminutive numbers in 1781. Nothing but Washington's tireless tenacity and loyalty held the army together, and kept the officers from resigning in disgust. Yet it seemed impossible that ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... appearance that marks both sense and simplicity, and, if I am not deceived, innocence also—Should it be otherwise, I can only say, you are the most accomplished hypocrite I have ever seen.—I ask to know no secret that you have unwillingness to divulge, least of all those which concern my son. His conduct has given me too much unhappiness to permit me to hope comfort or satisfaction from him. If you are such as I suppose you, believe me, that whatever unhappy circumstances may have connected you with George Staunton, the sooner ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the maiden whom he had adopted was no longer a child. As he desired secrecy above all things until he should have completed the one important matter for which he had laboured all his life, he decided with extreme unwillingness to put into operation a powerful charm towards her, which would have the effect of diminishing all her attributes until such time as he might release her again. Owing to his reluctance in the matter, however, the magic did not act fully, but only in such a way that her ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Master should be sufficient to silence that fanaticism which is so anxious to tell us the exact year, month, and even the day when Christ will come. This day is hidden in the counsels of God. Jesus Himself, by a voluntary unwillingness to know, while in His state of humiliation, showed no curiosity to peer into the chronology of this event. We should not nor ought we to want to know more than Christ did on this point. Can it be that "that day" was not yet fixed ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... extent of my paper, that I design to recompence rarity by length. A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation;—a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something. Yet it must be remembered, that he who continues the same course of life in the same place, will have little to tell. One week and one year are very like one another. The silent changes made by time ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... miserable defamation which makes up the bad reputations of so many of the purest of men. Numerous other instances might be quoted to show not only the injustice with which Mr. Cooper has been treated, but the addiction of the press to libel, and its unwillingness to atone for wrongs ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... had been a Christian for many years, lived negligent of his salvation, and his masters had never been able to induce him to make confession and fulfil the obligations of a Christian; he always displayed much unwillingness and obstinacy. This man became ill with a malady, apparently not very serious, accompanied by a slow fever; but within three or four days he suddenly lost the power of speech and seemed to be surely dying. A little food ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... was not made till after the expiration of the truce) as a part of a projected general assault. Anjou's main body failed to come up, and so Conde was saved. The blame was thrown on Marshal Gonnor (Cosse) and on M. de Carnavalet, the king's tutor, whom some suspected of unwillingness to allow so much noble blood to be shed. Others accused the one of too much friendship with the Chatillons, the other of a leaning to heresy ("de sentir le fagot") Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 227. See also Cl. Haton, i. 503. These two noblemen were accused of advocating ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... that fire ever escaped from clearing operations, the cause was either thoughtlessness or unwillingness to perform certain work. Because it is easier to burn a slashing than to pile and burn; or when a ground burn is desirable, because it is easier to take chances than to clear a fire line around the area and have a force of men present; because burning at a dry, ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... to paint again—even to paint such pitiful little pictures as these—the same familiar experience repeated itself, the unwillingness of his fingers, their failure to rightly interpret his ideas, the resulting crudity of his work, the sudden numbness in his brain, the queer, tense sensation behind his eyes. But Vandover had long since become ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... is due in great part to the unwillingness of the employer to deal fairly by his employee. There have been worthy exceptions, of course, but capitalists in the main have not felt a responsibility to consider the interests of the workers. It has been a constant temptation to take advantage ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... speaking too often, and with being too forward. And he was mortified by a more serious charge than murmurs about superfluity of zeal. Men said and said again that he was Junius. His very proper unwillingness to stoop to deny an accusation, that would have been so disgraceful if it had been true, made ill-natured and silly people the more convinced that it was not wholly false. But whatever the London world may have thought of him, Burke's energy and devotion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... democratic countries to-day, where the cultivated classes, and the classes with the sternest morality, have withdrawn in disgust from the turmoil—the mob having the upper hand, the least worthy scrambling into high places, and the community suffering, and bearing a heavier yoke, by reason of the unwillingness of some to bear the yoke and do the duty of a citizen. Vice lifts up its head, morality is scouted, self-interest is pursued unblushingly, and the whole tone of public opinion is lowered. Christian men and women, remember that you are members of a community, and you bear the yoke ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... forgot his grandfather's former harshness, and reproached himself for his unwillingness to come to England, when he saw how solitary the great house was, and how utterly the feeble and paralytic old man was left to the care and companionship of servants. He wondered at first that this should be so, for the rich generally ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the understandings of men can be warped and their affections changed by operations upon their passions and prejudices, so long will the liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation. The danger to all well-established free governments arises from the unwillingness of the people to believe in its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... at the gate. With a firm, proud step, rendered more confident by his very unwillingness to betray any thing like fear, the tall, and, as Captain Erskine had justly designated him, the noble-looking Ponteac trod the yielding planks that might in the next moment cut him off from his people for ever. The other chiefs, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... when there was unwillingness or ignorance, which prevented this being acted upon, women had not the less power for their want of light and noble freedom. But it was power which hurt alike them and those against whom they made use of the arms of the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... are many and great; his conciseness, repression of personal feeling, love of accuracy, careful research, unwillingness to praise overmuch and his total absence of preconceived opinion testify to an honesty of outlook rare in classical historians. Because he feels certain of his detachment of view, he quite confidently undertakes what few would have faced, the writing of contemporary ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... despair, for it showed an unwillingness on the part of his comrade to make any farther delay on account of ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... straightened herself, with a bearing half proud half defiant, and looked away. Then in another minute, seeing her chance, she darted or glided from her covert, and before Hazel's indignant and pitying gaze, plunged into a gay bit of badinage with her lover who was passing near. No trace of regret or of unwillingness apparent; Josephine was playing off her usual airs with her usual reckless freedom; she and Charteris ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... how little able she had been as yet to read the riddle of a man's heart,—how ignorant she had been of the difficulty under which a man may labour to express his own feeling! That which we call reticence is more frequently an inability than an unwillingness to express itself. The man is silent, not because he would not have the words spoken, but because he does not know the fitting words with which to speak. His dignity and his so-called manliness are always near to him, and are ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... of the warehouseman has been mentioned. His services have developed with the need of mills for greater credit, and their unwillingness to tie up their working capital in cotton held in their own warehouses. Mills which formerly bought all their year's supply during the buying season, so-called, now take their cotton from warehouses as they want it, buying it ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... Mrs. Gray. "The language is very plain indeed; so I'll pay the fine. I pay it very willingly. It would be very dishonorable in any of us, after having deliberately adopted the rules, to manifest any unwillingness to abide ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... not like this point-blank questioning. She fidgetted in her chair and said nothing. Mr Campbell repeated his question. Mrs Blewcome repeated her movements, expressive of unwillingness ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... and honor, as much as was consistent with his vow of obedience. When he journeyed through Italy as provincial, he would not make himself known at the inns, where he lodged, lest any distinction should be paid him. To the same cause may be ascribed his unwillingness to revisit his native country, his aversion to being in company with the great, when their spiritual affairs did not require it, his not accepting the invitations of the viceroy and his consort ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... we ran across a man I had known slightly at Harvard, and other Americans with whom we made excursions and dined and went to the theatre. Maude liked these persons; I did not find them especially congenial. My life-long habit of unwillingness to accept what life sent in its ordinary course was asserting itself; but Maude took her friends as she found them, and I was secretly annoyed by her lack of discrimination. In addition to this, the sense of having been pulled up by the roots ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... letters which her father, whose eyes were supposed to be acquiring the power of those of cats, contrived to write in the darkness of Fred's room. She thought she could have borne everything excepting Henrietta's coldness, which still continued, not from intentional unkindness or unwillingness to forgive, but simply because Henrietta was too much absorbed in her own troubles to realise to herself the feelings which she wounded. Her uncle Geoffrey had succeeded in awakening her consideration for her mother; but with her and ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... town as I have done from year to year. When my garden is shamefully overgrown with weeds, I pull up some of them. I prune my apples and pears. I have a few friends who gild many hours of the year. I sometimes write verses. I tell you with some unwillingness, as knowing your distaste for such things, that I have received so many applications from readers and printers for a volume of poems that I have seriously taken in hand the collection, transcription, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven, and unafraid, and had never worn woven cloth on my body. And as the flames sprang up, and Elgiva sang her death-song, and the thralls and slaves screeched their unwillingness to die, I tore away my fastenings, leaped, and gained the fens, the gold collar of my slavehood still on my neck, footing it with the hounds loosed to tear ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Great Powers, signatories of the Articles of London in 1814, to intervene and to restore order in the Belgic provinces. The difficulties of the prince at Antwerp were very great, for he was hampered throughout by his father's unwillingness to grant him full liberty of action. He issued a proclamation, but it was coldly received; and his attempts to negotiate with the Provisional Government at Brussels met with no success. Things had now gone too far, and any proposal to make Belgium ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Seltanetta, mournfully shaking her head. "How many gold-embroidered words have you invented to cover, as with a shawl, your unwillingness to remain here. What! Did you not give your heart to love before it was pledged to friendship? You had no right to give away what belonged to another. Oh, forget your Verkhoffsky, forget your Russian friends and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... or animal, to solitude, black things, dark places, holes and corners, a human corpse," the native and unlearned response is fear. The original response of man to being alone is an experience of discomfort, to perceiving a crowd, "a tendency to join them and do what they are doing and an unwillingness to leave off and go home." It is part of man's original nature when he is in love to conceal his love affairs, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that he only made himself suspected of cowardice, without getting credit for voluntary concession. But yet his behaviour on many trying occasions effectually vindicate him from the charge of timidity, and showed that the unwillingness to shed blood, by which he was peculiarly distinguished, arose from benevolence, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... great man of genius. His genius has consisted principally in his wonderful capacity to labor for perfection in the most minute detail. And yet most ambitious misfits are unwilling to work hard. Their products always show lack of finish due to slipshod methods, unwillingness to spend time, to take pains to bring what they do up to a standard of beautiful perfection, so far as perfection is humanly possible. Those who are mentally lazy do not belong in an artistic vocation. There are probably ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... of loyalists who arrived in Nova Scotia was very great. They constituted a large proportion of the original settlers in almost every section of the colony. So termed because of their loyalty to the sovereign, and unwillingness to remain in the revolted and independent States, they found their way hither chiefly in the years 1783-4. Sometimes termed refugees, because of their seeking refuge on British soil from those with whom they had contended in the great ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens |
