"Half-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the afternoon were half-hearted and perfunctory. There was nothing more to be learned. But he had seen in his mind some vague outline of what they must meet. He saw a something, mammoth, huge, that could grasp and hold an ocean freighter—against whose great body he had seen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... aristocratic view of the responsibilities of youth and quite new to me. Caligula was worried in a like manner, I believe. We had near us there a little section of the old world which was trying, in a half-hearted fashion, to maintain itself in the midst of a democracy. It was the manorial life of the patroons—a relic of ancient feudalism which had its beginning in 1629, when The West Indies Company issued its charter of Privileges and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered, yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira, which denounces all half-hearted servitors of Heaven; and this he sang with a lilt gayer than his matter countenanced. Faintly there now came to Osmund and the Queen the sound of Camoys' singing, and they found it, in the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... partner. "But women when they get together talk all manner of nonsense. Is it likely that I shall alter my course of action because you tell me that she tells you that he tells her that he is losing money? He is a half-hearted fellow who quails at every turn against him. And when he is crying drunk I dare say he makes ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... bare suggestion of such a thing drew her into a half-hearted defense of the project. Numbers of the girls she knew down here who had been doing war work were going enthusiastically into things like that—or at least were announcing an invincible determination to do so. Only they were cleverer ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... presbyteries and conferences for the Negro, and the Y.M.C.A., with the same narrow spirit, is refusing colored men seats in its councils, while Northern Protestants are either neutral in this matter of caste or only half-hearted in crying down upon the sin of it; the Catholics alone have accepted in a full and liberal sense the command, "preach my gospel to every creature," and have extended fellowship to all, regardless of race, color or condition. It matters not what their motive is. The fact stands boldly out. ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... I admired the manifesto very much myself; it was a timid and half-hearted document, but it was at least sympathetic and tender. The purport of it was to say that, just as historical criticism has shown that some of the Old Testament must be regarded as fabulous, so we must be prepared for a possible loss of certitude in some of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... run after them, but it was a half-hearted run and he brought up a very laggard rear. He never tried to get anything for himself that the clannish Mullarkey brood had in their possession, or to which they could with any shred of justice lay claim. If he did, he knew by experience ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... adopt, of course, is the feint—a feint being a false attack, or rather a move as if to attack in a line which you threaten, but in which you do not intend to attack. All feints should be strongly pronounced or clearly shown. A half-hearted feint is worse than useless; it is dangerous. If you have a foeman worthy of your steel facing you, he will detect the fraud at once, and use the time wasted by you over a feeble feint to put in ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... to another, but no movement followed. There was no sleep for the defenders that night, and at dawn, in spite of Stefan's forecast, another attack was made upon the gate. It was as unsuccessful as the first, nor was it made with such determination. The obedience to orders was only half-hearted. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... a half-hearted conversation on trout flies, and as we approached "the American" I was explaining the deadly nature of the Red Palmer after a spate and the advisability of including Greenwell's Glory on the same cast. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... two thousand persons asking that German representations under Mr. Seidl be included in the Metropolitan scheme, Messrs. Abbey, Schoeffel & Grau made German opera a factor in the next season; but they did so in a half-hearted way, which defeated its purposes and brought punishment instead of reward. Nevertheless, German opera had returned to the Metropolitan to stay, and henceforth will call for attention along with the Italian and French performances in this history. Meanwhile, since I have begun it, let me finish the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... away, to stand in Kaffir or coal trucks and to expose themselves cheerfully to the fierce sun, and other elements. The streets were palpitating with burghers ready to proceed to the frontier that night, and with refugees speeding to the stations. Everybody was in a state of intense feeling. One was half-hearted, another cheerful, and a third thirsting for blood, while many of my men were ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... be so incidentally treated. He lives in the age of the comparative sciences and of anthropological research. He sometimes uses, though in a half-hearted and incomplete fashion, the results of inquirers in these fields of research, but he nowhere deals with the problem fully. His sins are not general, but special. He agrees with one statement of his original authority and disagrees with another, and we are left with a chaos ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... world took sides against the King's party in this British civil war. France, Spain, and Holland were thirsting for revenge. So when they saw a vile creature like Lord George Germain bungling through a war Pitt never would have made; when they saw British generals half-hearted because belonging to the party that opposed the King's; when they saw how steadfastly Washington fought; and, most of all, when they saw how much the Royal Navy was weakened by the Opposition in Parliament, who stopped a ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... Pinega. In place of the three hundred dispirited White Guards was a well trained regiment of local Russian troops which, together with recruits, numbered over two thousand. Under the instruction of Lieut. Wright of "M" Company, who had been trained as an American machine gun officer, the at first half-hearted Russians had developed an eight-gun machine gun unit of fine spirit, which later distinguished itself in action, standing between the city and the Bolsheviks in March when the Americans had left to fight on another front. Also ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... catastrophe. In the course of the inquiry which was held evidence was given showing that the gaol surgeon had reported the state of affairs to the proper authorities some days before, but in a formal and half-hearted way. Evidence however was forthcoming that four of the prisoners (themselves medical men) had forcibly represented the extreme seriousness of the case to the gaoler, the gaol surgeon and the landdrost of Pretoria, and had induced the assistant-gaoler and warders to support their ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... a great resource in the family, and it was a half-hearted matter for us unless we were at his side. His gait was one of long, easy steps which were leisurely and not rapid, and he cast an occasional look around, stopping if anything more lovely than usual was to be seen in sky or landscape. It is the people who love their ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... endeavors, tentative and half-hearted, to repristinate my venery were foredoomed, partly because I had feared they were, to failure: erection was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gone down to the village to look into some rumours of a strange woman who had been seen by some children on the Chatham Road the previous morning. As to my friend, all his usual energy seemed to have deserted him. I had never known him handle a case in such a half-hearted fashion. Even the news brought back by Hopkins that he had found the children, and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman exactly corresponding with Holmes's description, and wearing either spectacles or eyeglasses, failed to rouse ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was silence, then the clamour broke out with redoubled violence, and a portion of the multitude made a rush round the edge of the pool towards the rock platform, which was repelled by the soldiers in a very half-hearted way. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Half-hearted, fainting Molly went through her little part with the accustomed success. Her pretty English-Italian, her English lips, again her eager hands, so anxious to search friends out, found their sure way to one ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... made everything right for me, denied all things though we are. After ten years of struggle with the vineyard, with several conspicuous failures and now and then a half-hearted success, I have at last rejoiced Mother's heart—and my own as well—with the largest crop within my memory or hers. The fruit, too, has ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... fortune, and received them back once more into the bosom of their special clique. The Mafia had indeed languished considerably during their absence. Nobody had troubled very much to keep up its activities, and it had held only one or two half-hearted meetings. Now that its nine members were together again, however, the secret society set to work with renewed vigor. Insensibly it had rather altered its scope. It had begun originally for the purpose of resisting the aggressions of Laurette, Hester, and Truie, but ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... final solution of a problem which troubled him so much that he had become dissatisfied with Confucianism, as it had no proper diet for his now spiritual hunger. Thus Shang Kwang was far from being one of those half-hearted visitors who knocked the door of Bodhidharma only for the sake of curiosity. But the silent master was cautious enough to try the sincerity of a new visitor before admitting him to the Meditation Hall. According to a biography[FN30] of his, Shang ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... his arm, he went out into the little street, where in his shabby clothes he was recognized by none and leaned for a time against the mongrel, underfed tree that was hesitatingly greeting the spring with a few half-hearted leaves. He bathed himself in the warm sun which seemed over-glorious for so mean a street; he filled his lungs with the tangy May air; yes, it was wonderful to ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... were alone together. The servant who had been sent with the news keeping watch at the door outside, and Humphrey, for the time, seemed to go over, half unconsciously, the scenes of the taking of Axel, and Mary listened to it not exactly with half-hearted sympathy, but with the perpetually recurring cry at her heart that God would restore ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... had summoned the army of the city to the Field of Mars, and century after century had entered the enclosure to cast its vote for Varro—for Varro alone, until no one of the noble candidates, who received the half-hearted support of their fellows, got even enough pebbles to be proclaimed elected to the second consulship. To Varro alone, cringing and insolent, was the oath administered; for Varro alone was the prayer put up; for Varro was the declaration twice made, according ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... it is one of the most suggestive facts we know of—that the very growth of the public conscience has helped to make peace somewhat more difficult, war vastly more terrible. When war was the game of kings and soldiers, the nations went into it in a half-hearted way, and sincerely loathed it; now that war is literally an outburst of popular feeling, the friend of peace finds most of his logic powerless. There is little use in reasoning with a man who is ready to die ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... reason for the fickleness, as well as for the insatiability of the poet's love. If the poet's genius consists of his peculiar capacity for love, then in proportion as he outsoars the rest of humanity he will be saddened, if not disillusioned, by the half-hearted return of his love. Mrs. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... woman pleading at the bar of justice could have seemed more in earnest. Of one thing I was quite sure: she had found it worth her while to convince us if that were possible. She was playing no half-hearted game. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... help its votaries in the hour of peril; the victory of the Voizins was attributed to the superiority of their Gods rather than to deficiency in courage on the part of their foes: this theory, which was not unpalatable to those who had been half-hearted in defence of their homes, was also utilized by the more sober spirits as an argument wherewith to restrain the more ardent from attempting to renew the struggle under similar conditions. The observances of the religion of Thor and Odin, or rather of that debased ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... fact, we were never in any real danger, for our pursuit was very half-hearted indeed. To begin with, now that their first rage was over, the Orofenans who were fond of us had no particular wish to do us to death, while the ardour of their sorcerers, who wished this very much, had been greatly cooled by the mysterious annihilation of their idol and the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... I understand. Ha! Ha!" replied Riasantzeff, laughing in a faint half-hearted way. After that ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit, they aren't half-hearted ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... be, I think, impossible to find a touch or trace of anything less vile than it was devilish. Even Goneril has her one splendid hour, her fire- flaught of hellish glory; when she treads under foot the half-hearted goodness, the wordy and windy though sincere abhorrence, which is all that the mild and impotent revolt of Albany can bring to bear against her imperious and dauntless devilhood; when she flaunts before the eyes of her "milk-livered" and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... voyage from Dover to Ostend was dismissed in two lines: 'Under way 7 p.m., wind W.S.W. moderate; West Hinder 5 a.m., outside all banks Ostend 11 a.m.' The Scheldt had a couple of pages very technical and staccato in style. bland Holland was given a contemptuous summary, with some half-hearted allusions to windmills, and so on, and a caustic word or two about boys, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... matrimonial projects had been pursued only in half-hearted fashion during this year, and on his return to England in December, he seems to have thrown up the game in despair. On January 2, 1829, he turned his back on our perfidious shores, and made a short tour in France before proceeding to Muskau. In one of his letters to Lucie he admits ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... little Genevieve, the twelve-year-old daughter of Michel, did not appear. The table was kept waiting for an hour. Michel sat down but could not eat, and, after scolding awhile in a half-hearted fashion, he went to the clearing down the road, where the child had been playing. A placard was seen upon a tree beside the way, and he called a passing neighbor to read to him these words: "Meshell Coosy. French ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... off, she asked me to play something for my father. There is only one thing in the world that can make music, at all times and under all circumstances, up to its general standard; that is a hand-organ, or one of its variations. I went to the piano and played something in a listless, half-hearted way. I simply was not in the mood. I was wondering, while playing, when my mother would dismiss me and let me go; but my father was so enthusiastic in his praise that he touched my vanity—which was great—and more than that; he displayed that ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... value of play in this respect arises from the instant muscular response to volition. Delay, half-hearted response, inattention, preoccupation, whimsicalness, carelessness, and every sluggish performance of the order of the will, disqualifies the player so that when we take into account the adolescent passion to excel, and the fact that 80 per cent of the games of this period are ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... Record against admitting Unitarians to the Universities or allowing them to sit in Parliament. England is a Christian State, he said; they are not Christians; they have no right in her except on sufferance. Well, I suppose he was about right,' said the vicar with a sigh. 'We are all so half-hearted nowadays.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Marthereau, as he espies an over-ripe infant on whose bladder-like cheeks are shining deposits of jam, for the ensnaring of the dust in the air. He offers a half-hearted caress in the direction of the moist and bedaubed countenance. The woman ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... brings to us a breath of winter. Already the daylight has taken to itself wings and flown partially away; and though, as yet, a good deal of it through compassion lingers, it is but a half-hearted dallying that speaks of hurry ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... addressed by the presiding officer to a bishop, sounds incredible, and considering the great influence of religion on all Spaniards of that time, it is not wonderful that after such insolence, this petty official was regarded by the entire community as excommunicated; a half-hearted apology, ungraciously made, sufficed however ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this universe nothing compares with that of life followed by eternal redemption through personal effort interpreted by a mediator. The bare Christian tenets have a nobility that it kills me to see belittled by the bored, half-hearted observances of most of its protestants, who in turn are not to be blamed for being half-hearted and bored by the dogmas and restrictions and littleness with which the great bare scheme has been enmeshed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mistake, and a hot sympathy for the colonists which was not long resolving itself into as burning a patriotism as any in the land. It was not in him to do anything by halves, it is doubtful if he ever realized the half-hearted tendency of the greater part of mankind. He studied the question from the first Stamp Act to the Tea Party. The day he was convinced, he ceased to be a West Indian. The time was not yet come to draw the sword in behalf of the country for which he conceived a romantic passion, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... serious subjects are in very bad taste, young man," said Aunt Caroline. But her rebuke was half-hearted. She looked uneasy. "John," she added with sudden suspicion, "you don't suppose they could ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... disaffected; he at once ordered that what had been taken should be paid for, and that persons trespassing thereafter should be severely punished. He found also the great nobles who commanded in the army half-hearted and almost traitorous from sympathy with those of their own caste on the other side of the walls of La Rochelle, and from their fear of his increased power, should he gain a victory. It was their common saying, that they were fools to help him do it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... appertaining to his study which the age brought forth, but without developing the new modes of mental life requisite for the recognition of all that such facts involved. The theories of evolution he did not venture openly to resist, but his acceptance of them was so half-hearted that practically he made no use of their teaching. He was no man of science, but an idler among the wonders which science uses for ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... European coalition. They therefore concurred in establishing a republican government; and here, again, they were right. For, in that struggle for life and death, it would have been madness to trust a hostile or even a half-hearted leader. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as it is still called—which twenty years since was a wide waste of land, but is now divided by new fences, very grievous to half-blown horses. Sir John Purefoy got a nasty fall over some stiff timber, and here many a half-hearted rider turned to the right into the lane. Hampton and his Lordship, and Battersby, with Fred Botsey and Larry, took it all as it came, but through it all not one of them could give Larry a lead. Then there ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... English relatives visited his uncle in Lisbon, where in six months he laid the foundation of his knowledge of Spanish history and literature; the Church and medicine had already, as possible careers, been abandoned, and on his return to England he made a half-hearted effort to take up law; still unsettled he again visited Portugal, and finally was relieved of pecuniary difficulties by the settlement of a pension on him by an old school friend, which he relinquished in 1807 on receiving a pension from Government; meanwhile had ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Six—eleven—forty-two—nineteen—twelve" to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang "Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... invariably cowards, they lived in mortal terror lest this creature of theirs should break out into St. Helena leprosy again and impose further humiliation upon them. Lowe had talked of actions for libel against Barry O'Meara, and in a whimsical, half-hearted way worried his employers to give battle, and the law officers of the Crown stated a case but advised against taking action, and so it was never brought, though O'Meara kept telling them in so many words to come on. "I am anxious ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... Julia made a half-hearted attempt, and managed to grasp the ledge, but her hold was so feeble that Tom dared not withdraw his support He was powerless to act, and they would both drown unless help ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... After numerous half-hearted attempts, he arose one day about noon; then, having eaten a tasteless breakfast and strengthened his languid determination by a stiff glass of "hootch," he strolled out of town, taking he first random trail that offered itself. It was a wood trail, leading nowhere in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... his report, for, mindful of what he had told them of the unsatisfactory nature of Dr. Thornhill's evidence, Mr. Gregg in the Daily Wire and Mr. Douglas on the Daily Planet were dealing with the case in a half-hearted manner, though they were still clamouring with some vivacity for the ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... but the one way before me: to profit by an excellent bed, to try to sleep soon, to be stirring early, and to hope for some renewed occasion in the morning. To have said so much and yet to say no more, to go out into the world upon so half-hearted a parting, was ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children would cry. It wanted to get out of bed and sit on the po-po. Nothing strange or unusual or lovely would or could happen. Life was too close, intimate. Nothing that could happen in the apartment could in any way stir him. The things his wife might say, her occasional half-hearted outbursts of passion, the goodness of his stout mother-in-law who did the work of a servant ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... really think we shall not require him," says Barbara. Something in the glittering brightness of her sister's eye warns her to give in at once, and indeed she has been unconsciously a little half-hearted about having Felix or any stranger as a travelling companion. "There, run away, Joyce, and go to your bed, darling; you look very tired. I must still arrange some ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... not clear sailing, but all hard passages can be bridged, if you just think they can and concentrate on how to do it. But if you think the obstacles are unsurmountable, you will not of course try, and even if you do, it will be in only a half-hearted way—a ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... was silent. But his head was too hot to wear a thinking cap, and no story would come at his half-hearted call. ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... came without question to believe in her. She was the woman meant to be his mate and he had called to her and she had come to him. His moment of doubt had fled with his declaration. Otherwise he would have been the paler personality which it was not in him to be, half-hearted. Of her passion and pride he made character. From the look which he had seen in her eyes he made tenderness and truth. Every attribute of that ideal which is somewhere in the heart of every man, until at last the one woman ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... at hand. He had feared that some such mischief would arise. Seeing that two other soldiers were running to the aid of their fallen comrade, he suddenly gave the signal for the revolt of the slaves. It was premature. Taken by surprise, the half-hearted among the conspirators paid no attention to it, while the timid stood more or less bewildered. Only a few of the resolute and reckless obeyed the call, but these furnished full employment for their guards, for, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter whether those twenty years had been spent in the complacent routine of a rustic in holy orders; in the dogmatism, defensive or aggressive, of scholastic youth; in fruitless efforts to understand the new views of which he was one day to be the chief representative; or in half-hearted hesitation whether, after having so far understood them, he could part with all things for their sake. Which of these positions he held, or how far he may have passed from one to another, we may never be able to ascertain. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... hastily, ashamed of the half-hearted way in which I had given my promise. "The instant we are out of this place I will take steps to grant your ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 'Either you go to sleep, or I'll call father!' But no obstacle is so difficult that depravity cannot twist around it and even while he threatened 'I'll call father,' I slipped into his bed and took my pleasure in spite of his half-hearted resistance. Nor was he displeased with my improper conduct for, although he complained for a while, that he had been cheated and made a laughing-stock, and that his companions, to whom he had bragged ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... himself about the matter, but sent back an answer by his wife, that the price of transporting the freight from one railway to another at Breslau, Berlin, Magdeburg, and Cologne, would render the scheme impossible. Balzac showed unusual docility at this juncture; he was evidently already half-hearted about the enterprise, and remarked that since his first letter he had himself thought of the objections pointed out by M. Surville, and had remembered hearing that a forest purchased in Auvergne, had ruined the buyer, owing ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Bismarck, and your disciples in Germany and other countries, (including a few in my own,) make up your mind. To be ruthless and frightful in a half-hearted, nervous, vacillating fashion is ridiculous. You have either got to go back to the beginning of things, and make war a battle of wild beasts, or you have got to go forward and make it a game—a grim game, I grant you, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... President, when he returned to his allegiance, he offered to the service of his reunited country the same zeal and devotion he had given to the Confederacy. There was no reserved or half-hearted loyalty. We could have counted on his care for the honor and glory of his country, on his wise and brave counsel, in this hour of anxiety, with an unquestioning confidence. So Massachusetts to-day presses the hand of Tennessee and mourns with her for ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... question his amazing energy. He delivered his long series of Philippics at Rome, and kept up a correspondence with the various provincial governors and commanders, all short-sighted and selfish, and several of them half-hearted, endeavouring to keep each man in his place and to elaborate a common plan of operations. He was naturally included in the list of the proscribed, though it is said that Octavian fought long on his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... this the house of our solemnities, on this the instalment of our great Christian festival. It will be easy to devote the accessories, when the principal bestowment has been rendered. I claim from you this sacrifice for God. Yourselves, not a half-hearted homage, not a divided service, not a stray emotion, not a solitary faculty; yourselves, you all, and all of you; your bodies, with their appliances for service; your souls, with their ardour of affection; intellect, with ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... up all other notions as to the future and get down to business and learn this trade. Now make up your mind; go at your work with the feeling that you are determined to succeed. If you go at your work in a half-hearted way you are certain ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... book as Hints and Helps had never existed, Abner shot for the gate—he was but a hobbledehoy fascinated with the idea of playing gentleman. But in Ross there were the makings of a man. For a few half-hearted paces, under the first impulse of horror, he followed his deserting chief, the laughter of the family, the unrestrainable guffaws of the negroes, sounding in the rear. But when Champe's high, offensive ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... She would slip out of her room unheard, and speed over the dark country on moonless nights on his errands; she would seek for weapons and bring them in and distribute them; she would take his messages to those on whom he could rely, and rouse to his cause the hesitating and half-hearted by repetition of his words. Her whole young life had caught fire at his; and her passionate loyalty accepted without comprehending all he enjoined her or told ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... and the passion of his love struck upon her soul and arrested her attention. There is something so touching and so pitiful in that first boy-love that asks for nothing in return, craves for no other reward than to be suffered to exist; that amongst all the selfish and half-hearted passions of older and wiser men, it must needs elicit some response of gratitude at least, if not of answering love, in the heart of the woman who is the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... to extract but little comfort and solace. Neither Laurens nor Conybear, however, were for annihilating it: although they took the other side of the discussion of a subject of which none of us knew anything, their attacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still under the spell exerted ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reproach to him as to profess love and be lukewarm. God wants all your heart. If he can not have it all, he will have none. He desires warm, fervent love. To love him only partially, and not supremely, makes it appear as if he were worthy of only half-hearted love. It makes other things ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel Bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise your ambition—and so great, so influential an ambition!—by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... foreign policy, see Adair, p. 11-13. Its principle was to relinquish the attempt to raise coalitions of half-hearted Governments against France by means of British subsidies, but to give help to States which of their own free will entered ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... compensates for the trouble of looking after them, for when in that state they fight like tigers, especially if they have not been long together. Once, however, the bulls become friendly, they only fight in a more or less half-hearted way amongst themselves; but woe betide any alien who finds himself near them—they will then band themselves together and fall upon that stranger until even his master would not recognise him. There is no fun attached to travelling along a much-frequented track, on ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Lentulus, in no very affable tone; "the heat and din of the city will drive me mad! And I have had no end of troublesome business. The senators are all fools or slaves of Caesar. That treacherous rascal, Curio, is blocking all our efforts. Even Pompeius is half-hearted in the cause. It wouldn't take much to make him go back to Caesar, and then where would ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... well as Melito, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Lactantius, Commodian, and Victorinus lived in these hopes no less than did Papias, the Asia Minor Presbyters and Justin.[623] But this is the clearest proof that all these theologians were but half-hearted in their theology, which was forced upon them, in defence of the traditional faith, by the historical situation in which they found themselves. The Christ, who will shortly come to overcome Antichrist, overthrow the Roman empire, establish in Jerusalem ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... my life to trade," he said, "and I have grown weary of watching the half-hearted simpletons who imagine they can rise to the top by thinking more about themselves than they do about the business. You, Mr. Gissing, have won my heart. You see storekeeping as I do—a fine art, an absorbing passion, a beautiful, thrilling sport. It is an art as lovely and subtle as the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... said he. "I envy Orange. He will know things that I can never know—now. I haven't lived up to my thoughts. I am not remorseful—I don't believe in remorse. It is a thing for the half-hearted. But if I am not sad, I am not especially gay. The middle course between sentimentality and gallantry seems to me intimately immoral and ridiculous into the bargain. So I am an idealist with senses. There are times when I hate life. And why? Because life is evil? By no means; but because we tell ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the acceptance in our family of the new order of things. The new dynasty, as was natural, raised Louis to the Peerage and made him a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. The oath once taken, l'Estorade could not be half-hearted in his services, and he has since then made himself very useful in the Chamber. The position he has now attained is one in which he can rest upon his oars till the end of his days. He has a good deal of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... No cook can withstand such a compliment as that, and Ossie cast off his gloom. They all declared that that dinner was just about the best they had ever eaten, and they meant it, and Ossie swelled visibly with pride and almost declined Han's half-hearted ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had worked so hard over it, it did seem to him as if he ought to be able to sell some of his produce. One day he loaded a little cart with vegetables and went down the street to a corner market. I imagine he went in a half-hearted sort of way. The market-man was busy and he spoke a bit roughly to the boy. But Newton went on to another store. He received the same sort of treatment there. This time he gave up discouraged and went home. His mother was not discouraged. She showed him how he should have made ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... so; but he forced himself to join the cheering crowd and to make a half-hearted pretense of rejoicing. All the while he was thinking that Grant owed everything to him, and that perhaps he had been foolish in training a fellow to fill his shoes in such an emergency. For Phil had long entertained the ambition of becoming the first pitcher on the academy nine, and this ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... of Georgia spread away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch of water bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only saved from oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze. Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore made tentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib of a small half-decked sloop working out from ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and sewed from seven in the morning until six at night. Mr. Stone had left her there and come away, feeling that an unpleasant matter was disposed of. He had made some inquiries as to where she intended staying, even added a half-hearted invitation to dinner that evening at his home. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... British Provinces would, at last, force the subjects of the Queen to seek admission into the Republic. So it was, and is and will be; and the only way to prevent aggression and war was, is, and will be, to "put our foot down." Not to cherish the "peace-in-our-time" policy, or to indulge in the half-hearted language, to which I shall have hereafter to allude—but to combine and strengthen the sections of our Colonial Empire in the West—to give to their people a greater Empire still, a nobler history, and a prouder lot: a lot to last, because based ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... definition until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 had formally won the principle of trading-rights at five open ports, and thus established a first basis of agreement between England and China (to which all the trading powers hastened to subscribe), these interests expanded in a half-hearted way until 1860, when in order to terminate friction, the principle of extraterritoriality was boldly borrowed from the Turkish Capitulations, and made the rock on which the entire fabric of international dealings in China was based. These treaties, with their always-recurring "most-favoured ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... political speculators so unreservedly trusted. In France, some fifty years earlier, the destructive theorist had swept all before him; in England, while he was assaulting with effect the entrenchments of Conservatism, he was taken in flank by the moderate reformers. Mill had denounced the Whigs as half-hearted and even treacherous allies, who dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... would have been a half-hearted denial of my statement. I presume I expected something of the sort. But this ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to go any farther into the direct examination of Mrs. Elsie Morton, nor into the half-hearted efforts of Smilk's disgusted lawyer to shake her in cross-examination. Nor is it necessary to introduce here the testimony of Mrs. Jennie Finchley, who succeeded her on the stand. It appears that ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... extended half-hearted generosity to Jay, because she was, after all, a 'bus-conductor, and to that extent a nob. She shook her head and laughed, when he held out ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... in getting material. The inevitable smuggling has resulted. In order to put a check on illicit removal, all passengers now leaving the Union are searched before they board their ships. Nor is it a half-hearted procedure. It is as drastic as ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... all hold together in this quarter everything will go right. My duty principally is to find out if there are any signs of wavering; there are no signs, of course, among the butchers, but some of the others are thought to be but half-hearted." ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... know the beauty and the dignity, the purity and the humanity, of that aristocratic patriarchal South which produced such beautiful figures as Lee and Lanier. Not even his most enthusiastic biographers have attempted to palliate, save with half-hearted facetiousness, his inglorious desertion of the cause which he had espoused. Mark Twain is the most speedily "reconstructed rebel" on record. Is it broad-minded—or even accurate!—for Mr. Howells to say of Mark Twain: "No one has ever poured such scorn upon the second-hand, Walter-Scotticised, pseudo-chivalry ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... another voice, pretty close behind his ear. Young John, now he had learnt that wrens can talk, had no difficulty in recognising this other voice: it was the half-hearted note of the titlark. He turned over on his side and peered into the shadow of the Main-Stone; but in vain, for the titlark is a hesitating, unhappy little soul that never quite dares to make up its mind. ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which brought money and men and open aid from France; the decisive event was the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, October 19, 1781, to Washington, commanding the allied French and American forces, with the aid of the French fleet. Although the war was still continued in a half-hearted way, the Cornwallis disaster convinced England of its hopelessness, and led to negotiations for peace. In these the diplomatic talents of Franklin eclipsed his financial abilities. And this was the more remarkable, since he was not trained in the diplomatic ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... resist. He even sought to conceal his depth of feeling under a disguise of lightness. He admitted that in his present frame of mind he ought to be with her as much as possible, as then, if ever, he stood in need of a sure antidote for the blues, and with a half-hearted jest he closed the conversation, and after that call merely kept away from her. It was hard for him, and as hard for her; but if he had honor, she had pride. So they ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... which constantly increased, and almost every student in Yale came to Christ. "No man liveth unto himself alone." We are responsible for the souls of other men. We are also responsible for their service; if we are half-hearted they ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... the priesthood, the other great office of divine appointment. Their first care was to rear some poor copy of the Temple; and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any sort, and dog every movement that rests upon religious enthusiasm, beset them —strong enemies, and half-hearted friends, and personal jealousies weakening still more their weak forces. In this time of anarchy, of toil at a great task with inadequate resources, of despondency that was rapidly fulfilling its own forebodings, the Prophet, who was the spring of the whole movement, receives ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... they went, and the Barbarians seemed springing to meet them. From the mainland a tumult of voices was rising, the myriads around Xerxes encouraging their comrades by sea to play the man. No indecisive, half-hearted battle should this be, as at Artemisium. Persian and Hellene knew that. The keen Phoenicians, who had chafed at being kept from action so long, sent their line of ships sweeping over the waves with furious ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... carrying the war again into Virginia were followed with high hopes for his success. The officers of the army, however, did not share the popular confidence in their new chief and some of those highest in authority gave him only a half-hearted support. ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... as leader of the king's party, was an open enemy; Grafton, a half-hearted friend. The duke (1736-1811) would have visited him in the Tower (1763), "to hear from himself his own story and his defence;" but rejected an appeal which Wilkes addressed to him (May 3) to become surety for bail. He feared that such a step might "come under the denomination of an insult ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron |
