"Wavering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul, Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect whole Of clear conceptions, brightening ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... girl to-day there is a moment when by a secret atavism she feels the pride of her sex, the intuition of her moral superiority, and cannot understand why she must hide its cause. At this moment, wavering between the laws of Nature and social conventions, she scarcely knows if nakedness should or should not affright her. A sort of confused atavistic memory recalls to her a period before clothing was known, and reveals to her as a paradisaical ideal the customs ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with the demirips of their race—dancing to the music of the sea sucking and gurgling into the caves at the base of the cliffs. With swimming eyes Sisily watched them careering and pirouetting around her. Faster and faster they went, advancing, retreating, bending clumsily, then wavering, toppling, reeling, like giants well drunk. A great stone fell into the sea with a splash, as if dislodged by a giant foot. As though that signalled the cockcrow of their glee, the dancers stopped in listening attitudes, and sank back into ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... believers and semi believers, who, consequently or inconsequently, accept its authority in whole or in part, listen to its preachers, revere its doctors, and deferentially await the decisions of its councils. Wide-spread, still uncertain and lax under a wavering hierarchy, the new Church, for a hundred years past, is steadily in the way of consolidation, of progressive ascendancy and of indefinite extension. Its conquests are constantly increasing; sooner or later, it will be the first of social powers. Even for the chief of an army, even for the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a moment my breath seemed to be stopped. This past, I heard the old serving-woman fumbling with the bolts, and peering from behind the curtain of my casement, I saw that the ways were dark, and the narrow street was lit up with flaring torches, the lights wavering in the wind. I stepped to the wide ingle, thinking to creep into the secret hiding-hole. But to what avail? It might have served my turn if my escape alive from the moat had only been guessed, but now my master must have told all the story, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... terrors had, His blighted prospects did not make him sad. To leave his wife and babes he was resigned, And this while all deemed him of unsound mind. The tempter, true, his faith and feelings tried, But his suggestions met "God will provide." This simple text was strong enough to stay Each wavering thought that rose from ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... by every movement, that she regarded him as an unlicked bear. With hatred he watched her worn but still "piquant," sneering, Parisian face, her white cuffs, her silken apron, and light cap. He sent her away, at last, and after long wavering (Varvara Pavlovna still did not return) he made up his mind to betake himself to the Kalitins',—not to Marya Dmitrievna—(not, on any account, would he have entered her drawing-room, that drawing-room where his wife was), but to Marfa Timofeevna; he remembered ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... not have told whether her "Meredith Barrett" at the bottom of the page was as firmly penned as ever. To him it was now wavering from one misty letter to the next. Slowly he made a business of folding the sheet into a neat square of paper which he could fit into the safe pocket under his belt. A crack was forming in the shell he had started to grow on the night he first rode out of Red Springs, and he now feared ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... elderly man in a gray coat, threading his wavering way through the noisy buffet of the streets of the city where Athalia had elected to dwell. He found her in a gaudy hotel, full of the glare of pushing, hurrying life. He sat down at her bedside, a little breathless, and looked at her with ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... evening, but she dismissed this suspicion scornfully, as slander against the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languid summer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve. But the head nurse understood well that such a wavering of will or muscle must not occur again, or the hairbreadth ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... both pain. Yet in some pain there is pleasure; or, to be without it, is a worse kind of suffering. Helen was conscious of the inconsistency in her mind, and sighed, and endeavoured to be reasonable. And, to do her justice, there was not the slightest wavering as to the main point. She thought that the general might, perhaps, have some relenting towards her. Hope would come into her mind, though she tried to keep it out; she had nothing to expect, she repeatedly said to herself, except that either Cecilia would send, or the general ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the Christian army upon Loxa threw the wavering Boabdil el Chico into one of his usual dilemmas, and he was greatly perplexed between his oath of allegiance to the Spanish sovereigns and his sense of duty to his subjects. His doubts were determined by the sight of the enemy glittering ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... be seen that this classification has no stable foundation. It furnishes no ultimate standard of right. The mean is a wavering line. It differs under different circumstances and relations, and in different times and places. That mean which is sufficient for one individual is insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, of a slave, and of a child, is respectively different. There ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... David up to Hebron with one single purpose in their hearts. They had no sidelong glances to their own self-interest, they had no wavering loyalty, they had no trembling fears, so we may take their spirit as expressing generally the deepest requirements for prosperity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... through which I pushed towards a sound of tumbling waters. I stood at last upon the rocks above a torrent that went thundering down the mighty gorge which it had cloven itself between the hills. Thence I looked down a long, wavering valley over which the rays of the evening sun were slanting, and hazily in the distance I could see the russet city of Fornovo which I had earlier passed that day. This torrent was the Bagnanza, and it effectively barred all passage. So I went up, along its bed, scrambling over lichened rocks ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." The Christian must offer (2) also his continual testimony. He must "hold fast the confession of his faith without wavering." "By him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifices of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name." And, finally (3), the Christian priest must offer the sacrifice of a holy life. ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... emerged from the concealment of the first clump of shrubbery, Middleton saw that he was a tall, thin person, in a dark dress; and this was the chief observation that the distance enabled him to make, as the figure kept slowly onward, in a somewhat wavering line, and plunged into the second clump of shrubbery. From that, too, he emerged; and soon appeared to be a thin elderly figure, of a dark man with gray hair, bent, as it seemed to Middleton, with infirmity, for his figure still stooped even in the intervals when he did not appear ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moodily at the moon-painted pool where the trout, deceived by the brightness into thinking it was day, started widening ripple-rings here and there, where they flicked the surface with slaty noses; and the wavering rings were gold-tipped until they slid into the shadows and were lost. Dade watched three rings start in the center ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... in a hundred years my lips are opened, my voice echoes mournfully across the desert earth, and no one hears. And you, poor lights of the marsh, you do not hear me. You are engendered at sunset in the putrid mud, and flit wavering about the lake till dawn, unconscious, unreasoning, unwarmed by the breath of life. Satan, father of eternal matter, trembling lest the spark of life should glow in you, has ordered an unceasing movement of the atoms that compose you, and so you shift and change ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... say, his flesh; (21)and having a great priest over the house of God; (22)Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having had our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience; and having had our body washed with pure water, (23)let us hold fast the profession of the hope without wavering, for he is faithful who promised; (24)and let us consider one another, to incite to love and to good works; (25)not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the custom of some, but exhorting, and so much the more as ye ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... smile, A wavering purpose altered, Goaded a hand the crime to do At which before ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... in front moves pretty fast, in a silent swinging trot; the tops of the reeds or grass sway very gently, with a wavering, side to side motion. A pig rushes boldly through, and a deer will cause the grass to rock violently to and fro. A buffalo or rhinoceros is known at once by the crashing of the dry stalks, as his huge frame plunges along; but ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... attitude with regard to Italy, at first a desire for agreement, and then absolute rejection of all compromises, a refusal to grant any concession, so long as Rome should not be evacuated. This, indeed, seemed to be Sanguinetti's definite position; he made a show of disliking the wavering sway of Leo XIII, and of retaining a fervent admiration for Pius IX, the great, heroic pope of the days of resistance, whose goodness of heart had proved no impediment to unshakable firmness. And all this was equivalent ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and slaves at heart Who, knowing thee what thou art, Abhor thee, seeing what none save here may see, Strong freedom, taintless truth, Supreme in ageless youth, Howled all their hate and hope aloud at thee While yet the wavering wind of strife Bore hard against her sail whose freight is ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... before Mrs. Blyth's wavering health permitted her husband to open the sittings of his evening drawing-academy ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... word spoken: and yet if once they be resolved, obstinate, hard to be reconciled. If they abhor, dislike, or distaste, once settled, though to the better by odds, by no counsel, or persuasion, to be removed. Yet in most things wavering, irresolute, unable to deliberate, through fear, faciunt, et mox facti poenitent (Areteus) avari, et paulo post prodigi. Now prodigal, and then covetous, they do, and by-and-by repent them of that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... through the promises of the Gospel there are all these—"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we might be partakers of the Divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). O therefore "let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for He is faithful that promised" (Heb 10:23). "In hope of eternal life," how so? because "God, that cannot lie, promised it before the world ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lacked interest in the trade union movement. As a matter of fact, both are true. An explanation of this attitude at the same time brings out another barrier opposed by the North to the free access of negroes to trades. Considerable wavering has characterized the attitude of the trade unions toward negro labor. The complexity of their organization makes it difficult to place any responsibility directly for their shortcomings. The fact remains, however, that despite the declaration of the constitution of the federated ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... of the bed, watching her mother's face intently. Naomi appeared to sleep. The candle burned long, and the wick was crowned by a little cap of fiery red that seemed to watch Eunice like some impish goblin. The wavering light cast grotesque shadows of Sarah Spencer's head on the wall. The thin curtains at the window wavered to and fro, as if shaken ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... intensity of electric search lights. A village appeared on the bank and he concluded to stop. Pulling in shore, he was bewildered to find only the mud bank. This discovery startled him into a realization that something was wrong with his brain. The mind was wavering between the hallucinations of a fever, and lucidity. Vagaries occasioned by a high temperature, would suddenly vanish as the struggling mind briefly asserted itself. As he resumed paddling, some swaying willows became three ladies attired in the Grecian bend costume, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... love of God a mere wavering thing, perhaps known only at critical times; or was it not rather His vital breath and native air? "I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am"; and "the only-begotten Son is in the ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... lips, as Cumae's cavern close, The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin, The rigid front, almost morose, But for the patient hope within, Declare a life whose course hath been Unsullied still, though still severe, Which, through the wavering days of sin, Kept itself icy chaste ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... false. Furthermore, the notion that it might have been true that nothing existed is a perfectly clear notion. The nature of dialectic is entirely corrupted when sincerity is lost. No intent can be self-contradictory, since it fixes its own object, but a man may easily contradict himself by wavering between one intent ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... general officers and of several regiments to repel them. The army of the Elector, entirely unsupported, and taken in flank by the English, wavered in its turn. All the valour of the Bavarians, all the prodigies of the Elector, were unable to remedy the effects of this wavering. Thus was seen, at one and the same time, the army of Tallard beaten and thrown into the utmost disorder; that of the Elector sustaining itself with great intrepidity, but already in retreat; and that of Marsin charging and gaining ground upon Prince Eugene. It was not until Marsin learnt of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... got better, and was able to see and speak with my people, there came to me several in trouble of different kinds, and the light was sullen and wavering; one, whose name I will not tell you, came to me with a sin upon his mind, and the vapour was all dark and stained; and so it has been till now; and these last weeks it has been even stranger; because by a kind of practice