"Half-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vagueness, without any flattering metaphor; he is prepared to accept or endure any answer if only it be the truth. Whether his discussion leads to a trustworthy result or not, the sincerity and the energy of his endeavour after truth serve to banish all supine and half-hearted moods. The debate, of which his poem is a report, falls into two parts: first, a statement of facts; secondly, a series of conjectures—conjectures and no more—rising from the basis of facts that are ascertained. To put the question, "Shall I survive death?" is to assume that I exist and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... establishing a force of a dozen able-bodied guards, armed with clubs, to assist the police in disputing the shore line with the rioters. The police themselves had proved ineffective, even betraying a half-hearted sympathy with the union men, who were not slow to profit by it. Even so, the day passed rather quietly, as did the next. But in time the agitation became so general as to paralyze a wide section of the water-front, and ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... is speaking of his departure from Spain, but he is thinking of his departure from Malta, and his half-hearted amour ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... retract &c 607; 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the popular party led by Jefferson. Mixed with and succeeding this came an exasperating and perplexing struggle for commercial rights, invaded equally by England and France in their gigantic grapple; an ineffectual defense by Jefferson, who in executive office proved an unskillful pilot; a half-hearted war under Madison, a closet statesman out of place in the Presidential chair; a temporary alienation of New England, exasperated by the loss of her commerce and suspicious of the Jeffersonian influence; a participation in the general peace ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... have reasons, chivalry must have facts. You have vowed your love and loyalty a hundred times, and still, when a great crisis confronts me, you question, you grow angry, you complain, because my reasons are unknown to you. Because I am lonely, because I feel the need of even your half-hearted loyalty, I shall tell you why, why. Do you know what terror is? No. Well, it was blind terror which made me run. I counted not the consequences; my one thought was of instant flight. I shall tell you why I am lonely, why the world, bright to you, is dark. I am proud, but I shall bend my pride." With ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the products of stuffy air, mean food, and casual or half-hearted parentage, often tainted with hereditary or acquired disease, the faces are; but, worse than all, how insignificant and indistinguishable! It is well known that a Chinaman can hardly distinguish one Englishman ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... curious, he spoke of everything except his garden tobacco. I emphasize this here at starting, lest any one should think that I was in any way responsible for the manner in which our experiment was conducted. If fault there was, it lies at Pettigrew's door. I remember distinctly asking him—not in a half-hearted way, but boldly—to produce his tobacco. I did this at an early hour of the proceedings, immediately after I had lighted a second cigar. The reason I took that cigar will be obvious to every gentleman ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... loves righteousness and his fellow men, it must always be painful to be misunderstood; and misunderstanding is specially inevitable where he acts upon principles beyond the recognition of those around him, who, being but half-hearted Christians, count themselves the law-givers of righteousness, and charge him with the very things it is the aim of his life to destroy. The Lord himself was accused of being a drunkard and a keeper of bad company—and perhaps would in the present day be ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... returned to the charge. But a change had come over him. The Attorney-General, elucidating a point of importance, caught his chief's eye wandering, and followed it, surprised, to that ball of paper on the table. The Secretary of State could not understand why the Governor agreed in so half-hearted a way when he urged with eloquence the victim's speedy sacrifice. Finally, the august master of the house growing more and more distrait, he suddenly rose, and picking up the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "Fact is, Balderstone, I'm glad of it. She's too snippy for me, and I'm afraid I should have quarrelled with you about her in a half-hearted, unconvincing manner." ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 form of it which prevailed among ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... the seigneurs should lend a hand in encouraging the immigration of people from their old homes in France. Some of them did this. Robert Giffard, who held the seigneury of Beauport just below Quebec, was a notable example. The great majority of the seigneurs, however, made only half-hearted attempts in this direction, and their efforts went for little or nothing. What they did was to meet, on arrival at Quebec, the shiploads of settlers sent out by the royal officers. There they gathered about the incoming vessel, like so many land agents, ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... 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 circumstances, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... stops. His professional experience saved a calamitous situation. With an acrobat's stride he reached the stage, telescoped fiddle and bow to normal proportions, and after a lightning nod to the chef d'orchestre, played the Marseillaise. At the end there was half-hearted perfunctory applause. A light hearted section of every audience applauds anything. But mingled with it there came from another section a horrible sibilant sound, the stage death warrant of many an artist's ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Edam 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
... well as his words, commended. And as soon as he began to smack his rosy lips, which nature had fitted up on purpose, over a rasher, or a cut of gammon, or a keg of best Aylesbury, or a fine red herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... he began speaking, Mariana fixed her eyes upon him. Kollomietzev, who was sitting beside her, turned to her with various compliments (he had been asked not to start a dispute), but she did not listen to him; and indeed he pronounced all his pleasantries in a half-hearted manner, merely to satisfy his own conscience. He realised that there was something between himself and this young girl that could ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... justice of courts of law or equity; and those who profess the morality of Jesus Christ have abjured, in that profession, all that can be urged by policy or worldly prudence. From them we can accept no half-hearted and calculating generosity; they must make haste to be liberal; they must catch with eagerness at all opportunities of service, and the mere whisper of an obligation should be to them more potent than the decree of a court to others who make profession of a less stringent code. And remember ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 his "mashes." ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... do. You might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... sadness within this abode of the dead. "How many unfinished lives," he thought, "have ended beneath these sods! Unimproved talents here are buried in the ground. Unattained ambitions, and those who died before their time; those who tried, in a half-hearted way, to improve their opportunities, and accomplished something, and those who neglected them, and did still less—all are together here, the just with the unjust, though it be for the last time. The grave absorbs their bodies ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... parted in a smile. She was thinking of something Harz 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 he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... relief, and now it was rather unreasonable to suppose that they should relieve their reliever. Indeed, they had an entirely exaggerated idea of the strength of the force which he was bringing, and received the news of his capture with incredulity. When it became confirmed they rose, but in a half-hearted fashion which was not due to want of courage, but to the difficulties of their position. On the one hand the British Government disowned Jameson entirely, and did all it could to discourage the rising; on the other, ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lines suggest another 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. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... liberal provision for the representation of the Uitlanders," and urge Her Majesty's Government to appoint a Joint Commission—a proposal to which the British Government had declared that it was impossible to return. The effect of this somewhat half-hearted effort was, however, on this occasion appreciably diminished by the fact that the nationalist petition was accompanied by a resolution presented by fifty-three Progressive members of the Cape Parliament, embodying their entire disapproval ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... were heads!' From Bures, near Bayeux, in this department, where Henry was then holding his court, the four knights followed the Primate to Canterbury, sternly bent on showing their lord that they were neither 'sluggish nor half-hearted.' Of the abbatial buildings which stood here then few traces are left. But the handsome modern mansion built here by Guizot rests, I believe, on the massive foundations, and certainly incorporates some of the solid masonry above ground of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... at length decided to commence work as carriers; we rented a four-acre paddock, and built a small wooden hut, and were in treaty for the purchase of the necessary drays and teams, but it was all being done in a half-hearted way, as well as in opposition to the best of our advisers. C——'s aversion to undertake anything where he was not entirely his own master was unconquerable. Doubtless the carrying business would have answered very well, for ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... grandchildren," she said. "As a matter of fact, I shall probably run them down in my motor as they go to work with their little dinner-pails. And as I take their mangled forms to the hospital, I'll murmur: 'Riatt, Riatt, I think I once knew a half-hearted ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... 8 in half-hearted way. To the Grahams, then to the Arrakan Pagoda again, too tired and mosquito-bitten to do much after getting there—a nostalgia of colour these last few days—but saw the golden Buddha. The florid iron gates were open, and an immense light shone on the seated and kneeling worshippers ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... days the remnant of the defeated fleet had been surrendered or burned at its anchors. The army of Canidius, after a half-hearted attempt at an inland march, and after being further weakened by desertions, declared for Octavian, and ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Queen marched an army of eighteen thousand men against them from Edinburgh; their forces dispersed in face of superior numbers, and Murray, on seeking shelter in England, was received with contumely by Elizabeth, whose half-hearted help had failed to support his enterprise, and whose intercession for his return found at first no favor with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 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 ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To'oto'o's half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To'oto'o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... well from which he must be continually refreshed and stimulated. Some called that well by the name of religion, unity with God. Some called it faith in mankind, faith in the destiny of the world, that faith in man which is faith in God. But it must be a real belief, not a half-hearted, shivering faith. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... considers menial or unjust may be a pretty good fellow, but in the wrong environment, but the malcontent who takes your order with a smile and then secretly disobeys, is a dangerous proposition. To pretend to obey, and yet carry in your heart the spirit of revolt is to do half-hearted, slipshod work. If revolt and obedience are equal in power, your engine will then stop on the center and you benefit no one, not ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... disciplined regulars and Loyalist militiamen for another fight. On the Heights themselves the American musketry had slackened while most of the men were entrenching; but the Indian fire kept growing closer and more dangerous. Up-stream, on the American side of the Falls, a half-hearted American detachment had been reluctantly sent down by the egregious Smyth; while, on the other side, a hundred and fifty eager British were pressing forward to join Sheaffe's ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... 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
... 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... principles to make a colossal 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... anxious, dearest, because there is probably no cause for it. Though I know how easy it is to give advice, and how difficult to take it, even when it is oneself. Though perhaps that is really harder, being often half-hearted. And now we will go to bed, and things will look brighter in the morning, especially if it is fine. And the glass going up as I came through the hall. Quite time it did. I always had sympathy with the boy in the poem—Jane and Anne Taylor, wasn't it?—who smashed the glass in the holidays because ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... to do utterly away with the sharing and partaking business he so much loathes. He will not call contradiction the glue in one place and identity in another; that is too half-hearted. Contradiction must be a glue universal, and must derive its credit from being shown to be latently involved in cases that we hitherto supposed to embody pure continuity. Thus, the relations of an ego with its objects, of one time with another time, of one place with another place, of a cause ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... ridiculing people who say that twice two are five. They even resent a dogmatic statement that twice two are four. Perhaps they think four and a half a very fair compromise. Now this is recreancy to truth, and therefore to progress. No great cause was ever won by the half-hearted. Let us be faithful to our convictions, and shun paltering in a double sense. Truth, as Renan says, can dispense with politeness; and while we shall never stoop to personal slander or innuendo, we shall assail error without tenderness or mercy. And if, as we believe, ridicule is the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... later,—two hours later,—to receive from Scotty himself the intelligence that Florence was out but would soon return. Evidently the Englishman had been instructed; for, though he added an invitation to wait, it was only half-hearted, and being declined the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... strong defenses or heavy guns to defy attack, and my troops are not more than a thousand men, all told. It is obvious that I must make for the interior. There, I gather strength as I advance, the warships cannot pursue, and I can choose my own positions to meet the half-hearted forces that Dom Miguel will collect to oppose me. In fact, I and every armed man in ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... worship of God was soon to begin. Several of the other smacks also flew Bethel-flags. These belonged to the whole-hearted ones who had fairly and boldly come out on the Lord's side. Others drew near, although they did not fly the flag. Some of these belonged to the half-hearted, who wanted medicines or books, and were rather indifferent about the meeting, though willing enough, perhaps, to remain ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... rocky, half-formed trail to Cottonwood Spring, reluctantly but with no more than a half-hearted kick from Subrosa to register their disgust. And to that Lance gave no heed whatever. He did not so much as twitch a rein or yell a threat. He drove surely—with one hand mostly because of the broken knuckle, which was painful in the extreme—ignoring ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... will-o'-the-wisp fantasy before him, and from day to day he endeavored to discover how deeply in love she was willing he should fall. He was really fond of her, a fact that did not prevent his entertaining a half-hearted passion for Ethel Mott, the result of this mixture of emotion being that he was the slave, albeit with a difference, of either lady with whom he chanced to be. That he was the plaything of Mrs. Staggchase's fancy he ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... again at four o'clock, and proceeded under the Deputy President with the order of the day. But it was a half-hearted business. No one was really interested in anything except the fate of Dr. Svensen, who, it had transpired from inquiry among the boat-keepers, had not taken a boat on ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... you see, and with a beautiful spring. Deadly weapon, isn't it, sir? Even a half-hearted sort of ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fact that, ere long, instead of being his servants, they might become his masters. When, therefore, the British government offered him a subsidiary force of six battalions, and to guarantee him against any further aggression by the Mahrattis, he accepted the proposal; but in a half-hearted way, that showed he could not be relied upon for any efficient assistance ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... 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 youth, I was haunted in the depths ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... no humour to stand half-hearted work; it will bow its proud head only to the man who pours out sweat; and Bourdaloue's standard of excellence will hold for all time. His answer to the question "What was your best sermon?" is: "The ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... 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 rascal. Pay me my money and you have ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... 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! Out on the briny for a decently long trip; plenty ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... peace, he should return the vessels he had taken, and send men of figure and consequence to treat, instead of the obscure individual through whom his overtures had come. In spite of this peremptory reply, Toolajee continued to make half-hearted proposals for peace. The fact was that he was now at open war with the Peishwa, who had made himself master of the Concan, with the exception of the coastline. According to Orme, Toolajee had cut off the noses of the agents sent by the ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... 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
... this. But these demands had met with no success. Even as regards the more subordinate features of the Hildebrandine reformation, simony and the celibacy of the clergy, the response of the Norman and English churches to the demand for reformation had been incomplete and half-hearted, and not even the beginning of a papal party had shown itself in either country. This exceptional position is to be accounted for by the great strength of the crown, and also by the fact that the sovereign in his dealings with the Church was following in both states ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... ignorant British common soldier of the time any deep conviction as to the merits or demerits of the cause for which he fought. There is no evidence that, once in the army, he was less ready to attack the Americans than any other foe. Certainly the Americans did not think he was half-hearted. ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... 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
... 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 ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Asclepiodotus, whose crime was that he had not deserted an unfortunate friend, with the striking words, "Such is the even-handedness of Heaven towards good and evil conduct." Even his praises of the government of Trajan are half-hearted and incredulous; "the rare happiness of a time when men may think what they will, and say what they think," is to his mind a mere interlude, a brief lightening of the darkness before it once more descends on a world where the ambiguous ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... the daughter became, not only because she clarified suspicions that had been too hazy to take form, but also because they disliked her intensely. The following day Wharton Conover became unofficial administrator. He had no difficulty in baffling Frank Gower's half-hearted and clumsy efforts to hide two large fees due the dead man's estate. He discovered clear assets amounting in all to sixty-three thousand dollars, most of it ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of mind. For myself, I should have no objection to calling it on the whole a religious state of mind, although I dare say that to many of you it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. But what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... playtime had now left him for good. The time for half-hearted or three-quarters-hearted attempts to forge ahead were over. He had pledged his heart and shortly hoped to pledge his hand in the service of the loveliest young lady in the world, none less. At present he was only a young instructor; of promise, perhaps, but still unproved. The immediate goal ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... reader may doubt how far Acton succeeded in his own aim, for there was a touch of intolerance in his hatred of absolutism, and he believed himself to be divided from his ecclesiastical and political foes by no mere intellectual difference but by a moral cleavage. Further, his writing is never half-hearted. His convictions were certitudes based on continual reading and reflection, and admitting in his mind of no qualification. He was eminently a Victorian in his confidence that he was right. He had none of the invertebrate tendency of mind which thinks it is impartial, merely because it is undecided, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... 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
... half-hearted. I did my best to make it otherwise. But it was barely a month since our Bond Street exploit, and we certainly could have afforded to behave ourselves for some time to come. We had been getting along so nicely: by his advice I had scribbled a thing or two; inspired by Raffles, I had even done an ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Philippa, she was frightened at her temerity in having invited the minister to a Hannahless supper; her flutter of questions as to "what" and "how" brought the old woman from her bed, in spite of the girl's half-hearted protests that she "mustn't think of getting up! Just tell me what to do," she implored, "I can manage. We ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... 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 to the laws of the Republic, and into ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... was 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 a silver ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... was almost over before the heroine of the play, and the actress concerning whose merits there was already some difference of opinion, appeared. A little burst of applause, half-hearted from the house generally, enthusiastic from a few, greeted her entrance. Ellison, watching his companion's face closely, was gratified to find a distinct change there. In Matravers' altered expression was something more than the transitory ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 been ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... up with a simple sentimental impulse, full of nostalgia and tenderness for things that seemed to stay steady and put. The way he felt was half-hearted apology for human moods in which murder would have been easy. He even had a strange ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... enough to ask Hanson. It was a half-hearted procedure without a shade of desire on ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... gentlemen, nor can I ever remember any examples of that casuistry with which they are reproached. Some of my best friends have been among the parochial clergy of the Church of England, men of sweet and saintly character, whose pecuniary straits were often a scandal and a reproach to the half-hearted folk who accepted their spiritual guidance. I have known, also, splendid men among the Nonconformist clergy, who have often been the champions of liberty, though their views upon that subject have sometimes seemed ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... belles-lettres. James 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 cross ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... found their courage fail them at the critical moment; but as for the martial ditty itself, it appeared to take the public ear very well; and when Lionel finally folded the music together again, there was quite a little tempest of clapping of hands. Here and there a half-hearted demand for a repetition was heard; but this was understood to be merely a compliment to Lady Sybil; and indeed Lionel strolled out of the room as soon as his duties were over. Fortunately no one was so indiscreet as to ask him what he ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... honesty may in the present social environment be so potential for harm that it is for the common interest that they should not be gratified. This may be so, though I do not believe it. But whether it be so or not, of one thing I am certain,—and that is that the half-hearted dallying with things sexual is wholly an evil; that the prurient sniffing and sniggering round the subject is more fraught with peril to a community, more debasing to the emotional currency, more blighting to the higher sexual feelings of the race, than ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Egremont, of which the pretext was resistance to the levying of taxes; this, however, did not take very long to suppress, nor was any one of importance involved in it. Still the hostilities with France were carried on in a very half-hearted fashion; being confined to defensive operations in Brittany which were supposed to be no violation of the peace recently prolonged to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... is an excellent lesson, since one has no choice but to look hard at those objects which we usually pass with such half-hearted interest. Through my little peep hole I employed the hours in studying every specimen, from the huge mummy-case which leaned against the wall to those very jewels which had brought us there, gleaming and sparkling in their glass case immediately beneath ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "ration" is inspiration. There is so much half-hearted work, so much done mechanically, so much form in worship and service. What we need is enthusiasm. We hear much about artistic inspiration and poetic inspiration, but what we really need most of all is spiritual inspiration. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... wearily, already half-asleep; when, to the surprise of both, the old man went outside and returned with a little wooden tub of water which he brought to the bedside, and then, in spite of a half-hearted protestation on the part of Punch, he proceeded to carefully attend ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... be quoted here the explanation of Italy's attitude given by Chancellor von Buelow when discussing the conference in Parliament next year. The impression is general, both in and out of Germany, that Italy is only a half-hearted political ally. It is based on the temperamental difference between the Latin and the Teutonic races, on the popular sympathy between the French and Italian peoples, and to the supposedly reluctant support ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... incidents of note were the repulse by the 18th Infantry Brigade of a half-hearted enemy attack on Cantaing on the 1st December, and D.H.Q. being three times shelled out of its Headquarters between 30th ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... and cared for, and advanced, by those professional cricketers against whom the unthinking have so much to say; by these and by the few amateurs who, as time goes on, will be found able to bear the strain. For the search after perfection is no light one, and will admit of no half-hearted service. I say nothing here of material rewards, beyond reminding you that your professional cricketer is poorly paid in comparison with an inferior singer of the music-halls, although he gives twice as much pleasure as your lion ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her, to her friend to be helped in her lifelong penance. This done, she had strengthened herself to bear all that might come to her with that resignation of remorse which demands no rights and inherits no joys. She was not one of those emotional half-hearted creatures who resolve one day, break down the next, and drift always. For good and evil alike she had the power to hold where she had gripped and to maintain what she had undertaken; and even her life at Windy Brow did not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... almost silently, and were about to disperse quietly for the night, after an hour of half-hearted conversation in the drawing room, obviously endured by Richard simply for his mother's sake, when Ward burst in. He had travelled almost four hundred miles by motor that day, his face was streaked with dirt and oil, and ghastly with fatigue. He ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... easy—I know I got no business comin' to you like this, but I had to make Bibbs go my way instead of his own—I had to do it for the sake o' my business and on his own account, too—and I expect you got some idea how it hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in half-hearted or mean; he came in—all the way! But there isn't anything in it to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... Centenary dawned—and dawned in splendour—he was compelled, even within himself, to treat Sunday schools with more consideration. And, in fact, for two or three days previously the gathering force of public opinion had been changing his attitude from stern hatred to a sort of half-hearted derision. Now, the derision was mysteriously transformed into an inimical respect. By what? By he knew not what. By something without a name in the air which the mind breathes. He felt it at six o'clock, ere he arose. Lying in bed he felt it. The day was to be a festival. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... January 1: St. Valentine's: The First Day of Spring: Midsummer Day: Proposal Day, September 17: Followed by Mourner's Morn (a half-hearted holiday) for the other fellow, ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... to stay, dad," she said, in a whisper. But the half-hearted invitation acted like a spur, and The Pilot ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... 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 from ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... duties, except for the Tea Tax, were repealed. George Mason, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson lamented the retention of the Tea Tax as a symbol of British oppression and supported the half-hearted "association". Most Virginians agreed ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... us and 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 ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... Alving." She is a plain, hard-featured woman who takes in sewing for a living, and she is quite unlettered, but she is a general in the army of spiritual forces. She does not despair, she does not give up like the half-hearted mother in "Ghosts," she does not waste her strength in concealments; she stands up to her enemy and fights. She fought the wild beast in Nelse's father, hand to hand, all his life, and he died a better man than when she married him. Undaunted, she fought it in Nelse as a boy, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... strait 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 strokes. The grudges, the commercial ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... did go, six months afterwards. I tried to deter these men from the erroneous step they were contemplating, by getting them into active work for the Lord. Sometimes I preached in this church, but more often in the open air. I am sorry to say my friends were but half-hearted in their cooperation, so that after a few weeks I left, and went to ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... was done in a half-hearted manner, for our thoughts were with Cary and Cole, and as the days went by and they did not appear, but were more and more overdue, our suspense became almost unbearable. Added to this was the thought that we could wait but a few days more at the longest, without running the danger of being ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... circle which surrounded Charlotte Bronte through her brief career, it is of the utmost importance that a word of recognition should be given, and that in no half-hearted manner, to Mr. William Smith Williams, who, in her later years, was Charlotte Bronte's most intimate correspondent. The letters to Mr. Williams are far and away the best that Charlotte wrote, at least of those which have been preserved. They are full of literary enthusiasm ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... written in eternal letters, on the iron tablet of her will. He must yield. She the woman, the mother of his children, how should she ever even think to yield? It was unthinkable. He, the man, the weak, the false, the treacherous, the half-hearted, it was he who must yield. Was not hers the divine will and the divine right? Ha, she would be less than woman if she ever capitulated, abandoned her divine responsibility as woman! No, he ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... country and disregard of its interests is treason.—In time of war and revolution treason consists in giving information to the enemy, surrendering forts, ships, arms, or ammunition into his hands; or fighting in such a half-hearted way as to invite defeat. Treason under such circumstances is the unpardonable sin against country. The traitor is the most despicable person in the state; for he takes advantage of the protection the ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Alix had suggested bridge, but Martin did not play bridge. So she presently scattered anagrams over the table, reminding Peter of some of their battles with word-making in the long winter nights, and they had a half-hearted game, in which Martin showed no interest at all, and Peter deliberately missed chances ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... over her. She fought it down. Then, with hypocrisy that amazed herself, she met his ardent stare boldly, though with a pretense of timidity. She spoke with a hesitant, remonstrant voice, as if in half-hearted protest, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 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
... Boston in 1746, where he found the people in a state of warlike fervor after the conquest of Louisburg; and on returning home he wrote an eloquent pamphlet, called "Plain Truth," to rouse the colony to a sense of its peril. Despite the half-hearted opposition of the Quakers in the Assembly companies were raised, cannon, by the shrewd policy of Franklin, were got from New York, and the promoter of the movement was even asked to act as colonel of the troops,—an honor ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... an argument against the enactment of laws to protect the people from great wrongs—especially the weaker and more helpless ones? To the half-hearted, the indifferent and the pusillanimous—yes! But with brave, true men, who have at heart the best interests of humanity, this can only intensify opposition to wrong, and give strength for new efforts to destroy its power. These have an undying faith ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... sunk in a superstitious torpor. He had lost hundreds of thousands where he would have hated to spend pennies; yet the financial part of the loss hardly touched him. He mumbled fearfully to himself, and took not the slightest interest in the half-hearted attempts to read the mystery. When the others moved, he moved with them, because he was afraid to ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... some of his opinions he accepted mildly, answered him sometimes very seriously, and often nonplussed him. Stepan Trofimovitch treated him very kindly, and indeed he behaved like a father to all of us. "You are all half-hearted chickens," he observed to Virginsky in joke. "All who are like you, though in you, Virginsky, I have not observed that narrow-mindedness I found in Petersburg, chez ces siminaristes. But you're a half-hatched chicken all the same. Shatov would ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 have known ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... unlike are they to win, that think it enough to keep company with the hindmost? There are some men that profess themselves such as run for heaven as well as any; yet if there be but any lazy, slothful, cold, half-hearted professors in the country, they will be sure to take example by them; they think if they can but keep pace with them they shall do fair; but these do not consider that the hindmost lose the prize. You may know ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... to walk in the light, 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 will surely be. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... While the Southern Protestants are setting up separate synods, councils, 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 ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... an attempt to assert himself and limit her dances. She was blithe and radiant and fancy free when Frank Garrison reached the post, a wee bit hipped, it was whispered, because of the failure of a somewhat half-hearted suit of his in the far East, and the Fairy bounded into the darkness of his life and fairly dazzled him. Somebody had ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... literature is an index to its mind. If the nation has its freedom to win, from its literature may we learn if it is passionately in earnest in the fight, or if it is half-hearted, or if it cares not at all. Whatever state prevails, passionate men can pour their passion through literature to the nation's soul and make it burn and move and fight. For this reason it is of transcendent importance to the Cause. Literature ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... had once rustled with gay and cheerful people, was now cold, echoing, empty, repellent. Nothing came from the balcony, wherein Helen's sweet voice wandered, save a faint, half-hearted hand-clapping. No one sat in the boxes, and only here and there a man wore evening-dress. The women were always intense, but undemonstrative. Under these sad conditions the music of the orchestra became factitious, a brazen clatter raised to reinforce ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Walter Besant, Thomas Browne, and the author of "An Englishwoman's Love-letters." As it was, it did not occur to him to wonder why the publisher should spend so much money on advertising a book of which he had seemed to have but a half-hearted appreciation. After all it was his book, and the author felt that it was only natural that as the hour of publication drew near the world of letters should show signs ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... among the men speaking to them, but with a half-hearted air. He cut a pitiful figure. It was not clear whether he was unwilling to ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... 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 hand, is masculine and courageous, moving ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... At the top of these I was confronted by a glass door, beyond which, entrenched behind a desk, sat a cynical-looking youth. A smaller boy in the background talked into a telephone. Both were giggling. On seeing me the slightly larger of the two advanced with a half-hearted attempt at solemnity, though unable to resist a Parthian shaft at his companion, who was seized on the instant with a paroxysm ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shuffling and rustle of horses moving at a walk through the long prairie grass; the sudden jolt of a wheel as it dropped from a tufty wad to the barren sand intersecting the clumps of grass of which the prairie is largely made up; the half-hearted neigh of a horse, as though it were striving to break from under the spell of gloomy depression which seemed to weigh heavily upon the very atmosphere; these were the only sounds which broke the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Prussian advance would be as slow as it was. His composite forces, in which five languages were spoken, were unfit for a long contest with Napoleon's army. The Dutch-Belgian troops, numbering 17,000, were known to be half-hearted; the 2,800 Nassauers, who had served under Soult in 1813, were not above suspicion; the 11,000 Hanoverians and 5,900 Brunswickers were certain to do their best, but they were mostly raw troops. In fact, Wellington could thoroughly rely only on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... slow drops began to fall. In her heart, too, the fierceness of her pain was overcast. Something infinitely sad, yet infinitely peaceful, stilled her pulses. Infinitely sad, yet infinitely funny too. How small, how insignificant, this tangle of the whole-hearted and the half-hearted; what did it all come to, and how feel suffering as tragic when farce grimaced so close beside it? Who could take it seriously when, in life, the whole-hearted were so deceived and based their loves on such illusion? To feel the irony was to acquiesce, perhaps, and acquiescence, even if only momentary, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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 ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of Browning's Poems, and it contained "Sludge"; it also happened that it contained "The Statue and the Bust"—that stimulating lecture on half-hearted constraints. "Sludge" did not interest Lewisham, it was not at all his idea of a medium, but he read and re-read "The Statue and the Bust." It had the profoundest effect upon him. He went to sleep—he used to read his literature in bed because it was warmer there, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... He only 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 to ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... into 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 a mistake to ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... than at this conjuncture. It needed but one expression of resentment against his ungrateful and undutiful son to secure his exclusion. His expressions in his favour, on the other hand, had the effect of inducing the most powerful nobles to resolve to carry out his wishes, the half-hearted and wavering to join with them. Not even the highest nobleman in the army, the father-in-law of Prince Khusru, who had already combined with Raja Man Singh to support Khusru, could resist the influence. He sent privately to Prince Salim to assure him of his support. Man Singh, the most influential ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... 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
... say but there's good in that fancy. To have any spot of your own, however small—freehold, I mean—must be a comfort. At the same time, what's the world for, if you're to meet it in that half-hearted way? I don't mean that every young man—there are exceptions—must sow just so many bushels of avena fatua. There are plenty of enjoyments to be got without leading a wild life—which I should be the last to recommend to any ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... loveliness, the gentle shadows that lay beneath her wide—yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly or not, was weaving. But the effort was at best half-hearted. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr. Stocks, and she viewed him for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan |
