"Half-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the unreliability of his ideas, as seems necessary in the cultivation of a tentative attitude, may he not come finally to lack decision and energy? Certainly we now and then see examples of indecision and half-hearted action, due at least in part to appreciation of opposing points of view and to ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... situation which he could have prevented. His own early hostility, his later indifference and negligence, his actual protection given to Democratic opponents of the measure, his own reversal of policy practically at the point of a pistol, the half-hearted efforts made by him on its behalf, were all coming to fruition at the moment when his continued prestige was at stake. His power to get results on this because of belated efforts was greatly weakened. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... him. In his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness—that he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal were selfish and half-hearted. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... be done," cried Bob. "I will give my life to it. Everybody hates war in the abstract, but no one seems to throw himself heart and soul into a great peace crusade. Even the Peace Society is half-hearted. The cause of Peace hasn't been voiced of late years. That's it," and Bob rose to his feet excitedly; "I see my work, Nancy. Neither your father nor any one else shall say that I'm unpractical, or that I sit still and do nothing. Think of the glory of such a cause! Think of destroying for ever the ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... 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
... to think? Happiness stands on a brink Whence too easy 'tis to fall Whither's no return at all; Have a care, half-hearted lover, Thought would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... that any one thoroughly sympathized with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my mother, and she was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out on a "wild-goose chase." At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent from her that I might start. The small amount of money that I had earned had been consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the family, with the exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very little with which to buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... have remained undiscovered. For instance, it is not generally known that Mrs. Pennycook has lost control of her husband. Yet, such is the fact. She is still a great stickler for principle, but she trembles if her husband looks at her. It appears that Dan Pennycook's half-hearted accusation of Miss Pickett as the author of the anonymous note found on the body of Boras O'Rourke preyed on the spinster's mind, and when Bob McGraw started an investigation she could stand the strain no longer. She fled in terror to the Pennycook home and made certain demands upon ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... interest of the Chinese Educational Mission here in the U. S. Well, it was very funny. Joe had been sitting up nights building facts and arguments together into a mighty and unassailable array and had studied them out and got them by heart—all with the trembling half-hearted hope of getting Grant to add his signature to a sort of petition to the Viceroy of China; but Grant took in the whole situation in a jiffy, and before Joe had more than fairly got started, the old man said: "I'll write ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the new Council. Talk to them in your own way, and they'll understand you. I want the Society to be an absolutely voluntary one, or it's of no use. Don't let them think they must join merely to please me. I'd rather have a dozen who are in earnest over it than a hundred half-hearted members. Only those who feel enthusiastic need give in their names. I don't mind if it begins in quite a humble way. Indeed, I only expect ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... yelp, suddenly flattened its body and wriggled under a corner of the shed, Pink turned and rode after the others, who had passed the corral and were heading for the upper and of a small patch of green stuff that looked like a half-hearted attempt at a vegetable garden. As he passed the shed an Indian in dirty overalls and gingham shirt craned his neck around the doorway and watched him malevolently; but Pink, sighting the green patch and remembering their dire need of water, was kicking his ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... tasted too lipsticky, like the red-paint job on its rind, and the Gouda seemed only half-hearted. Both too obviously ready-made for commerce with nothing individual or custom-made about them, rolled or bounced over from Holland by the ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the forward stragglers, and then the main columns advancing at the double swept the disordered masses before them, and forced them rearward into their intrenched position in front of the Karez village. There the resistance was half-hearted. After a brief artillery preparation the columns carried the position with a rush, and the Kohistanees were routed with heavy loss. Meer Butcha and his Kohistanees well beaten, Macpherson camped for the night near Karez. Baker had reached his assigned position in the Maidan valley, and there ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... throughout the wild districts of Celebes and Sumatra they play a spirited part. The burghers of Ambon show more of the Dutch element in their composition. The island, Christianised in the dreary mode of Calvinistic Holland, accepts in half-hearted fashion the creed so incongruous with tropical Nature. Dutch missionaries, waging aimless war against brightness and colour, arrayed their brown converts in funereal gloom. The Sunday attire of the men consists of black calico coats down ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... I know it well; I've heard its prayers and creeds, And seen men put them all to shame with poor, half-hearted deeds. They follow Christ, but far away; they wander and they doubt. I'll serve him in a better way, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... was the verdict of grateful subalterns, who found these tea-drinkings a vast improvement on stale home papers, and half-hearted gambling at the Club. There was always music. Honor, besides playing magnificently, could be safely relied upon for impromptu accompaniments. The Chicken, and an irrepressible Irishman of the Sikhs, who gloried in the name of O'Flanagan, were indefatigable on the banjo, and in the construction of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... intentions and intrigues of the clergy, threatened to close the Chapel of St. Orberosia, and spoke without respect of the National Virgin. The entire Right rose up in indignation; the Left appeared to give but a half-hearted support to the rash Minister. The leaders of the majority did not care to attack a popular cult which brought thirty millions a year into the country. The most moderate of the supporters of the Right, M. Bigourd, made the question ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Lulworth, "the migration idea was falling somewhat into disrepute from the half-hearted manner in which it was occasionally carried out. You were not impressed by the information that such and such a paper was being edited and brought out at Lisbon or Innsbruck if you chanced to see the principal leader-writer or the art editor lunching as usual at their accustomed ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... 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 more than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bound to fail, and fortunately Col. Jones, who was on the spot and just about to start with Capt. Allen, received the order to cancel the attack. It would have been a useless waste of lives, for no good could have come of such a half-hearted effort. Half-an-hour later the Staffordshires were ordered to withdraw and the 5th Leicestershires to take over the front line, while the 5th Lincolnshires came in on our left and relieved the ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... to make some sort of half-hearted apology, but his sister wouldn't listen to it. Polena's dignity was touched. She was a woman of consequence in East Harniss, was Polena. Her husband had, at his death, left her ten thousand dollars in her own right, and she owned bonds and had money in the Wellmouth Bank. Nobody, not even her brother, ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a boatman who offered to take us ashore. An uglier fellow I had never seen in the East. The morning sunshine soon dried the decks of the gunboat Kinsha (then stationed in the river for the defense of the port) which English jack-tars were swabbing in a half-hearted sort of way, and all looked rosy enough.[B] But for the author, who with his companion was a literal "babe in the wood," the day was most eventful and trying to one's personal serenity. We had asked questions of all and sundry ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... amiable, generous wrangle as to which of the parents should enjoy the adult form of amusement. But while the Professor grew more and more half-hearted in his protestations that he really didn't care where he went, Mrs. Marshall grew more and more positive that he must not be allowed to miss the music, finally silencing his last weak proffer of self-abnegation ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 have known ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and to believe that I should restore him to his owner. At any rate, before we retired to rest he prevailed on himself to eat some supper which I prepared for him, pausing every now and then in his meal to lift his infantile face to mine and wag his tail in a half-hearted manner, as though he said, "You see I am doing my best to trust you, though you are a medical student!" Poor innocent beast! Well indeed for him that he had not chanced to stop at the door of my neighbor and camarade, Paul Bouchard, who had a ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Lester Stark's rather half-hearted greeting—Lester Stark never had liked Dacre Wynne and they both knew it. "You here as well? Merriton's giving me a send-off and no mistake. Gad! you chaps will be envying me this time next week, I'll swear! ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... 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 to avoid an ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... but in a half-hearted manner, and tugged heavily at the ends of his moustache, while he scrutinised Mollie's face through half-closed lids. She beamed at him gaily in response, scorning ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sat dumbfounded, his face flushing to a dull, dark red, for he saw in a moment what the thing that had happened would mean to those others—the audience before him—the men he had summoned to listen to his half-hearted words. ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... fluctuate; pendulate^; alternate &c (oscillate) 314; keep off and on, play fast and loose; blow hot and cold &c (caprice) 608. shuffle, palter, blink; trim. Adj. irresolute, infirm of purpose, double-minded, half-hearted; undecided, unresolved, undetermined; shilly-shally; fidgety, tremulous; hesitating &c v.; off one's balance; at a loss &c (uncertain) 475. vacillating &c v.; unsteady &c (changeable) 149; unsteadfast^, fickle, without ballast; capricious &c 608; volatile, frothy; light, lightsome, light-minded; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the sands of Dee. It leaves the upper blue clear and the head of Orion, but dims the flicker of Sirius and shortens the steady ray of the evening star. The people scattered about are not mining people, but half-hearted agriculturists, and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... grasped the calf by the forelegs and drew the forlorn little animal up before him on the saddle. As it stretched out quietly across his thighs, following a half-hearted struggle to escape, Kay saw Don Mike give the orphan his left index ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to play poker or drink, but ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the course of his life from the time when he resolved to labor with all his powers in the office of poet. The first two years, during which he lived with his self-sacrificing sister at Racedown, in Dorset, were spent in half-hearted and very imperfectly successful experiments—satires in imitation of Juvenal, the tragedy of "The Borderers," and a poem in the Spenserian stanza, the poem now entitled "Guilt and Sorrow." How much longer this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... long illness and with impaired sight, this bright, little woman's keen interest in current events and the latest "best seller" puts to shame the half-hearted zeal of the ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... Zutphen Sconces. Both these officers turned traitors and delivered up the posts they commanded to the Spaniards. Their conduct not only caused great material loss to the allies, but it gave rise to much bad feeling between the English and Dutch, the latter complaining that they received but half-hearted assistance ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... gods in a cursory manner, and to insist that men shall set out from their homes with this purpose and none other in their minds, so Numa thought it wrong that the citizens should see or hear any religious ceremony in a careless, half-hearted manner, and made them cease from all worldly cares and attend with all their hearts to the most important of all duties, religion; so he cleared the streets of all the hammering, and cries, and noises which attend the practice of ordinary trades and handicrafts, before any holy ceremony. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... however doomed to disappointment. The methodical, remorseless advance of powerful forces filled the tribesmen with alarm. They made a half-hearted attempt to capture the Panjkora bridge, and finding themselves forestalled, fell again to discussing terms. In this scene of indecision the political officers employed all their arts. And then suddenly the whole huge combination, which had been raised in our path, collapsed as an iceberg, when southern ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... so," returned Lewes. He was occupied with his own interests; he doubted Challis's intention to continue his work on the book—the announcement had been so half-hearted. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Archbishop Lee, Bishops Tunstall and Gardiner, and Bennet,[862] were now all in secret or open opposition, and even Longland was expressing to Chapuys regrets that he had ever been Henry's confessor;[863] like other half-hearted revolutionists, they would never have started at all, had they known how far they would have to go, and now they were setting their sails for an adverse breeze. It was the King, and the King alone, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... earth. Ashes everywhere. Trees, houses, the fertile fields, the mountain slopes—all were smothered under a layer of monotonous pallor. They knew what it meant. It meant ruin to their crops and vineyards. None the less, they raised a shout, a half-hearted shout, of praise. For Nepentheans are born politicians and courteous by nature. It is their heritage from the Good Duke Alfred to "keep smiling." A shout was expected of them under the circumstances; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... 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. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... kingfishers and king-crows utter their familiar notes; even these birds are heard but rarely in the middle of the day, nor have their voices the vigour that characterised them in the hot weather. Occasionally the brown rock-chat emits a few notes, but he does so in a half-hearted manner. In the early days of August the magpie-robins sing at times; their song, however, is no longer the brilliant performance it was. By the end of the month ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... of a young, provincial thrown into the heart of a great city; still retaining some good and true feeling, still clinging more or less to the observance of certain rules of conduct, still fighting in vain against the debasing influence of evil examples, though I offered but a feeble, half-hearted resistance, for the enemy had accomplices within me. Yes, sir, my face is not misleading; past storms have plainly left their traces there. Yet, since I had drunk so deeply of the pure fountain of religion in my early ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... with his shoulder against the mantelpiece, listening in a half-hearted way to his sisters' conversation. With a heavy jerk he threw himself upright and slowly crossed the room. He stood for some moments immediately behind Hilda without touching her. Then he raised his hand and with gentle, almost ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... a certain type of speaking, which, while not strictly a mannerism, is detrimental to the highest effect. It manifests itself in physical weakness. The speaker is uniformly tired, and his speaking has a half-hearted tone. The lifelessness in voice and manner communicates itself to the audience, and prevents all possibility of deep and enduring impression. Joseph Parker said that when Sunday came he felt like a racehorse, and could hardly wait for the time to come for him to go into ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... 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
... festival of the year, was approaching, and all the community was stirred with deep desire for its worthy celebration. Sociability ceased, or at best was sustained in limp, half-hearted fashion by the men. The ladies had other things to think of; for on them rested the sole responsibility of the Christmas preparations—the providing of copious lodging for expected guests, the bedecking of rooms ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the history of the English Legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war where prisoners received no quarter and the soldiers on either side were left without pay or rations. In a half-hearted manner England went to the assistance of the Queen Regent of Spain, and one error in statesmanship led to many. It is always ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... saw in the distance the grand grey towers of Stancy Castle looming over the leafless trees; he felt stupefied at what he had done, and said to himself with bitter discontent: 'Well, well, what is more contemptible than a half-hearted rogue!' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... had hoped. He became a Confederate hero over night, and there was no longer any danger of his being recalled. There were several half-hearted attempts to kick him upstairs—an offer of a commission in the now defunct Virginia Provisional Army, which he rejected scornfully, and a similar offer in the regular Confederate States Army, which he politely declined because ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... or to show me 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 sincere appreciation which always ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... 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 that you ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... endurance, his chivalry to the uttermost; and he will never fail her for an instant—he will never even confess to himself in the loneliness of his own heart that there is anything amiss. The severest criticism he will ever pass upon her will be a half-hearted wish that she should exhibit the best side of herself more consistently. And so I come at last to think that there are many worse things in the world for a strong man than to be the bulwark and fortress of a thoroughly ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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. It used to be the friend of a race that ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... distasteful idleness, Ernest became quite a human being; invaluable as baiter of worms for the children's fish-hooks, as extra butler, and did not scorn even temporary experiments as kitchen-maid. In fact, he proved the half-hearted recommendation that he "might be useful" so thoroughly that the first person of all to be especially invited for next year ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Concentration is the prime requisite in attaining rapid results. The student must concentrate absolutely upon the various qualities sought, and must infuse intelligent impulse into his every nerve and muscle! The vibrant voice of the spirit cannot be evoked by half-hearted effort, lazy nerves and muscles, nor with the drag of inattention. The student who does not intend to arouse himself need hope for no keen sense ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... he said. "The devils rushed us, but we drove them back by volleys from the loopholes, killing half a score and losing one ourselves. The ground dips down to the fort there, and we had a clean sweep. They won't molest us on that side again—it was a half-hearted attack, anyway." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... Gruithuissens departed, Humphrey and Mary Gifford 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 to her her ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... his for a long moment, and before the challenge in hers, his fell. He remembered then those doubts that had assailed him when this girl had been sentenced to prison, remembered the half-hearted plea he had made in her behalf to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Pompey and the aristocracy on the one hand, and Caesar and the new democracy on the other. His leanings had hitherto been toward Pompey and the senate and the old republic; but as time went on, he felt that Pompey was a half-hearted man, who could not be trusted, and that he would have ultimately to succumb to his far abler and more far-sighted rival, Caesar. The result was that he lost the esteem of both parties, and came to be regarded as a mere trimmer and time-server. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... crowd, half-hearted, moved chiefly by a cruel delight in destruction for its own sake, and giving voice at intervals to coarse comment of which the wittiest penetrated through a stream of profanity, like one of those same splinters of glass, to the consciousness of at least two of the three men ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... that my kebuns had cut with their keen parangs, or jungle-knives. Ten feet within the confines of the forest the metallic glare of the sun and the pitiless reflections of the China Sea were lost in a dim, green twilight. Far ahead I could hear the half-hearted snarls of the cowardly, deserting curs, and Aboo Din's angry voice rapidly exhausting the curses of the Koran ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... statement of the manner in which a supernatural power has thought fit to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of the biological sciences during the last twenty years, doubts that science will sooner or later make this further step, so as to become possessed of the law of ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... foreign policy, east of the Mississippi, was generally looked upon as anaemic and nebulous. He had permitted, so the Republicans contended, the honor of the country to be stained and Americans to be destroyed, without effective action. His early opposition to preparedness and the half-hearted measures of army reform had proved his weakness, at least to the satisfaction of Republican stump orators. He had won the hearty dislike of the bankers, the manufacturers, and the merchants by his attacks on capitalist interests and by his support of labor unions. The Clayton Act, which ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... the more annoying to Mr. Hazard because his orthodoxy was his strong point. Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. Of all weaknesses he most disliked timid and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because it could not be explained. The idea that these gossiping parishioners of his should ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... 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 equal ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... 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, knowing that failure meant death, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... Newton, had a nice vegetable and flower garden. He 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 his ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... insult as a demi-tasse. Then, too, she loses caste at once; for it is not enough that a girl should not do evil: she must also avoid the appearance of evil. She will be judged by the character of her companions, and a few half-hearted denials, a shrug of the shoulders, a discreetly suppressed smile, will place her among the list of ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Bourgeois' spoilt tunes were still far better than what they made for themselves, and sufficient not only to float their book into credit, but to kindle the confused enthusiasm of subsequent English antiquarians, whose blind leadership has had some half-hearted following. But if these French tunes, and those which are pieced in imitation of Bourgeois, be extracted from this English Psalter, then, with one or two exceptions, there will ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... 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 ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and it helped me through the worst time in my life. My uncle, after some half-hearted resistance and a talk with my aunt, behaved like the father of a spoilt son. He fixed up an arrangement that gave me capital to play with, released me from too constant a solicitude for the newer business developments—this was in what I may call the later Moggs period of our ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... concerned. Not as far as the United States was concerned, however; for when the circumstance became known to Mr. Leggett, he excoriated Mr. Irving for his subserviency to a bloated aristocracy, and so forth. Mr. John Wilson reviewed the book in Blackwood's Magazine in a half-hearted way, patronizing the writer ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Court preventing a certain Scotch bookseller, caller McFarquhar, from reprinting the letters in Edinburgh. Whether the executors believed Mrs. Stanhope's story, or saw no reason to object to the publication of the letters, I do not know, but it is clear that the opposition was a half-hearted one. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... English settlers vaguely sad to see all the Cherokee traditions and prestige, and remnants of prehistoric pseudo-civilization, shattered in the dust, and the tremulous, foreign, unaccustomed effort—half-hearted, half-believing, half-understanding—to put on the habitude ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... want to know what they are to do; they feel that they are only half-hearted in God's service; they have neither joy nor power, and say, "What must I do?" and we take, as God helps us, the dissecting knife, and try to find out the difficulty. We get them down under the blaze of the Holy Spirit's light, and try to probe them and find where they are wrong. Perhaps ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... ground. Then they crossed Purbeck field, 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 was manoeuvring into a wood and out of it again, and that saddest of all sights to ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... ready for his new North German Confederation; but he would bring them in—somehow—later! As for Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Frankfort, and Schleswig-Holstein, they were now mapped with Prussia, their crime being this, that they had opposed Prussia in a half-hearted ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... morning interested me more than even most of your letters, and that is saying a good deal. I must scribble a little on several points. About Lyell and species—you put the whole case, I do believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted and whole-headed." (168/1. Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken up by Lyell in the "Antiquity of Man" is illustrated in the "Life and Letters," III., pages 11, 13. See also Letter 164, page 239.) I wrote to A. Gray that, when I saw such men as Lyell and he refuse to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... as I turn from the portico to the hall and vast domed house of books. The half-hearted light under the dome is stagnant and dead. For it is the nature of light to beat and throb; it has a pulse and undulation like the swing of the sea. Under the trees in the woodlands it vibrates and lives; on ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... as editor is little more than half-hearted. Its purpose was at first partly commercial, permitting advertising in the preface. Four ladies urged him on, so, Richardson confesses, he "struck a bold stroke in the preface... having the umbrage of the editor's character to screen [him] self behind."[15] But the author nevertheless ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... but yet quite cordial, consented. Mabel showed the others all the secret doors and unlikely passages and stairs that she had discovered. It was a glorious morning. Lord Yalding and Mademoiselle went through the house, it is true, but in a rather half-hearted way. Quite soon they were tired, and went out through the French windows of the drawing-room and through the rose garden, to sit on the curved stone seat in the middle of the maze, where once, at the beginning of things, Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy had found the sleeping Princess who ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... exchanged with lips that seemed hardly to move, remaining motionless, her eyes fixed before her in an enduring silence; and presently Charley coming in to whom she did not even give a glance. He hardly said good morning, though he had a half-hearted try to smile at the girl, and sitting opposite her with his eyes on his plate and slight quivers passing along the line of his clean-shaven jaw, he too had nothing to say. It was dull, horribly dull to begin one's day like this; but she knew what it was. These never-ending family ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for only so will it become OUR faith. The halt in indifference or in hostility is easy enough and seductive enough. The half-hearted thinks that when he has attained that stage he has completed the term of human wisdom. I say go on: do not stay there; do not take it for granted that there is nothing beyond; incessantly attempt an advance, and at last a light, dim it may be, will arise. It will ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... astonishment of the enemy, the new-comer ranged himself by the King's side, and all setting spurs to their horses, the brave beasts shook themselves free from those who grasped their reins, and together broke into a gallop, trampling down and driving to the right and left those who, half-hearted now, held fast and strove to stop ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Bryce, who knew him well, is said to have seen in him the stuff for a great man-of-affairs, a leader of armies or a captain of industry. His excursions, however, into such fields, though sometimes noteworthy in result, were transient and more or less half-hearted. His allegiance, given so early to the sublimest of pursuits, held him to the end. The Government of the United States placed him in its highest scientific position, at the head of the Naval Observatory, and his serious work from first to last was in the solemn labyrinths where the stars ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... merely in theory. In the south the clans of Judah and Simeon were not long in rallying round him, and their neighbours the Kenites, with Caleb and Jerahmeel, soon followed their example. These southerners, however, appear to have been somewhat half-hearted in their allegiance to the Benjamite king: it was not enough to have gained their adhesion—a stronger tie was needed to attach them to the rest of the nation. Saul endeavoured to get rid of the line of Canaanite cities which isolated them from Ephraim, but ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... 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
... idle or the half-hearted gardener will complain that he has no work to do in the short dark days of this month. Although there may be little or nothing to plant or sow, and few flowers need repotting, yet there are soils to obtain and store for future use; former heaps to turn over and remake; dead ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... troops, and inspire with courage the most stupid men. He would sit up all night, if necessary, after riding thirty or forty leagues, to attend to correspondence, dispatches and details. What a lesson his career affords to the shiftless and half-hearted! ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... a subject which I hold to be of much moment as the leading instrument, never to be replaced by another, let me beg of you to abandon a half-hearted consideration of its adoption in actual work later on, unless you be prepared to suffer for this fine art, a member of the body of which it is your present thought to become; for, be assured, there ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... had in fact engaged himself to Mr. Drake in August before he had come to Great Keynes at all; and that in honour he must keep his engagement. He asked pardon of his father for his hastiness; but it seemed a cold and half-hearted sorrow; and the letter ended by announcing that the little fleet would sail in November; and that at present they were busy fitting the ships and engaging the men; and that there would be no opportunity for him to return to ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... might probably have succeeded, have maintained her Christianity, or even recovered her independence, had her people been of one mind, and had no defection from the national cause manifested itself. But Vasag, the Marzpan, had always been half-hearted in the quarrel; and, now that the crisis was come, he determined on going wholly over to the Persians. He was able to carry with him the army which he commanded; and thus Armenia was divided against itself; and the chance of victory was well-nigh lost before the struggle had begun. When ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... circle, and of course they all got down their ropes in a second, and putting spurs to their fiery little horses started toward the bears at a run, shouting and swinging their loops round their heads. For a moment the old she tried to bluster and made a half-hearted threat of charging; but her courage failed before the rapid onslaught of her yelling, rope-swinging assailants; and she took to her heels and galloped off, leaving the cubs to shift for themselves. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... the smell of a young Cub. Her own were about his age, her heart was touched, and when he found courage enough to put his nose up and smell her nose, she made no angry demonstration except a short half-hearted growl. Now, however, he had smelled something that he sorely needed. He had not fed since the day before, and when the old Wolf turned to leave him, he tumbled after her on clumsy puppy legs. Had the Mother-wolf been ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... happier; he, or Sailor, again and again splashing through the water and returning with a bird in his mouth. As for me, I'm afraid I am but a half-hearted sportsman, for I noticed that, as the bang-bang-bang of the gun shivered the silence like a crystal mirror, those white spirits of the morning, till then massed in dazzling purity on the mangrove coppice, rose once more in ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... these ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened immersion—a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from themselves. Theresa—it really was hard on her—shared their eclipse. Hence the humble obscurity of the free ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... that it is an easy or a 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 nature is weak, and has need of tricky aids, even in ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... to a politician in Rome. Whether Cicero was right or wrong, none can 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 behalf, and was slain near Formiae on the 7th of December 43. He had a ship ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... success of his experiment and stimulated by a petition signed by about 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. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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, paint, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... without reproach, and it will be given him. Only let him ask with faith, with never a doubt, for the man who doubts is like the waves of the sea, driven and tossed by the winds. Let not such a man think, that a half-hearted man, unstable in all his ways, will ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... an honest fellow," he exclaimed, "and I believe thee. Half-hearted men are useless to me. Thou art released from ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... We read their thoughts by the light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case mutilation. Those who did know them listen in despair to the half-hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and are apt to exclaim, as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, 'Ah! you have never been under ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... which they carried off first honors at that same competition certainly ought to inspire all Boy Scouts to emulate their example, and never be satisfied with half-hearted efforts. I sincerely hope and trust the stirring happenings that fall to the lot of Paul and his chums, as related between the covers of the present volume, may give every reader the same amount of pleasure that I have ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... much to his friend as to the youth, and there can be no doubt that this consideration was the restraining force with many who have been stigmatised as half-hearted Reformers, because though they loved truth, they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wretch know that half-hearted opposition from him would only fan the flame hotter among the men who considered ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 form of it which prevailed ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... Nor was he half-hearted in his histrionic work. One night he died so realistically on the stage that his eldest son, who sat in the audience, became so terrified that he screamed out in terror, and would not be pacified until his parent appeared smilingly before the curtain and assured ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... "But why be half-hearted?" I went on. "That's the folly. It seems to me that some one among your generals must be blundering very badly if Antwerp is to be so scandalously neglected. The lesson that it might teach if properly handled! ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... the wagtail family. They have not the lively colouring of the wagtails, being clothed, like skylarks, in homely brown, spotted or streaked with dark brown or black. They have the wagtail trick of wagging the tail, but they perform the action in a half-hearted manner. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... deficiencies it may be marked The Ring and the Book is blameless for the most characteristic of all the shortcomings of contemporary verse, a grievous sterility of thought. And why? Because sterility of thought is the blight struck into the minds of men by timorous and halt-footed scepticism, by a half-hearted dread of what chill thing the truth might prove itself, by unmanly reluctance or moral incapacity to carry the faculty of poetic vision over the whole field; and because Mr. Browning's intelligence, on the other ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... half-hearted opposition, but finally, as I knew he would, consented. I had gained my point: I was free from Miss Gittens ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... 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 giggle, topping ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its 'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' gets altered; or ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... had said the night before. A discussion having been started as to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz, after sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... off and gave up the half-hearted chase, employing the short time still remaining before darkness fell in effecting some very necessary repairs to their ships; while the broken remnant of China's northern squadron pursued its halting way toward Wei-hai-wei, ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... 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 the waves dash in a line of white spray. Yet a something ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various |