I have been led to infer what the thoughts in the mind of each person are, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the British sailors were, they could advance no farther under so terrible a fire. Two of the barges were shot to pieces, leaving their crews struggling in the water. A ceaseless hail of grape and canister spread death and wounds broadcast among the enemy; and, after wavering a moment, they turned and fled to their ships. Cochrane, seeing his plan for taking the American positions by assault thus frustrated, redoubled the fury of his fire; hoping that, when daybreak made visible the distant shore, nothing but a heap of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... granddaughter, Eliza Wahrendorff. I am sure you will agree with me, dear boys, that your grandfather was right, but how seldom do we see an exhibition of such firm integrity among men, (even among brothers), of whom the poet truthfully says, "If self the wavering balance shake, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... news came from persons passing along the road, and for a time things seemed to be mending. The police were getting the upper hand; the Mayor had made a plucky speech to the crowd in the market-place, with good results; the rioters were wavering; and the soldiers had been stopped by telephone. Then following hard on the last rumour came a sudden rush of worse news. A policeman had been killed—two injured—the rioters had gained a footing in the market-hall, and driven out ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whole tendency of his nature changes. Instead of being assertive and rather insentient, he becomes wavering and sensitive. He begins to have as many feelings—nay, more than a woman. His heroism is all in altruistic endurance. He worships pity and tenderness and weakness, even in himself. In short, he takes on very largely the original role of woman. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and blue. Canyon wrens and vireos sang as they nested. The air was clear, cool, and salty from the near-by sea. Myriad leaf shadows danced on the black roadbed, level as a barn floor, and across it trailed the wavering image of hawk and vulture, gull and white sea swallow. Linda studied the canyon with intent eyes, but bruised flesh pleaded, so reluctantly she arose, shouldered her belongings, and slowly followed the road out to the car line that passed through Lilac Valley, still carefully bearing ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I averted my face and blushed so furiously that the walls of the cave were illuminated with a wavering crimson like the light of a great conflagration! Thinking that the capital city was ablaze, Juptka-Getch ran from the cave's mouth, crying, "Fire, fire!" and I saw him ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... without much re-writing, I said, and remembering my oath never to attempt the re-writing of an old book again, I fell back on the exclusion of A Drama in Muslin as the only way out of the dilemma. A wavering resolution was precipitated by recollection of some disgraceful pages, but a moment after I was thinking that the omission of the book would create a hiatus. A Drama in Muslin, I reflected, is a link between two styles; and a book that has achieved any notoriety cannot ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... action should under no circumstance be deferred. When all the votes of the provinces unanimously recommending the enthronement shall have reached Peking, the Government will, of course, ostensibly assume a wavering and compromising attitude, so as to give due regard to international relations. The people, on the other hand, should show their firm determination to proceed with the matter at all costs, so as to let the foreign powers know that our people are of ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... or defeat, in office or out, he was true to his own self and to his ideals. His early struggles, his firmness of purpose, his determination that knew no shadow of wavering, his exalted aims, and the success that ultimately crowned his efforts have given him high place among statesmen, and will be a continuing inspiration to the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... of time; the fissile results of the frost; the wavering line of ripple-marks of Seas that shall ebb no more; growth of lichen; an army of ants in full march; a passion-flower trailing from a crevice, its purple blooms lying upon the gray stone near where it is stamped with ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... instead of abandoning the interior of the country I will hold what we have already taken, and fortify and enlarge our boundaries." No other military document has so nearly that ring as Marshal Foch's immortal Marne despatch (written only a few weeks later): "My centre is broken, my right wing is wavering, the situation is favorable and I am about ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... his shoulders, as only an Italian can, pushed open the door, and entered the chamber. The spear-shaped flames of two tall candles but half lit the room, making a circle of wavering light. Beyond all was in uncertain gloom, through which one could dimly see the old tapestry and massive furniture of ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... winds of delight, may they beat With their palpitant wings at the hearts of the Young, And in bosoms of Age find as warm a retreat!— Yet sweetest of all of the musical throng, Though least of the numbers that upward aspire, Is the one rising now into wavering song, As I sit in the silence and gaze ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... windows were covered tight with shutters and heavy screens before the doors. The waiter put a candle in a saucer before your plate and you ate your food in this wavering light. There was not the usual temptation to linger in the piazza after dinner, for the cafes were all sealed against a betraying gleam of light and the Venetian public had taken to heart the posted advice to stay within doors and draw their wooden shutters. ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... setting sun By twos and threes, in wavering rows, As twilight shadows dimly close, The crows fly ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... a low tone of voice as the boat glided nearer and nearer to where the shark was swimming slowly and wavering to and fro, and in my excitement I drew back, raising the lance high, and just as the monster was about to dash off in a fresh direction I threw myself forward, driving the point of the lance right into the soft ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... straight Of clouds condensed a sable car. With charm and spell she blessed it there, From all the fiends of upper air; Then round him cast the shadowy shroud, And tied his steed behind the cloud; And pressed his hand as she bade him fly Far to the verge of the northern sky, For by its wane and wavering light There was a star ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... floor, while in the front room upstairs a fire was evidently burning in an open grate, the rest of the house being in darkness. Presently a man's figure, tall and well formed, could be seen pacing up and down the room, appearing, vanishing, and reappearing in the wavering firelight. For nearly an hour he continued his perambulation, his hands clasped behind him as though absorbed in deep thought. At last, arousing himself from his revery, the man looked at his watch and vanished, reappearing ten minutes later at the front door, in the usual fur coat and cap, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... solemnly declared on his deathbed that his master had sworn when once on the throne of England to banish all John's enemies.(199) Just when matters seemed to be approaching a crisis and the barons were wavering in their allegiance, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... foremost chiefs hallooing out that the white men were running, and to come on and scalp them. They were led by Dragging Canoe himself, and were formed very curiously, their centre being cone-shaped, while their wings were curved outward; apparently they believed the white line to be wavering and hoped to break through its middle at the same time that they outflanked it, trusting to a single furious onset instead of to their usual tactics.[35] The result showed their folly. The frontiersmen on the right and left scattered out still farther, so that their line could not be ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... thoroughly in earnest, Curly said no more, but stood there with his eyes fixed straight forward. The only time Glen spoke was whenever she detected his look wavering in the slightest degree. Then she called him sharply to attention, and warned him to be mindful of what ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... greatest of deaths far away from here, and because of another woman. It seems that, as I lay in the dark of this cave, I saw you, Umslopogaas, a great man, gaunt and grey, stricken to the death, and the axe Groan-maker wavering aloft, and many a man dead upon a white and shimmering way, and about you the fair faces of white women; and you had a hole in your forehead, husband, on the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... face, and slightly wavering voice appealed to all that was tender and loving in his cold undemonstrative nature, and he was strongly tempted to take her in his arms, and tell her the truth, which every day he found it ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... affectation. The concluding cadenza, that twirling line, reads plainly "Frederic Chopin." Op. 15 shows a higher degree of independence and poetic power than Op. 9. The third (in G minor) of these nocturnes is the finest of the three. The words languido e rubato describe well the wavering pensiveness of the first portion of the nocturne, which finds its expression in the indecision of the melodic progressions, harmonies, and modulations. The second section is marked religiose, and may be characterised as a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... he returned glibly. Then his pinched face shaded. "If I can git back before she comes down," he hesitated, wavering between kindness and fear. "I guess I can," he decided, ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... by this proof of American strength, his wavering mind was irritated by the apprehension of some sudden outbreak of English arrogance; for the Ambassador wrote that Whigs and Tories might yet unite in a war against France in order to put an end to the troubles in the Colonies,—and no Frenchman had forgotten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... intrigue, he did not fear that a few fugitive princes, destitute of credit, and some thousand aristocratic emigres, would impose laws or conditions on a nation whose first struggle for liberty had shaken the throne, the nobility, and the clergy. Neither did he think that the disunited and wavering powers of Europe would venture to declare war against a nation that proclaimed peace so long as we did not attack them. But should the European cabinets be sufficiently mad to attempt this new crusade against human reason, then Robespierre fully believed they would be defeated, for he ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... too?" she asked, wondering whether the act of walking would tend to steady her wavering fancies, and to stop that horrible tendency to light-headedness which bothered ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... of cresset protected by a wire globe, was suspended from the roof by a string. It shed a faint and wavering light, creating weird shadows in that far-stretching space, too vast for ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... spirit burn, and for a little while she and he stood by the table while the cold blue flames curled out of the saucer, wavering and spurting, until the spirit was consumed and the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... brother, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was intercepted by Bonaparte. I translated the letter, which proved to him that Francis II. was acquainted with his project. He likewise saw with pleasure the assurances which the Emperor gave his brother of his love of peace, as well as the wavering of the imperial resolves, and the incertitude respecting the fate of the Italian princes, which the Emperor easily perceived to depend on Bonaparte. The Emperor's letter was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... a close approach. There was the prelude of a few shots, which hurt one or two of Lambert's troopers; but the orders were that the general fire should be reserved till the musketeers should see the pikemen already within push of the enemy. Then it was not necessary. Lambert's men had been wavering all the while; his troopers now turned the noses of their pistols downwards; one troop came off entire to Ingoldsby; the rest broke up and fled. But Lambert himself was Ingoldsby's mark. Dashing up to him, pistol in hand, he claimed him as his prisoner. There was ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... It descended, its banners wavering in the winds of prayer; it hung above the Gates, the flowers of all splendours, Heaven's very rose, hung like an opal on the boundless breast of ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the leader: Like shaft from the bow Each mad horse is hurled On the wavering foe. A thousand bright sabres Are gleaming in air; A thousand dark horses Are dashed on ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... drawn in—and I was glad. I luxuriated in my gladness, lying there in my room under the wavering, uncertain light of two candles, hearing the church bells clanging and echoing mysteriously beyond the wall. I lay there with a consciousness of being on the very verge of some adventure, with the assurance, too, that I was to be of use once ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... they are close upon one another; it is hard to say as they come speeding back from the flagstaff which will reach the columns first. There are new faces among the foremost—eager, glowing faces, unnoticed before. Katrinka is there, and Hilda, but Gretel and Rychie are in the rear. Gretel is wavering, but when Rychie passes her, she starts forward afresh. Now they are nearly beside Katrinka. Hilda is still in advance, she is almost "home." She has not faltered since that bugle note sent her flying; like an arrow still she is speeding toward the goal. Cheer after cheer ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... arduis servare mentem." The girls smiled at this, confident of their powers. The students at Hurst prided themselves on their Latin, and could have stood a much severer test without wavering. The seniors did not trouble to write their answers, but waited complacently until the time came when they should have an opportunity of airing their proficiency. It never came, however, for Tom chose to disappoint expectations by reading ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and replenished the fire with resinous pine logs, and for a while the flames leaped high, filling the woods with strange shadows and ghostly, wavering spots of light. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... caprices of fortune. The Duke of Brunswick's language to me, as we saw the Tricolor waving on the walls of Longwy, the first fortress which lay in our road, was—"Sir, your court must not be deceived. We shall probably take the town, and defeat its wavering army; but up to this moment, we have not been joined by a single peasant. The population are against us. This is not a German war; it is more like yours in America. I have but one hundred and twenty thousand men against twenty-five millions." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... with a sword. After Sankara had destroyed the Buddhists in India, it is said that he journeyed to Nepaul, where he had some difference of opinion with the Grand Lama. To prove his supernatural powers, he soared into the air. But as he mounted up the Grand Lama, perceiving his shadow swaying and wavering on the ground, struck his knife into it and down fell Sankara and broke ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... close together, meditative and silent, their eyes roaming idly over the courtyard. The big bonfire burned brightly, and a wavering splash of light lay on the dark earth at their feet, while the lazy smoke wreathed itself slowly in gleaming coils amongst the black boughs of the trees. They could see Lakamba, who had returned to his place, sitting hunched up ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... soul seemed to shudder and his reason cried out that the thing could never be.... Yet in his heart of hearts still he loved her, still desired her with all his strength and will; in his heart there was no wavering. Whatever Rutton had been, whatever his daughter might be, he loved her. And more, the honour of the Ambers was in pledge, holding him steadfast to his purpose to seek her out in India or wherever she might be and to bear her away from the unnamed danger that threatened ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... conduct of the next, he has not failed." His mind went over this several times.... And presently he felt himself sailing through space toward one bright star. For eternities he had sailed—dominant, deathless—often wavering in the zones of attraction of other worlds, but never really losing that primal impetus for his own light of the universe.... And so while she read, Bedient drifted afar, sailing on and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... careful and dexterous, ever thinking of some fresh expedient to help the camp life; tough as steel on the traces, never wavering from start ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... thus spoke the carriage, making a sudden turn, showed them through the left window the village at some distance, still widely beaconed by the fire, which, having reached a store-house wherein spirits were deposited, now rose high into the air, a wavering column of brilliant light. They had not long time to admire this spectacle, for another turn of the road carried them into a close lane between plantations, through which the chaise proceeded in nearly total darkness, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Frenchmen pulled rapidly on, expecting to make an easy prize of the "Vestal." Their look of consternation was very great when they first perceived the painted canvas which concealed the corvette's guns. Pearce had carefully watched for the first sign of their wavering, and now ordered the three boats to make chase. The Frenchmen, taken by surprise, made but a slight show of resistance, and in ten minutes the whole party found themselves prisoners on the deck of the corvette. The "Vestal" was now towed up towards the brig, which opened ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... without a following, but the ranks of his old allies gradually began to show signs of wavering. His panic about the Jacobins within the gates slowly spread. His old faith, about which he had once talked so much, in the ancient rustic, manly, home-bred sense of the English people, he dismissed as if it had been ...
— Burke • John Morley
... are hard to please. Then without tropes, my Lord, An overmuch severeness, I repeat, When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass Into more settled hatred of the doctrines Of those who rule, which hatred by and by Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal, The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail, Yet others are that dare the ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of admiration. By appealing constantly, when we praise, to the judgment of the pupils themselves, we shall at once teach them the habit of re-judging flattery, and substitute, by insensible degrees, patient, steady confidence in themselves, for the wavering, weak, impatience of vanity. In proportion as any one's confidence in himself increases, his anxiety for the applause of others diminishes: people are very seldom vain of any accomplishments in which they obviously excel, but they frequently ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... wavering expressively on the threshold as if in rebuke of such offhand acquiescence; then her retreating steps sounded down the passage, and Mary, pushing away her papers, crossed the hall, and went to the library door. It was still closed, and she wavered in her turn, disliking to disturb ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... steer the course that events took now. The rails of the main line beside us brightened in wavering parallels as the headlight grew down upon us, and in this same moment the shootings at the corrals chorused in a wild, hilarious threat. The burden of the coming engine heavily throbbed in the air and along the steel, and met and mixed with the hard, light beating of hoofs. The sounds ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... northwards from it, in which stood the new bare buildings of the Calliope. Outside the theatre itself there was a dense mass of carriages and human beings, only kept in order by the active vigilance of the police, and wavering to and fro with kaleidoscopic rapidity. The line of carriages seemed interminable, and, after those who emerged from them had run the gauntlet of the dripping, curious, good-tempered multitude outside, they had to face the sterner ordeal of the struggling well-dressed ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it was she who said: "But—" and paused uncertainly. I could see she was wavering, and I massed my horse, foot, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... blew up, and a wonderful strong light lighted the town, the river, and the camp. As it fell the dog bayed again, a long, sharp, wavering cry. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... remember—a weird and unearthly bit of living—that war-ruined church, strewn with straw, the wounded wrapped like mummies in dark blankets, their white bandages making high spots in the wavering, irregular lights of lanterns and pocket flashes moving about. I sat on the pavement by his side, hand in hand. A big crucifix hung above, and the Christ seemed to be ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... above my power. I would have liked to possess very much; that I might make him the owner of it all. And instead, I was going to give him as poor a wife as ever he could have picked up in the farm-houses of the North. Yes, I cared. I found I cared much. And though there was not, of course, any wavering of my judgment as to what was right, I found that to do the right would cost me something; more than I could have thought possible; and to tell Mr. Thorold of it all, was the same as doing it. I walked down a good many ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species, bow in storms with considerable scope and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... weighty authority, however, of Sainte-Beuve, at first thrown into the scale that at length would sink, was thence withdrawn, and at last, if not resolutely cast upon the opposite side of the balance, was left wavering in a kind of equipoise between the one and the other. But our preliminary sketch has already passed the limit within which our choice of authors for representation ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... no wavering or weakness apparent to the girl who marched beside him, and she wondered at the physical endurance of the man. But when at last they came to a clear pool of water, half hidden by overhanging rocks and long masses of depending mosses, in the midst of a natural grotto ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... down in writing before her and asked her if any of them were wrong; to this she replied: "yes:" "Which?" asked I—she said: "2." (the second) "What should it be?" I queried; she rapped "n." "How many of these letters belong to the first word?" I continued. "2." "And to the second?" She gave a wavering six—(though it may have been five). So the words purported to be "ne deresf." I could make nothing of it and asked her again—"What is deresf?" to which she gave the explanation: "ein tir." (tier animal) "An ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... dark and starless; the breeze, though slight and wavering over the sands, was penetrating and cold. The feet of Mrs. Armine sank down at each step into the deep and yielding sands as she went on into the blackness of the immeasurable desert. And as she gazed before her at the hollow blackness and felt the immensity of the unpeopled ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... behold, and, careless of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh, what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling through the streets of ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... seat, fixed the corner of the slate well into his ribs, humped his back, and commenced another wavering line. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... It is better, with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem oneself in the hands of Fate, than to think—with our fierce passions and weak repentances; with our resolves so loud, so vain, so ludicrously, despicably weak and frail; with our dim, wavering, wretched conceits about virtue, and our irresistible propensity to wrong,—that we are the workers of our future sorrow or happiness. If we depend on our strength, what is it against mighty circumstance? If we look to ourselves, what ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr. Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd confront Berne Webster again with ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... What they learned during those eight years of sitting still and not whispering had nothing to do with the books in their desks or the lore in their teachers' brains. The great impression stamped upon the wax of their minds, which became iron in after years, was democracy—a crude, distorted, wavering image of democracy, like every image an ideal in this imperfect world, but in its essence a reflection of the ideal of their country. No European could have conceived how literally it was true that the birth or wealth or social position of a child made no difference ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... she guided Baldy, while Buck strode beside, never wavering from the easy, powerful stride that was the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... soil is soft as marl, with tints splashed on it of pale green and rose and orange, and a faint scent in it of sulphur. They break away into wild chasms, where rivulets begin; and here the narrow watercourses made for us plain going. The turf beneath our feet was starred with cyclamens and wavering anemones. At last we reached the chestnut woods, and so by winding paths descended on the village. Giuseppe told me, as we walked, that in a short time he would be obliged to join the army. He contemplated this duty with a dim and undefined ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... cattleman, tentatively; "him I speaks of former?" My gray old campanero was measuring out what he called his "forty drops," and, since this ceremony necessitated keeping one eye on his glass, while he endeavored to keep the other eye on me, the contradictory effort resulted in a wavering and uncertain expression, not at all in harmony with his usual positive air. By way of helping conversation, I confessed to a clear remembrance of the "Polish artist person," and wound up by urging him to give the ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... promise you blue-grass training, suh. That has to begin with a foal." He hoped Rennie would credit his wavering to a modest appraisal ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... clothes, and now came forth dressed out in skins, in strips of white cloth, with feathers, shells and various ornaments. They carried white wands to represent spears, and they sang their tribal lion song. A soloist delivered the main argument in a high wavering minor and was followed by a deep rumbling emphatic chorus of repetition, strongly accented so that the sheer rhythm of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... eyebrows dark under her gold, very dark against her white; sorrowful, transparent, lucid eyes. A little girl with a straight white face. A little, slender girl in a straight white frock. She stood by Anthony's chair, spinning out the time, smiling at him with her childish wavering mouth, a smile that would not spread, that never went higher than the tip of her white nose, that left her lucid, transparent ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Sedgwick. Slowly, in perfect order, the veterans of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania were falling back, contesting every inch of the way. One position was surrendered only to take another. There was no wavering, no falling out of ranks, except of those who were shot down. The next morning, one passing over the ground where those heroes fought, could see where they successively stood and breasted the storm by the dead men who lay in line where they had fallen. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... since the early morning when her father and Diana, with the engineer and Stanley, rode away, after escorting her to the Mission Station and leaving her there to await their return. It was as though the very abruptness of Carew's departure had crystallised all her wavering, uncertain thoughts, and told her bluntly what he was to her. Before she had been half dreaming; ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... soldier who is called upon to fight her battles. But other objects of no less importance are in view, viz., to open the eyes of the misguided Boer people to the wicked artifices by which it has been seduced from friendly relations with England into an unjustifiable war, to deter the still wavering portion from joining the ranks of sedition, and, lastly, the grounds for palliation being recognised, to pave the way to an early termination of the war by adjustments which could restore mutual goodwill and respect between the contending ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... his presence, turned a wavering face to her friend; and Alice, before the other could speak, rose up, and went out, ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... possible. Briefly, he produced a caricature, modeled upon no existing work of modern art, but corresponding to the lineaments of that Desired of the Nation which pedants had prophesied. Unity of action celestial machinery, races in conflict, contrasted heroes, the wavering chance of war, episodes, bards, heroines, and love subordinated to the martial motive—all these features of the epic he viewed through the distorting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... such as these that always called Molly back, if she had been ever so unconsciously wavering in her allegiance to Cynthia. She had been wishing downstairs that Cynthia would be less reserved, and not have so many secrets; but now it seemed almost like treason to have wanted her to be anything but what she was. Never had any one more than Cynthia ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is but a memory, and its vividness cannot be made clear to another mind, any more than the vivid emotions of a dream. One must have seen his innate splendour, one must have known him before—looked at him then. The wavering gloom of the little cabin; the breathless stillness outside, through which only the lapping of water against the schooner's sides could be heard; Hollis's pale face, with steady dark eyes; the energetic head of Jackson held up between two big palms, and with the long yellow hair of his ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... and those writ large and deep, on the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's copy of the Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the first lessons, might ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... being stationed on the confines of the Lower Province, would be always immediately and essentially useful in checking any seditious disposition, which the wavering sentiments of a large population in the Montreal district might at any time manifest. In the event of invasion, or other emergency, this force could be easily and expeditiously transported ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... moment their letters arrive." It will be seen how much was at stake for Nelson personally in the issue of these weeks. Happy the man who, like him, has in such a case the clear light of duty to keep his steps from wavering! ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... rightful owner for his property, rents, and profits. In due season courts will be established to execute the laws, the confiscation act included, when we will be relieved of this duty and trust. Until that time, every opportunity should be given to the wavering and disloyal to return to their allegiance to the Constitution of their birth or adoption. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... him with the little hybrid. One more, and offered with such simplicity! . . . "Lack of religion and good habits!" Then with sudden modesty, he doubted the woman's veracity. Why must it necessarily be his? . . . But his wavering was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... left Lisconnel on a fine autumn morning, when the air was so still that the flashing and twinkling of the many dewdrops seemed to make quite a stir in it. The sky was as clear as any one of them, and in the golden light the wavering columns of blue smoke rose with curves softly transparent. He started with a buoyant step, as well he might, since he was setting out on the enterprise into which he had put all the spirit of his youth. He felt some regret at parting from his Lisconnel friends, but his ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Hamlet. Tourneur, writing independently of Shakespeare, introduces, among all sorts of horrors, a Christian ghost who forbids blood vengeance and commands submission to Providence. Ben Jonson, in his additions to the old Spanish Tragedy, gives fine imaginative interpretation of the wavering moods of meditation, irony, and frenzy with which Kyd had dealt only crudely. The later development of this type proceeded without much regard to Shakespeare's Hamlet, but rather in the direction started ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to be at the Echo offices that day with copy for the next issue of his paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter's private room opened and the great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on his return from the elevator his eye fell ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... these hopes: she was willing to believe in promises which she was convinced were made with entire sincerity; and when her affections had been wrought to this point, when her resolution was once determined, she never afterwards tormented the man to whom she was attached, with wavering doubts and scruples. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of weak-bodied, large-winged insects, with an irregular wavering flight, and which, when resting on foliage, often expand the wings, which the species of the other sections rarely or never do. They are the most conspicuous ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... yet, consider, what was the object of the Government in their imposition? merely to get rid of "Popery?" No; it had the further object of gaining the "Papists." What then was the best way to induce reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed, were the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new symbol? how had the Arians drawn up their Creeds? was it not on the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... his woman was running a band of sheep very close to the border of Tim Sullivan's lease. All afternoon Mackenzie had heard the plaint of lambs; they had lifted their wavering chorus all during Joan's lesson, giving her great concern that Carlson designed attempting a trespass on her ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... devolved upon Colonel Elzey.) and Beauregard, with ready judgment, dispatched his staff officers to order a general advance. The broken remnants of Bee, Hampton, and Evans advanced upon Jackson's right, and victory, long wavering, crowned the standards of the South. The Federals were driven past the guns, now finally abandoned, past the Henry House, and down the slope. McDowell made one desperate endeavour to stay the rout. Howard's ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... yards away a slender, upright object turned in a wide circle and moved slowly northward. To the south a cluster of smoke spirals appeared above the horizon, growing gradually more distinct. The party in one of the cutters raised a wavering cheer. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... of that firm to his credit. He was, however, acquitted by a majority of three only. The greatest exertions were made to screen him. Lord Stanhope, the son of the Earl of Chesterfield, went round to the wavering members, using all the eloquence he was possessed of to induce them either to vote for the acquittal or to absent themselves from the house. Many weak-headed country-gentlemen were led astray by his persuasions, and the result was as already stated. The acquittal caused the greatest ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... of the "Foul Anchor."—Honest Joe stood with a perfectly composed look, and with a face that might readily have been trusted to confront a far more imposing tribunal, awaiting the result of his testimony on the seemingly wavering ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... held up high a flaming torch, and the watcher at the window saw that the shadowy crowd which had managed to force its way into the Park hung together, like bees swarming, on the farther lawn through which flowed the Serpentine. With the gleaming of the yellow, wavering light there had fallen a sudden hush and silence, and Mr. Tapster wondered uneasily what those people were doing there, and what it was they were pressing forward ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... hope or wish is to expire, Here's POWELL'S [101] pistol ready for your life, And, kinder still, two PAGETS for your wife: [xlix] Fit consummation of an earthly race 680 Begun in folly, ended in disgrace, While none but menials o'er the bed of death, Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy wavering breath; Traduced by liars, and forgot by all, The mangled victim of a drunken brawl, To live like CLODIUS, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... what manner of creature it was which gripped the satchel's handle and whose eyes pulsed back greenish flares into the torch's dim glow. But it was an animal of some kind;—distorted and formless in the wavering finger of blunted light; but still an ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... neighbors stumbling over the stony roads at twilight, when the day's work was done, to hear the daily paper read at the farmhouse on The Corners, eager to know the worst or the best every night. Hugh used to hold the candle, while Mark read in a slow, understanding voice about the marching, fighting, wavering, conquering of those days, now less remembered than the Iliad, when we warmed our hearts at the blaze of war. At every new local name, "Stop!" the old farmer used to say: "let's see where that is. Get the map.—Hugh, hold the light.—There 'tis, by that grease-spot—not the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... equal opportunity to study her. It was a doubtful satisfaction. He could rarely meet Dolly's eyes, while yet he saw how coolly they perused him, how calmly they studied him as an abstract thing. He wanted to see a little shyness, a little consciousness, a little wavering, in those clear, wise orbs; but no! Dolly sat at her work and did it as unconcernedly as if she were five years old, to all appearance; with as quiet, calm poise of manner and simplicity of dignity as if she had been fifty. But how pretty she was! Those eyes of hers were such ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... smiling, and wavering between the confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs—"I am afraid I am very far from understanding—how am I to put it?—I am afraid ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... judgment of the synod, must prepare themselves for an immediate exile, annihilated the murmurs of a feeble opposition; which, from seventeen, was almost instantly reduced to two, protesting bishops. Eusebius of Caesarea yielded a reluctant and ambiguous consent to the Homoousion; [80] and the wavering conduct of the Nicomedian Eusebius served only to delay, about three months, his disgrace and exile. [81] The impious Arius was banished into one of the remote provinces of Illyricum; his person and disciples were branded by law with the odious name of Porphyrians; his writings were condemned ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fireflies pulsed within the meadow-mist Their halos, wavering thistledowns of light; The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin tryst, Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in affright, Like Odin's hounds, fled baying ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... I'll get you others if there's a shop open in the city," I said. Then, as she hesitated, wavering between doubt and surprise, I left the room, descended the steps with a rush, and picking up my hat, hurried in search of a belated florist who had not closed. At the corner a man, going out to dine, paused to fasten ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... affection was of that passive, tenacious kind which tacitly accepts all the faults of the beloved. He was always ready to sympathize with Ellen, and once or twice expostulated with Joanna—but his loyalty showed no signs of wavering. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... at her side, her clothes touched his, and he could have flung his arms around her. But it was the move next after that which seemed obscure. He wondered what her reply would be; and, moving the lantern a little, she read the hesitation in his eyes—the wavering between desire for vengeance, a soldierly regard for sex, and mistrust of her apparent helplessness. And, being ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... insidious flattery, that was most soothing to her temper. Full, as he pretended, of the infant purposes of virtue, he besought his captive in the most importunate manner, to remain with him for a time, to confirm his wavering rectitude, to instruct him in duty, and thus to gain one human being to the standard of integrity, and to render so extensive possessions subservient to the happiness of mankind. All this he expressed with that ardour, which is congenial to the simplicity of truth; and with ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... the bleachers, whose chorus work had equalled, in some respects, that on the stage. A soft light began to illumine the painted heavens, and a three-hundred-candle-power Luna, the pride and joy of Connor's heart, rose in wavering majesty. The house was quiet now, listening to Smith's solo to Lillian in the moonlit garden. The music swept softly on to the close of the song. As Jack took a deep breath for his tender love-note, the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... She kept on. The wavering gleam came from behind a thicket—an open fire, she saw at length. Beyond the fire she heard a horse sneeze. Within a few yards of the thicket through which wavered the yellow gleam she halted, smitten with a sudden panic. This endured but a few seconds. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... have seen, at evening, one or other of them, not both together. His imagination will therefore waver; and, with the imagination of future evenings, he will associate first one, then the other—that is, he will imagine them in the future, neither of them as certain, but both as contingent. This wavering of the imagination will be the same, if the imagination be concerned with things which we thus contemplate, standing in relation to time past or time present: consequently, we may imagine things as contingent, whether they be referred to time ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... wavering to and fro, The brightsome flower of beauty fades away, Reason retires, and Pleasure brings in Woe, And Wisdom yieldeth place to black decay. Counsel, and fame, and friendship are condemned, And bashful shame, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... to see Glenn working on his own farm must result in her talking to him about his work; and in a way not quite clear she regretted the necessity for it. To disapprove of Glenn! She received faint intimations of wavering, of uncertainty, of vague doubt. But these were cried down by the dominant and habitable voice of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... back, bore with them their officers. The narrowness of the pass forced the mob into solid formation, and the rear-rank delivered some sort of a wavering volley. The Ghazis drew off, for they did not know what reserves the gorge might hide. Moreover, it was never wise to chase white men too far. They returned as wolves return to cover, satisfied with the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... women have fantastic constitutions, Inconstant in their wishes, always wavering, And never fixed. Was it not boldly done, Ev'n at first sight, to trust the thing I loved (A tempting treasure, too,) with youth so fierce And vigorous as thine? but ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway |
