"Unwillingness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your pardon!" replied Irene, briskly. "If I don't want to ride, no company can make the act agreeable. Why can't people learn to leave others in freedom? If Hartley had shown the same unwillingness to join this riding party that I manifested, do you think I would have uttered a second word in favor of going? No. I am provoked at ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... morning hymn and our familiar talk, in which we always "outlined the policy" of the new day; for the children were apt to be angelic and receptive at nine o'clock in the morning, the unwillingness of the spirit and weakness of the flesh seldom overtaking them till an hour or so later. It chanced to be a beautiful day, for Helen and I were both happy and well, our volunteer helpers were daily growing more zealous and efficient, and there ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... antagonism between religion and science, it is obvious that he identifies the cause of the anti-geologists and the persecutors of Galileo with the cause of religion. The word "religion" is to him a symbol which stands for unenlightened bigotry or narrow-minded unwillingness to look facts in the face. Such a conception of religion is common enough, and unhappily a great deal has been done to strengthen it by the very persons to whom the interests of religion are presumed to be a professional ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the old Southern leaders. He was generous and considerate; he wanted no executions or imprisonments; he wished the leaders to escape; and he was anxious that the mass of Southerners be welcomed back without loss of rights. "There is," he declared, "too little respect for their rights," an unwillingness, in short, to treat ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... again urged Michel to go a-hunting that he might if possible leave us some provision, tomorrow being the day appointed for his quitting us, but he showed great unwillingness to go out and lingered about the fire under the pretence of cleaning his gun. After we had read the morning service I went about noon to gather some tripe de roche, leaving Mr. Hood sitting before the tent at the fireside ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... this country reinforce the elements that tend to a softening of the moral fibre, to a weakening of the will, and unwillingness to look ahead or to face hardship and labor and danger for a high ideal—then all of us alike, men and women, will suffer. But if they show, under the new conditions, the will to develop strength, and the high idealism and the ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... far-spread dominions. Disraeli, who was in the ascendant when the period opened, had forgotten his old opinion of the uselessness of colonies, and had become a prophet of Empire. An Imperial Federation Society was founded in 1878. The old unwillingness to assume new responsibilities died out, or diminished; and the rapid annexations of other states, especially France, in regions where British influence had hitherto been supreme, and whose chieftains had often begged in vain ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... the time. The laws of the spring of 1862 were attacked as unconstitutional. Davis was held responsible for them and also for the slow equipment of the army. Because the Confederate Congress conducted much of its business in secret session, the President was charged with a love of mystery and an unwillingness to take the people into his confidence. Arrests under the law suspending the writ of habeas corpus were made the texts for harangues on liberty. The right of freedom of speech was dragged in when General Van Dorn, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... untenable), he then sent another of his colleagues to represent to the King that his mother was so unpopular that, even if the Lords should pass the bill in such a form as rendered her eligible for nomination, the Commons would introduce a clause to exclude her by name. With great unwillingness, and, it is said, not without tears, George III. consented to the bill being so drawn as to exclude her, and it passed the Lords in such a form. But when it reached the Commons it was found that if the leaders of the Opposition hated Bute much, they hated Grenville more. They moved ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... secret of the unwillingness of the authorities to encourage the search for gold, and it is after all due to the fact that the search was ultimately successful beyond all precedent, that Australia has been for so many years relieved of the curse of convictism, and has ceased once and for all to be a depot for the scoundrelism ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... endeavoured to parry, by declaring his hopes of having them all, not only in the army, but in his own regiment, one day or other. At this, there was a certain amount of mirth, and various protestations of an unwillingness to enlist; in which, I was glad to see, that neither Anneke, nor her most intimate friend, Mary Wallace, saw fit to join, I liked their reserve of manner, far better than the girlish trifling of their companions; and, I could see, that all the men respected them the more for it. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... asked her to do a paper for the General Review, thinking that her name would be a great catch in the first number. She consented, I must say with some unwillingness, and sent me this. Look it over and tell me ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... uneasy and hostile. He spoke abruptly and with evident unwillingness. Misha looked on with curiosity. He liked Trirodov—he had already heard something about him which assured pleasant relations ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... temporarily postponing their visits to the water closet, until, when they do go, they find themselves unable to evacuate the bowels. Sometimes the closet is a damp, uncomfortable out-house, situated at a distance from the dwelling, or the access is too public, and, hence, there is an unwillingness to visit it at the proper time. Some appear to be too indolent to attend to this duty. Others are too energetic, and think they cannot take the time, until they have finished some self-imposed task or attended to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... be a fatality attending riches imported into Canada. They are sure to make to themselves wings and flee away, while wealth is no less certain to adhere to the poor and industrious settler. The great fault of the Canadian character is an unwillingness to admit the just claims of education and talent, however unpretending, to some share of consideration. In this respect the Americans of the United States are greatly superior to the Canadians, because they are ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... give Orders in the midst of her Reading, 'Put to the Horses.' That a young Woman of Merit has missed an advantagious Settlement, was News not to be delayed, lest some Body else should have given her malicious Acquaintance that Satisfaction before her. The Unwillingness to receive good Tidings is a Quality as inseparable from a Scandal-Bearer, as the Readiness to divulge bad. But, alas, how wretchedly low and contemptible is that State of Mind, that cannot be pleased but ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... youths who found themselves unable to survive the mortification of an unsuccessful attempt to imitate it. Again, to the infinite horror of the Mandarins, he paraded himself one afternoon with decacuminated finger-nails, and came very near producing a riot by his unwillingness to permit them to grow again, besides calling forth another imperial decree, threatening ignominious death to all nobles throughout the empire who should encourage the practice. All these eccentricities served only to add to the consequence of the multipotent Mien-yaun. Then again, he was gifted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... while the discovery that he was included in the Easter party, which various other concomitant causes had already rendered disagreeable to her, made her look forward to that purposed expedition with nothing but unwillingness ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... much sooner than we like; but these regrets are passing with well-disposed people, and are a sine qua non for the existence of life at all. For if people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such regret, there would be no growth nor development in life; if, on the other hand, there were no unwillingness to die, people would commit suicide upon the smallest contradiction, and the race would end ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... their whole troop of infantry, which now amounted to three. Traveling in the charming climate of South Africa in the roomy wagon, at the pace of two miles and a half an hour, is not like traveling at home; but it was a proof of Livingstone's great unwillingness to be separated from his family, that he took them with him, notwithstanding the risk of mosquitoes, fever, and want of water. The people of Kolobeng were so engrossed at the time with their employments, that till harvest was over, little ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... ships would fall the brunt of the engagement with Fort Jackson, the more powerful of the enemy's works. The right column also had its heaviest ships in the lead; the exceptional station of the Cayuga being due to some natural unwillingness on the part of other commanding officers to receive on board, as divisional commander and their own superior, an officer whose position in the fleet was simply that of captain of a single ship.[P] The Cayuga led, not in virtue ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... 1. Aside from the unwillingness to abandon a long-cherished belief on any subject whatever, which is both a natural, and, when not pushed to an unreasonable length, a desirable brake on all inconsiderate change, no practical interest is threatened ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... House of Commons, after some angry debates on the subject, presented an address to the king, requesting he would abandon this proposed marriage. To this he was not inclined to listen, his honour being so far involved in the business; but notwithstanding his unwillingness, his councillors urged him to this step, and prayed he would stop the princess, then journeying through France on her way to England. This so incensed him that he immediately prorogued parliament, and freed himself from further interference ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... still more to the ruin of Noor ad Deen's fortune, was his unwillingness to reckon with his steward; for whenever he brought in his accounts, he still sent him away without examining them: "Go, go," said he, "I trust wholly to your honesty; only take care to provide good ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... willingness, readiness, inclination; arrangement, disposal; propensity, inclination, proneness, proclivity, bias, bent. Antonyms: indisposition, unwillingness, disinclination. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... be read to the sepoys stating that I had seen their disobedience, unwillingness, and skulking, and as soon as I received the havildar's formal evidence, I would send them back. I regretted parting ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... this method in the conduct of their classes. The tendency to self-assertion and verbal combat, natural to youth, is smothered by an unwillingness on the part of the teacher to indulge questions and debate or by a marked inclination to do all ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... commerce and its effects upon our own ships and people is substantially the same that it was when I addressed you on the third of February, except for the tying up of our shipping in our own ports because of the unwillingness of our shipowners to risk their vessels at sea without insurance or adequate protection, and the very serious congestion of our commerce which has resulted, a congestion which is growing rapidly more ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... thoughtful. The captain's reticence, coupled with the fact that he had made two or three attempts to get rid of him that afternoon, was suspicious. He wondered whether Joan Hartley was the expected guest; the captain's unwillingness to talk whenever her name came up having by no means escaped him. And once or twice the captain had, with unmistakable meaning, dropped hints as to the progress made by Mr. Saunders in horticulture and ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... busied at the next step of her offices. Almost it seemed the girl surrendered reluctantly, as though she were loath to go through with the role that had fallen to her by penalty of being tagged. But if Miss Smith felt unwillingness in the sudden rebellious tensing of the limbs she touched, the only response on her part was an added quickness in her fingers as she placed one veined wrist upon the other and with double wraps made them ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Liverpool one forenoon, the rain falling thickly and insidiously on the filthy town. I had no plans, beyond a sensible unwillingness to let my rascal escape; and I ended by going to the same inn with him, dining with him, walking with him in the wet streets, and hearing with him in a penny gaff that venerable piece, The Ticket-of-Leave ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... last person in the world to refuse, without a painfully good reason, any offered hand. She had never seen cause to desire the acquaintance of a man because he was a clergyman; but neither had she any unwillingness, because he was a clergyman, to make his acquaintance; while to Thomas Wingfold she already felt some attraction: the strong little hand was in his immediately, and felt comfortable in the great honest clasp, which it ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Shah accepted the throne, he insisted on the abandonment of the Shiah schism and reunion with the Sunni faith, and he went to extreme lengths in suppressing the unwillingness of the clergy to accept the arbitrary decree which he issued in proclaiming his mandate. His attempt to bridge the great gulf between the hostile creeds entirely failed, and the Persians remained Shiahs. Freedom of thought and liberty ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... moment a dozen servants were about them, and into their astonished ears Hester poured her story while vainly trying to restore her lady. Great was the dismay and intense the unwillingness of anyone to obey when Hester ordered the men to search the room again, for she was the first to ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... to their authority, and Gibbon Wakefield, who was then a member of Assembly, believed that Baldwin had already taken too great a share of responsibility to be willing to occupy a secondary place under an energetic governor.[2] Indeed an unwillingness to allow the governor-general his former unlimited initiative becomes henceforth a mark of the leaders of the Reformers, and La Fontaine, who had resented Sydenham's activity as much as his anti-nationalist policy, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... newspapers called attention to the new problems that the Old World was thrusting upon the New: the poverty of the foreigner, his low standard of living, his illiteracy and slovenliness, his ignorance of American ways and his unwillingness to submit to them, his clannishness, the danger of his organizing and capturing the political offices and ultimately the Government. In addition to the alarmist and the prejudiced, careful and thoughtful citizens were ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... that she felt waiting on her mother to be a trouble, but her face, and the expression of her shoulders, and her dull, dawdling movements said it for her; and poor Mrs. Bright, who was not used to such unwillingness on the part of her little daughter, felt it so much that she shed a few tears over the second cup of tea after it was brought. This dismayed Eyebright, but it also exasperated her. She would not take any notice, but stood by in silence ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... it would be a very tedious thing, put in a place already very tedious of itself; I mean a preface." Spence, in the preface to his "Polymetis," informs us, that "there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to with so much unwillingness as that of prefaces; and as he believes most people are not much fonder of reading them than he is of writing them, he shall get over this as fast as he can." Pelisson warmly protested against prefatory composition; but when he published the works of Sarrasin, was wise enough to compose a very ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... having confirmed the appointment of Bishop Anthimas, of Widdin, to be Exarch of Bulgaria, the Bulgarians thus virtually acquired their ecclesiastical independence, and so both their national spirit and their unwillingness to allow Protestantism to come in as an element of apprehended division, acquired strength. Few were yet able to see how one could be both a Bulgarian and a Protestant, and no general movement on the part of rulers and ecclesiastics towards Protestantism, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... science to ignore the fact that man has an element of ferocity similar to that of the tiger, because in the fully developed man that fierce element is overruled by the higher powers and confined to the destruction of that which does not suffer. The unwillingness to recognize anything evil comes not from the spirit of science, but from the a priori assumptions of sentimental theology, which presumes that it thoroughly comprehends the Deity (who is beyond all human comprehension), and, out of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... advisers, rewarded this zeal but ill. At one of the committee meetings Balzac was prevented from attending by a three days' confinement in a dirty lock-up at Sevres, the cause being the old one which had partly driven him from Paris—his unwillingness to go, as he humorously put it, into the vineyards of his village, and, dressed in uniform, to see that truants from Paris were not eating ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... system than on the unhistorical invention of braces. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the philanthropic preachers of potatoes, the peasant for years threw his potatoes to the pigs and the dogs, before he could be persuaded to put them on his own table. However, the unwillingness of the peasant to adopt innovations has a not unreasonable foundation in the fact that for him experiments are practical, not theoretical, and must be made with expense of money instead of brains—a fact that is not, perhaps, sufficiently taken ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... unwillingness to prosecute his suit under such circumstances, and prepared to take his leave. His mutterings and apologies were all swallowed up in that furious storm of abuse and denunciation which now poured from the lips of the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... reluctance of the Germans to agree to this was productive of long and dangerous delays in the supply of food, but the abortive Conferences of Treves and Spa (January 16, February 14-16, and March 4-5, 1919) were at last followed by the Agreement of Brussels (March 14, 1919). The unwillingness of the Germans to conclude was mainly due to the lack of any absolute guarantee on the part of the Allies that, if they surrendered the ships, they would get the food. But assuming reasonable good faith on the part of the latter (their behavior in respect of certain other clauses of the ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... changed situations, or been any one but myself for the whole world. I blest God for my poverty, that I had no worldly riches or grandeur to draw my heart from Him. I wish'd at that time, if it had been possible for me, to have continued on that spot for ever. I felt an unwillingness in myself to have any thing more to do with the world, or to mix with society again. I seemed to possess a full assurance that my sins were forgiven me. I went home all my way rejoicing, and this text of scripture came full upon my mind. "And I will make an everlasting covenant with ...
— A Narrative Of The Most Remarkable Particulars In The Life Of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince, As Related By Himself • James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
... Buddhist and the vegetarian. We consume the carcases of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves; we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house resounds daily with screams of pain and fear. We distinguish, indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how precariously the distinction is grounded. The pig is the main element of animal food among the islands; and I had many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old hermit came who was learned in all the simples and science of the times, he told the knight that "her fine care had saved his life,"—a pleasing assurance that there were medical men in those days, as well as in our own, who expressed no unwillingness to allow a woman credit for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... brief account of the poor man's terrors, and unwillingness to die: and, when I had done, Thus, Mr. Belford, said she, must it always be with poor souls who have never thought of their long voyage till the moment they are to embark ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... prevailed in the Republican party with regard to the South, down to the election of 1884, and found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." It showed itself after the war in unwillingness to release the South from military rule; then in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to withdraw from the carpet-bag State governments the military support without which they could not have existed for a day; and, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... known as the Fire District was organized. Its territory consists of about two square miles of land, having the Park as a centre, and includes most of the buildings of the town. It originated from the unwillingness of the outlying districts to help support a suitable fire department, of which they, themselves, felt little need. Nevertheless, at its formation the town granted land and a sum of money. A Chief Engineer, with ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... a state of declension in spirituality is an unwillingness to receive Christian counsel or reproof. The Spirit of Christ is a tender, gentle, docile Spirit. When the heart of the disciple is full of holy affection he feels that he is frail and insufficient. He seeks wisdom and strength from above and is thankful for the kind suggestions ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... respects, anyhow! But that made me want to talk to you all the more. That day, to be sure, you said I couldn't help you, that you wanted to fight it all out alone! An' to-day a good bit has grown clear to me—your strange behaviour that time, an' your unwillingness to let me help you.—But I don't see how you're goin' to get along all alone. Come, drink a cup o' coffee. [ROSE sits down on the edge of a chair by the table.] August was here to see me a while ago. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission; and a dispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in favour of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by argument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of their promulgator by that torture and imprisonment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... type has arrived, and much of the quiet humor displayed in these the latest and maturest of Hamsun's works springs from the spectacle of its influence on the natives, whose hands used always to be in their pockets, and whose credulity in face of the improbable was only surpassed by their unwillingness to believe anything reasonable. Still the life he pictures is largely primitive, with nature as man's chief antagonist, and to us of the crowded cities it brings a charm of novelty rarely found ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... keen mind of the Duke of Guise, had predicted that Guise might pretend a belief in such instigation, and so force the King to avenge De Noyard, in self-vindication. Mlle. d'Arency well knew that I would not incriminate a woman, even a perfidious one, and counted also on my natural unwillingness to reveal myself as the dupe that I had been. Moreover, it would not be possible for me to tell the truth in such a way that it would appear probable. And what would I gain by telling the truth? The fact would remain that I was the slayer of De Noyard, and, by accusing the instigators, I would ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... this Messer Francesco had been known to him since that day when they had first met him at Acquasparta. He had meant to say more. He had meant to add the announcement of Francesco's banishment from Babbiano and his notorious unwillingness to mount his cousin's throne. He had meant to make her understand that had Francesco been so minded, he had no need to stoop to such an act as this that she imputed to him. But she had cut him short, and with angry words and angrier ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... unlace her stays for her. But he was afraid of irritating her, and thought it would be better to leave her alone to undo the knot as best she could. She tugged at the laces furiously, and thinking she might break them and accuse him of unwillingness to come to her assistance, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... admitting the air freely, it shut the property to which it belonged completely from sight. I asked the meaning of this extraordinary structure, and learned that it was put up by a great nobleman, of whose subterranean palace and strange seclusion I had before heard. Common report attributed his unwillingness to be seen to a disfiguring malady with which he was said to be afflicted. The story was that he was visible only to his valet. But a lady of quality, whom I met in this country, told me she had seen him, and observed nothing to justify it. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to take him, in excuse of which, his mother and he, in letters to General Mackay, pleaded the delicate state of his health, which, it was urged, would suffer from imprisonment; and indeed few can blame him for any unwillingness to place himself absolutely at the disposal of such a body as the Privy Council of Scotland then was - many of whom would not hesitate in the slightest to sacrifice him, if by so doing they could only see any chance of obtaining a share, however ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... put an end to the tactics of those who wanted to set Gambara off on his high horse to amuse the new guest. Andrea was already conscious of an unwillingness to expose so noble and pathetic a mania as a spectacle for so much vulgar shrewdness. It was with no base reservation that he kept up a desultory conversation, in the course of which Signor Giardini's ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... clubs, as if for action, they showed unwillingness to withdraw, but I walked deliberately forward and made as if to push them out, when both turned and began ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... beset the aspirant to success on this arena, more perhaps than in any other. The difficulty which the most honest find to avoid treading in the footsteps of others—the different aspect in which the same phenomena present themselves to different minds—the unwillingness which the mind experiences in renouncing published but erroneous opinions—are points of human weakness which, not to mislead, must be watched with assiduous care. Again, the ease with which plagiarism is committed from the number of roads by which the same point may be reached, is a great temptation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Settlers. True, gaunt poverty did not stalk along the banks of Red River as it had done in the first ten years of the Colony, but just because the people were becoming better housed, better clad, and better fed, were they becoming more independent. The unwillingness to be controlled was showing itself very distinctly among the French half-breeds as they grew in numbers and dashed over the prairies on their fiery steeds. They were hunters, accustomed to the use of firearms and were, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... hag uttered in praise of her she called my mother went like a knife to my heart; I longed to fall upon her and tear her to pieces, and only refrained from unwillingness that death should find her in such a wicked state. Finally she told me that she intended to anoint herself that night and go to one of their customary assemblies, and inquire of her master as to what was yet to befal me. I should have liked to ask her what were the ointments she ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Auerbach had shown considerable unwillingness to attend the seance; he pleaded being extra busy with experiments just now, but I gave him that look which told him I knew he had just been stalling around the last few months, the ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... proposal to fix a time beyond which Robin should resign the hope of entering the ministry, and indeed seemed relieved by the suggestion. At his request, Robin was waited for, and when he came up with them, Mr Rose asked him what was the reason of his unwillingness to resign the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the order in which the council should debate the two divisions of subjects which it had met to settle had to be decided at once; and the compromise arrived at showed both the strength of the minority and the unwillingness of the leaders of the majority, the presiding legates, to push matters to an extreme. Their instructions from the Pope were to give the declaration of dogma the preference over the announcement of disciplinary reforms; for it seemed to him of primary necessity to draw, while there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... on the pillow signified unwillingness. "I'd take one to please my red-headed doctor, ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... They complained—and with reason, too, upon their principles—of these ecclesiastical reservations; and they made out of them their chief weapon of attack upon the Pope's government, though they did not profit so much by the use of it as by the evident unwillingness of Pius to rush into a war with Austria for the purpose of giving the sovereignty of Lombardy to Charles Albert, a measure to which he was averse, because he thought such a conflict would be detrimental to the interests of the Church over ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the real state of the case. Whatever responsibility, obloquy, or effect is to arise from the publication, should surely not fall upon you in any degree; and I can have no objection to your stating, as distinctly and publicly as you please, your unwillingness to publish them, and my own obstinacy upon the subject. Take any course you please to vindicate yourself, but leave me to fight my own way; and, as I before said, do not compromise me by any thing which may look like shrinking on my part; as for your own, make the best ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... tenacity as a natural swarm does to their new hive. How wonderful that the act of swarming should so thoroughly impress upon the bees, an absolute indisposition to return to the parent stock. If this were a fixed and invariable unwillingness, a sort of blind, unreasoning instinct, it would not be so surprising, but we have already seen that in case the bees lose their queen, they return in a very short time to the stock from which they issued! If the nuclei formed ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... unwillingness, the whole difficulty of the case springs from a highly virtuous ignorance of life. Paris now is not so different from the Paris of then; and the whole of the doings of Bohemia are not written in the sugar-candy pastorals of Muerger. It is really not at all surprising ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 27th of February, Pitt called the attention of the house to a plan, which originated with the Duke of Richmond, for the fortification of the dock-yards at Portsmouth and Plymouth. In the preceding session, the commons had expressed their unwillingness to vote any money for these objects, until they were made acquainted with the merits of the plan by some competent persons; and in consequence of this intimation, his majesty had appointed a committee of military and naval officers, with the Duke ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I to refuse monsieur?" replied Lurline, hesitating, yet softening her unwillingness to comply by a volley of sidelong glances. "Monsieur is not aware that he is placing me in a most delicate position. It is against madame's rules to be disturbed when her toilet is progressing: it requires her concentrated attention,—her whole mind! Still, if monsieur ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... They considered him a little daft and wanted to cure him of his fixed idea. That would explain the visit to the theatre and also Femke's alleged unwillingness to come with Uncle Sybrand. But—how did she dare to interfere with the policeman? And the greeting from the emperor? And how did Holsma know that he had "denied" Femke, and that her presence could ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Spanish Don. A propos of Mr. TOOLE, it has always been the wonder of his friends, to whom the quality of his vocal powers is so well known, that he has never been tempted to renounce the simple histrionic for the lyric Drama. It is said, and "greatly to his credit," that, had it not been for his unwillingness to rob his friend SIMS REEVES of the laurel-crown he wears as first English Tenor of his age, he would long ago have set up a most dangerous opposition to that sweet singer, and have ridden off victoriously with "My Pretty Jane" seated up behind him, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case. But you ought to do something to help those who are not so fortunate as yourselves. There is an unwillingness on the part of our People, harsh as it may be, for you free Colored people to remain with us. Now if you could give a start to the White people you would open a wide door for many to be made free. If we deal with those who are not free at the beginning, and ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the fate of his master, for whom he felt that kind of attachment which the force of habitual intercourse not unfrequently engenders respecting objects not in themselves amiable, and also a latent unwillingness to expose his weakness to the ridicule of his fellow-servants, combined to overcome his reluctance; and he had just placed his foot upon the first step of the staircase which conducted to his master's chamber, when ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... moment, as though in hesitation, then went with a sulky unwillingness that was very ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the sense of unwillingness was forgotten in the desire to laugh at the look of horror in Pete's face as he stared appealingly ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... startlingly strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus publication, put himself substantially right with the public about the extent of Morus's concern in the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, and had scarcely anything ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... man was the least she valued in him. It was his heart she desired to possess. "You cannot but be entirely persuaded of this by the extreme unwillingness I showed to marry you, though I knew that the name of wife was honourable in the world and holy in religion; yet the name of your mistress had greater charms because it was more free. The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still bear with them a necessary engagement, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... countries in which a tax on profits seems likely to be permanently a burden on capitalists exclusively are those in which capital is stationary, because there is no new accumulation. In such countries the tax might not prevent the old capital from being kept up through habit, or from unwillingness to submit to impoverishment, and so the capitalists might continue to bear the whole ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... unwillingness I force Her follies, and in those her sin, be witness, All these about me: she is bloudy minded, And turns the justice of the Law to rigor: It is her cruelites, not I accuse her: ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... suffering for the companionship of some bright young nature," Dr. Valentine proceeded, attributing the dismay written all over the girl's face to natural unwillingness to do the service. "After she gets over this attack she needs to be read to for one thing; to be told the news; to be made to forget herself. But of course, Polly," he said hastily, buttoning his top coat, and opening the ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... Isaac had but one consolation to support him, and that was of the dreariest and most negative kind. He had no wife and children to increase his anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various failures in life. It might have been from mere insensibility, or it might have been from generous unwillingness to involve another in his own unlucky destiny, but the fact undoubtedly was, that he had arrived at the middle term of life without marrying, and, what is much more remarkable, without once exposing himself, from eighteen to eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... not be much concerned about the unwillingness to give me a new sonnet which Rossetti at first exhibited, for I knew full well that sooner or later the sonnet would come. Not that I recognised in him the faintest scintillation of the affectation so common among authors as to the publication ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... found there bands of miners began to prospect on the Indian domain, a bill was introduced into Congress to extinguish the Indian title to a portion of the Black Hill region and finally a new treaty as negotiated But the unwillingness of the Indians to leave the encroachments of the whites and the advent of surveyors and troops all combined to ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... arrival in these islands of Doctor Sanctiago de Vera, your president, governor, and captain-general, he was informed of the condition of affairs in Maluco, and of the unwillingness of the petty king of Ternate to render obedience to your Majesty. Therefore, with the advice of all the captains, he determined to send an officer with reenforcements of three hundred soldiers, giving them orders and instructions ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... said, "you have only to command to be obeyed." Slowly he bent his head low, the gesture matching the humility of his words, while it emphasised their unwillingness. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... that for every extinct Dodo or Moa, a new species may be created, to keep up the equilibrium of the whole. This is but a surmise: but it may be wise, perhaps, just now, to confess boldly, even to insist on, its possibility, lest any should fancy, from our unwillingness to allow it, that there would be ought in it, if proved, contrary to ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... one exception to my unwillingness to join in the pastoral labours of Mary Grace. When she announced, on a fine afternoon, that we were going to Pavor and Barton, I was always agog to start. These were two hamlets in our parish, and, I ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... and then with what amounted to downright unwillingness, Merlin rose, followed Olive dumbly as she picked her way through the delirious clamor, now approaching its height and threatening to become a wild and memorable riot. Submissively he took his coat and stumbled up half a dozen steps into the moist April air outside, his ears still ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... these two ancient inhabitants of the forest remained also standing before the extinguished brands, probably from an unwillingness to depart without his comrades. The room was now deserted by all but this group, the divine, and his daughter. As the party from the mansion-house disappeared, John arose, and, dropping the blanket from his ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... persistency she clung to the subject, detecting his unwillingness to discuss a possible final stage in ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... of capital and labor are diametrically opposed to each other. You are the producers of the world's wealth and yet you submit to exploitation by the class of parasites who fatten upon your ignorance and your unwillingness to unite. Workingmen of the world, you have nothing to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... no courage. His father was supposed to be a huge black and white Newfoundland that came over in a schooner from Miquelon. Perhaps it was from him that the black patch was inherited. And perhaps there were other things in the inheritance, too, which came from this nobler strain of blood Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other dogs when they made night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense of fair play; his love of the water; his longing for human society ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... of slaves impressed from another plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good nature made "Mas ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... the state of the Press, and a resolution taken to prosecute, notwithstanding the unwillingness of the law officers. Scarlet appears to be quite cowed by opposition and ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... issuance of the annual report was due to my unwillingness to contract debts for the payment of which funds were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... Dick,' says my rich man, 'if people who don't keep cashbooks would only mark down wot they think they can afford to give away in a year, an' wot they do give away, they would be surprised. It's not always unwillingness to give that's the evil. Often it's ignorance o' what is actooally given—no account ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... less infamy to those who have it in them, according to the quantity which they have of it in consequence of their pedigree, or of their greater or less degree of consanguinity with the whites. Hence the West Indian feels an unwillingness to elevate the condition of the Negro, or to do any thing for him as a human being. I have no doubt, that this prejudice has been one of the great causes why the improvement of our slave population by law has been ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... necessary that some decision should be made as to the future residence of Mrs. Trevelyan and of Nora. Emily had declared that nothing should induce her to go to the Islands with her father and mother unless her boy went with her. Since her journey to Casalunga she had also expressed her unwillingness to leave her husband. Her heart had been greatly softened towards him, and she had declared that where he remained, there would she remain,—as near to him as circumstances would admit. It might ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... This unwillingness to part with money is not only found amongst the followers of Moses, but in those of Mahomet, and Christians too. When we went to purchase in the bazaars, after offering money for change, the honest ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... circumstances, possibly Dick might have felt inclined to pass the gate and himself step forth on to the sands. But, besides that the gate was locked, he gradually became conscious of a singular delicacy or unwillingness to intrude upon the privacy of this solitary, inexplicable, and impressive figure. He was content, therefore, to watch her noiseless progress, and, as he did so, even his untrained masculine eye seemed to note something ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... his wife, communicating to her his appointment as commander-in-chief, he said: "I have used very endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity; and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But, as it has ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... magician perceived one day that the maiden whom he had adopted was no longer a child. As he desired secrecy above all things until he should have completed the one important matter for which he had laboured all his life, he decided with extreme unwillingness to put into operation a powerful charm towards her, which would have the effect of diminishing all her attributes until such time as he might release her again. Owing to his reluctance in the matter, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah |
