"Loath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Norah was never loath to play, and on this occasion was anxious to make a good impression, so that Mrs Freer might gain her father's consent to the proposed music lessons. At the earliest opportunity, therefore, she produced her violin, played her favourite selections, ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... grown so big that you might look down his great throat, and see the place where one of the boys used to go in to make his snowship talk. Frank and Harry loved all their winter amusements, and were loath to give up skating, sliding, and coasting, and above all, snowballing. Yet the boys enjoyed the lengthening twilight—-the hour their mother devoted ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... bought for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just to disown and annul its obligation.... If there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows; if the victims of justice could live again, collect together and form a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice—that justice under which they fell—the fundamental law of ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... years and, though he felt that his dead comrade had a strong claim on him, he could wait a little longer. Fate might place conclusive evidence in his hands or remove some of his difficulties. Besides, he must go back as soon as possible to the Canadian North, and in one respect he was very loath to do this. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. No new flux'd rake show'd fairer skin; Nor Phyllis after lying in. With snuff was fill'd his ebon box, Of shin-bones rotted by the pox. Nine spirits of blaspheming ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... friend, drink where those holy waters shine Which the plough-bearing hero—loath to fight His kinsmen—rather drank than sweetest wine With a loving bride's reflected eyes alight; Then, though thy form be black, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... buggies and carriages, and of course they won't mind horses with women! Please go home!" But Ginnie, who had taken a fancy to go on, acted as spokeswoman, and determined to go on in spite of his advice, so, nothing loath to follow her example, we thanked him, and rode on. Another met us; looked doubtful, said it was not so dangerous if the Yankees did not see the dust; but if they did, we would be pretty apt to see a shell soon after. Here ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... much agreement to intrust Cromwell with the task; and after some consideration, and prayerful consultations in the army, he accepted the duty. The condition of England was precarious indeed; service in Ireland was not popular in the army; and an ambitious adventurer would have been loath to quit England while the first place was still unoccupied. It was at great risk to the cause, and at much personal sacrifice, that Cromwell accepted the difficult post in Ireland as his first duty to his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... exploded with one puff, and had its end; General Hunter was ordered North, and the busy Gilmore reigned in his stead; and in June, when the blackberries were all eaten, we were summoned, nothing loath, to other scenes ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... home—it would do no harm to inquire at the door; but Biddy, who was scouring the doorsteps, told him abruptly to step in and he would find the lady; and, half amused at his own coolness, he, nothing loath, accepted ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... not mind. Doris Cleveland had shot like a pleasant burst of colorful light across the grayest period of his existence, and he was loath to let ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... dear maid, this fond but faithful lay, That pictures, on no perishable page, Thy beauties, rescued from the spoils of age, To live and blossom with thy poet's bay: For when remorseless Time brings on decay, When the loath'd mirror shall no more engage Thy smiles, distorted into grief and rage, Alas! to think that youth must pass away— Then in these lines contented shall thou trace, As in a lovelier glass, thy lasting charms, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... or axe,—as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou hadst rather stay until what thou greatest is become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against Nature eat an animate thing? Nay, there is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing as it is; but they boil it, and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... view of the client is that he is loath to spend the money to hire a lawyer for defense. One litigant stated in court, when asked if he had not admitted the debt: "Well," he said, "I just went around to see the plaintiff to find out if I could not save a few dollars instead of hiring a lawyer." It is an open question which brand is the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... full loath they were to wait, For of their master's anger / stood they in terror great. Each day for leave to journey / more great their yearning grew, But daily to withhold it / crafty Hagen ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... work by craft and guile, neither was it in my father before me. I am ready to carry off this man with a strong arm; and how, being a cripple, shall he stand against us? but deceit I will not use. And though I should be loath to fail thee in this our common enterprise, yet were this better than ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... Hussars.) 'He was wounded, and had had his arm amputated on the field. He was among the first that came in. He rode straight and stark upon his horse—the bloody clouts about his stump—pale as death, but upright, with a stern, fixed expression of {p.042} feature, as if loath to lose his revenge.' These troops are very remarkable in their fine military appearance; their dark and ominous dress sets off to advantage their strong, manly, northern features and white mustachios; and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in his statement the germs at least of all that he has thought and believed. In this respect he is like light—the presence of the general at the particular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself somewhat loath to diffract this pure ray to the arbitrary end of my special topic. Why should I speak of him as an American? That is not his definition. He was an American because he was himself. America, however, gives less limitation than any other nationality to a generous and ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Guard into my Boat, thinking I could not Answer it to the Admiralty the tamely submitting to such a Custom, which, when practiced in its full force, must bring Disgrace to the British Flag. On the other hand, I was loath to enter into Disputes, seeing how much I was like to be delay'd and imbarrassed in getting the supplys I wanted, for it was with much difficulty that I obtained leave for one of my People to attend the Market to buy necessaries ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... at hand to see fair play," he muttered to himself, "in case any of his ruffians be hanging about. Fair play I'll see, and fair play I'll give, too, for the sake of my lord's honor, though I be bitterly loath to do it. So many times as I have been a villain when it was of no use, why mayn't I be one now, when it would serve the purpose indeed? Why did we ever come into this accursed place? But one thing I will do," said he, as he ensconced ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Nothing loath, the captain readily consented, inviting the boys to go with him; but this Douglas, much disturbed by the notoriety of the evening, flatly refused, while bold Norman, who had no fear of man before his ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... man was answering her, standing squarely before her, and holding both her hands, "you are wrong to despond. If I do not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the consent of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of the pleasure of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith in me, and in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should be ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... far-reaching hand, To greet, in Seventy-six, the wintry morn Of a new year, and herald to the world Glad tidings from a Western land,— A people and a hope new-born! The double cross then filled thine azure field, In token of a spirit loath to yield The breaking ties that bound thee to a throne. But not for long thine oriflamme could bear That symbol of an outworn trust in kings. The wind that bore thee out on widening wings Called for a greater sign ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... captain, carried the pannier, and, laughing, we crossed the street and the moat, giving the word "Bedford." To the porter I showed my pass, telling him that, though I was loath to disturb him, I counted not to watch all night in the cell, wherefore I gave him a gold piece for the trouble he might have in letting me go forth at an hour untimely. Herewith he was well ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... notes (vol. ii. p. 167), and will only say here that M. Pauthier's solution of the difficulty is no solution, being absolutely inconsistent with the story as told by Marco himself, and that I see none; though I have so much faith in Marco's veracity that I am loath to believe that the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are to return to-night with the wagonette; and some of the others, loath to break up company, will go with them a bit of the way and drink a stirrup-cup at Marlotte. It is dark in the wagonette, and not so merry as it might have been. The coachman loses the road. So-and-so tries to light fireworks with the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honied honeyed impale empale inclose enclose inclosure enclosure indict endict indictment endictment indorse endorse indorsement endorsement instructor instructer insure ensure insurance ensurance judgement judgment laquey lackey laste last licence license loth loath lothsome loathsome malcontent malecontent maneuver manoeuvre merchandize merchandise misprison misprision monies moneys monied moneyed negociate negotiate negociation negotiation noviciate novitiate ouse ooze opake ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... my Nature toward you, Love bends my Soul that way— A Weakness I ne'er felt for any other; And wou'd you be so base? and cou'd you have the Heart To take th' advantage on't to ruin me, To make me infamous, despis'd, loath'd, pointed at? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... arms and legs bare, looking in their strong contrast of black and white, mounted as they were upon small, active horses, wild of mane and tail, and as savage of aspect as their riders, effective looking troops for a desert campaign; and as they rode through the streets, loath to give way to anyone, their eyes wandered over every person, place, or thing, as if, as the Sheikh had said, in search ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... days," she writes, "like relatives. The entire Lincoln family stayed the last night before starting on their journey with Mr. Gentry. He was loath to part with Lincoln, so 'accompanied the movers along the road a spell.' They stopped on a hill which overlooks Buckthorn Valley, and looked their 'good-by' to their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... altogether are the words you encounter but do not recognize, except (it may be) dimly and uncertainly. Some counselors would have you look up all such words in a dictionary. But the task would be irksome. Moreover those who prescribe it are loath to perform it themselves. Your own candid judgment in the matter is the safest guide. If the word is incidental rather than vital to the meaning of the passage that contains it, and if it gives promise of but rarely crossing ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... gave answer to their din— The brook in fear beheld the sight. And all that bloody field within Wore token of Winfreda's might. The wolf was very loath to stay— But, oh! ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... departure completed, Rosendo and Jose took their chairs out before the house, where they sat late, each loath to separate lest some final word be left unsaid. The tepid evening melted into night, which died away in a deep silence that hung wraith-like over the old town. Myriad stars rained their shimmering lustre out of the unfathomable ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... been good to me—I shall never forget it," she whispered, almost loath to let this first woman friend ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... sympathy for France; England, too, the great investor in and developer of South America, was watched with good feeling; but Germany has done much for Latin America commerce and shipping facilities, a work performed with skillfully regulated tact, and very many sections of the southern republics were loath to believe that a nation so friendly and so industriously commercial had deliberately planned ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Ben Jonson, and of Tasso, and Tasso's Friend the Marquis of Villa, whome, it appeared, Mr. Milton had Knowledge of in Italy. Then he askt me, woulde I not willingly have seene the Country of Romeo and Juliet, and prest to know whether I loved Poetry; but finding me loath to tell, sayd he doubted not I preferred Romances, and that he had read manie, and loved them dearly too. I sayd, I loved Shakspeare's Plays better than Sidney's Arcadia; on which he cried "Righte," and drew nearer to me, and woulde have talked at greater length; but, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... testing the fence-lengths, and then, before they left the pasture, stood, by according impulse, and looked back into its trembling green. The boy had let down the bars, but he was loath to go. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... no distinguishing thee from them.' Now he is a rich man, having wealth galore, [and saith not on this wise but] because he is a niggard and grudgeth the spending of a farthing; [wherefore he is loath to marry me,] lest he be put to somewhat of charge in my marriage, albeit God the Most High hath been bountiful to him and he is a man puissant in his time and lacking nothing of the goods of the world." "Who is thy father," asked the young merchant, "and what ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... conception of a man of rare invention, imagination, and marked poetic feeling. It is surely the last word in stucco. Everybody loves this Court of the Ages, and everybody wishes that we could have something permanent like it somewhere - perhaps in San Francisco. We shall all be loath to part with in when the two hundred and ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... religion has departed; the clouds of heaven fall in rain; we have no longer either hope or expectation, not even two little pieces of black wood in the shape of a cross before which to clasp our hands. The star of the future is loath to rise; it can not get above the horizon; it is enveloped in clouds, and like the sun in winter its disk is the color of blood, as in '93. There is no more love, no more glory. What heavy darkness over all the earth! And we shall be dead when the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... startled by a footfall not unlike that of a man. She had not been married long enough to know the sound of her husband's step, and she felt a thrill of joy and fear alternately. It might be he, and it might be a stranger! She was loath to look up, but at last gave a furtive glance, and met squarely the eyes of a large grizzly bear, who was seated upon his haunches ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... night brought back the charm of the desert. How flaming white the stars! The great spire-pointed peaks lifted cold pale-gray outlines up into the deep star-studded sky. Carley walked a little to and fro, loath to go to her tent, though tired. She wanted calm. But instead of achieving calmness she grew more and more towards a strange ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the fine clothes," said the first old lady to the apprentice boy, reaching out a hand and pulling at the corner of the box-lid. The youth was nothing loath to show, with professional pride, the quality of his burden, and so raised ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... meant by this Jargon, the Bye and the Main? he said, That the lord Cobham told him, that Grey and others were in the Bye, he and Raleigh were on the Main. Being asked, what exposition his brother made of these words? He said, he is loath to repeat it. And after saith, by the Main was meant the taking away of the king and his issue; and thinks on his conscience, it was infused into ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... introduction into society she needed someone to shield her, as it were, from the many foolish, flattering speeches which were sure to be made in her hearing, he kept her at his side, where she was nothing loath to stay; for, notwithstanding that she "hated" him so, there was about him a fascination she did not try ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... on my knee to the speaking deity! She seemed delivering oracles! My passions rose, my heart was full, her eulogium made it loath and abhor its own deceit; the words—'Madam, I am a villain!'—bolted to my lips, there they quivering lingered in excruciating suspense, and at last slunk back like cowards, half wishing but wholly ashamed to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... social set gets a draft from me that will open their eyes," Trudy promised, loath to have ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... thoroughly glad to be at rest. Next, a beautiful woman enters, her face is lined with care and her dark, bright eyes are full of trouble. She does not tarry, but hurries on like one seeking for something yet to come. A little child, with lingering, backward glance, flits through the swinging door as if loath to say good-bye to some one on the other side. A hard-featured man, whose sullen glance travels quickly about the place, comes next; he seems seeking for some one to welcome him, and is abashed to find himself alone among unheeding strangers. ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... many months a faint color had found its way into his wan cheeks. His face was alight with interest, and his dark eyes shone from their deep hollows with a new, soft fire. From that moment he assumed a new place in her thoughts. She was loath to grant it to him, but she had no alternative. Guilty or innocent, this man had something in him which placed him high above other men in her estimation. She felt stirred in a manner peculiarly grateful to her. It was as ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Roman plays to prove Shakespeare's intimacy with the Latin classics. When he came under the influence of Warburton he lost his assurance. He was then "very cautious of declaring too positively" on either side of the question; but he was loath to give up his belief that Shakespeare knew the classics at first hand. Warburton himself did not figure creditably in the controversy. He might ridicule the discoveries of other critics, but his vanity often allured him to displays of learning as absurd as theirs. No indecision ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... all hath bought, If Death were the messenger, For no man that is living to-day I will not go that loath journey— Not for the father ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... successful in the business he had in hand, and likewise to take measures against Ptolemy who then held Cyprus, because the latter had failed to ransom him from the pirates. Hence he made the island public property and despatched Cato, very loath, to attend to ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... up wildly, and again she heard my Spirit's cry. Now a mighty fear took hold of her. She called aloud to the sailors to hoist the sails and make signal to her fleet to put about. This they did wondering but little loath, and fled in haste from ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... length he commanded vs to speake. Then our guide gaue vs direction, that wee should bow our knees and speak. Wherupon I bowed one knee as vnto a man: then he signified that I should kneele vpon both knees: and I did so, being loath to contend about such circumstaunces. And again he commanded me to speak. Then I thinking of praier vnto God, because I kneeled on both my knees, began to pray on this wise: Sir, we beseech the Lord, from whom all good things doe proceed and who hath giuen you ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit: and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of "Flora's Figarys," which was acted to-day. But, Lord! to see how they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me loath them; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk! And how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very observable. But to see ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... a different light upon the intention Neale had of hunting for the buried gold. Just now he certainly did not want to risk being seen digging gold or packing it away; and Slingerland was just as loath to have it concealed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... was attributed to him on all sides, in company with others, his secret being on the whole well kept. The Julius was translated into Bohemian, somewhere about this time: but from the nature of it, a kind of book to which publishers as well as authors were loath to put their names, it cannot be definitely placed. So it was, too, with the Moria, which had been translated by Gregory Hruby Gelenski, father of the scholar, Sigismund Gelenius; but of ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... the cafe. The "Nouvelle Athenes" is a cafe on the Place Pigale. Ah! the morning idlenesses and the long evenings when life was but a summer illusion, the grey moonlights on the Place where we used to stand on the pavements, the shutters clanging up behind us, loath to separate, thinking of what we had left said, and how much better we might have enforced our arguments. Dead and scattered are all those who used to assemble there, and those years and our home, for it was our home, live only in a few pictures ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... I, nothing loath, for I have always dearly loved the sound of my own voice, "do you see that man on the hearth-rug?—do not look at him this very minute, or he will know that we are speaking of him. I cannot imagine why father has asked him here to-night—he ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Nothing loath to avail himself of his master's permission, Ben Zoof crouched down in an angle of the shore, threw his arms over his eyes, and very soon slept the sleep of the ignorant, which is often sounder than the sleep of the just. Overwhelmed by the questions that crowded upon his brain, Captain Servadac ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... see the meetings close; and as he bade the sweet-faced women farewell, he was loath to see them go, because of their Christian influence. But life to him was no longer what it had been in the past. With the poet, ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... told Martha I hoped she would do no mischief. She was nothing loath to let me kiss her, so there was soon acquaintance between us. She had seen me half naked, how long she had been watching I knew not, but it was certain she had seen me shoving as hard as I could between the naked thighs of her ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Forth in their high-heeled shoes came the noble-born widows, who, old and faded, were loath to forget that in the days of the regency they had been blooming like the queen, and who, in happy ignorance of their crow's feet and wrinkles, were decked in the self-same costumes which had once set off ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... been urging the homeward journey for several days, but the men were loath to go, until now, a more severe bit of weather had persuaded them. Even as they sat round the fire, with storm coats drawn high up around their ears, the sleet-squalls drove against their faces and the gale howled among ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... service, he so exercised and inured his body to all sorts of activity and encounter, that, besides the lightness of a racer, he had a weight in close seizures and wrestlings with an enemy, from which it was hard for any to disengage himself; so that his competitors at home in displays of bravery, loath to own themselves inferior in that respect, were wont to ascribe their deficiencies to his strength of body, which they said no resistance and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had given us for our subsistence, and they wanted that too; they penetrated into the woods in quest of game; they discovered spots of land which pleased them, that land they also wanted; and because we were loath to part with it, as we saw they had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force, and drove us to a great distance from our ancient homes; they looked everywhere for good spots of land, and when they found one, they immediately, ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... said the man referred to, "I'm very sorry now that I didn't. But I felt loath to disturb people at that hour ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... this charming spot, the followers of the Prophet delight to saunter, or repose, as in the elysium of their devotions; and, arrayed in the gorgeous costume of the East, add much to the interest, the beauty, and solemn stillness of the scene, from which they seem loath to retire. The Sakhara itself is a regular octagon of about sixty feet a side, and is entered by four spacious doors, each of which is adorned with a porch projecting from the line of the building and rising considerably on the wall. All the sides of it are paneled. The centre ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... liberty he gives me for a month, I should be loath to take it; for one knows not the inconveniences that may attend a change of nourishment; or if I did, I should rather—But I know not what I would say; for I am but a young creature to be in this way, and so very unequal to it in every respect! So I commit myself to God's direction, and your advice, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... can speak," sez he, staggerin' up blind as a stump. I was loath to do ut, but I wint round an' swung into the jaw side-on an' shifted ut a ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... Nothing loath to remove their clothes, which still smelled of engine smoke, despite their ride over the plains, as the brothers seized their suitcases and followed their young hosts, Larry ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... progress of this discussion I shall have occasion to use very plain, and sometimes very severe language. This would be an unpleasant task, did not duty imperiously demand its application. To give offence I am loath, but more to hide or modify the truth. I shall deal with the Society in its collective form—as one body—and not with individuals. While I shall be necessitated to marshal individual opinions in review, I protest, ab origine, against the supposition that indiscriminate ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... remain closed a single Sunday. His wife appeared directly, and both insisted, with apologies for their peasant fare, that we should stop to dinner at their house, a few yards from the church. We were in truth nothing loath to accept the invitation, and found little to excuse in the savory soup, the fresh-laid eggs and the fruit that composed the simple feast, while we were scarcely less regaled with the neatness of the rooms and the spectacle of well-washed floors and spotless though coarsely-woven ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... his account of a parliament, a coinage, or a feud as winsome as a portraiture of a woman. In one of his critical essays, Macaulay himself gives a partial explanation of this protest of the minority in his own case. "People," he remarks, "are very loath to admit that the same man can unite very different kinds of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid and what is clear cannot be profound." And it has been most justly said of his own method of writing history, "He ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... surf as it broke on the rocky shore. Harry did his best to keep the party amused, and got Paul Lizard, who could sing a good song, to strike up a merry stave; and Paul, once set going, was generally loath to stop. His full manly voice trolled forth many a ditty, sounding above the whistling of the storm and the roar of the waves. Then adventures and stories were told, and yarn after yarn was spun, most of which were no novelties ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Renault," he said. "There should be a post of Jersey militia this side o' Valentine's, and we're like to see a brace of Sheldon's dragoons at any moment. Lord, sir, but I'm contented to see you, for I was loath to leave you in York, and Walter Butler there untethered, ranging the streets, free as a panther ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... was a young bear, nearly grown, very fat, and, as Robert well knew, very tender also. Here was food, splendid food, enough to last them many days, and he rejoiced. Then he was in a quandary. He could not carry the bear away, and while he could cut him up, he was loath to leave any part of him there. The wolves would soon be coming, insisting upon their share, but he was resolved they should ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... knight go before, for well knew he the robbers' hold, but loath enough had he been to go thither, had the knights not followed him behind. Lancelot was issued forth of the hold sword in hand, all armed, angry as a lion. The four knights were upon their horses all armed, but no mind had they come a-nigh him, for sore ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... Nothing loath, Jake accepted the challenge, and in a trice the two were locked together in a friendly yet desperate encounter. Douglas soon found that Jake was depending mostly upon his great strength of body to win, and that he was acquainted with hardly any of the tricks of the ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... Not infrequently she is loath to encourage free expression because it seems to her to disturb the peace. Certainly it does disturb fixity of views. It does prevent things becoming settled in the way that the woman, as a rule, loves to have them, but this disturbance prevents the rigid intellectual and ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... from high, is of celestial seed: In God 'tis glory; and when men aspire, 'Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire. The ambitious youth, too covetous of fame, Too full of angels' metal in his frame, 310 Unwarily was led from virtue's ways, Made drunk with honour, and debauch'd with praise. Half loath, and half consenting to the ill, For royal blood within him struggled still, He thus replied:—And what pretence have I To take up arms for public liberty? My father governs with unquestion'd right, The faith's defender, and mankind's delight; Good, gracious, just, observant of the laws; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... 'ow she save Michel Trudeau's life," said Poly, nothing loath, "I am the first to come down the river this summer or you would hear it before. Many times Michel is tell me this story. Never I heard such a story before. A woman to ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... by the fire and get a good bed of coals ready while I mix the johnny-cake," she said as she stepped briskly about the room, and Daniel, nothing loath, drew a stool to the Captain's side and fed the fire with chips and corn-cobs while he listened with all his ears to the ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... been the history of most of the land above and beyond Elk Creek Valley, and Donald and Virginia were loath to see this one unbroken mesa go. They wanted it as a hunting-ground for prairie chickens and pheasant in the fall, and as a wide, free, unhindered race-course for Pedro and MacDuff. Pedro and MacDuff wanted it, too. They liked to gallop, ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... and her recovery was now chiefly retarded by the dress-maker's delays in making up a silk too precious to be risked in the piece with the customs officers, at the frontier. Moreover, although the colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to linger yet a few days for the sake of an affair to which her suffering had been a willing sacrifice. In return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kitty had lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk more ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... of a Grecian mountaineer,—Egeus to be an Arnout, and the Captain to be Egeus. Chatterly and the painter, walking gentlemen by profession, agreed to walk through the parts of Demetrius and Lysander, the two Athenian lovers; and Mr. Winterblossom, loath and lazy, after many excuses, was bribed by Lady Penelope with an antique, or supposed antique cameo, to play the part of Philostratus, master of the revels, provided his gout would permit him to remain so long upon the turf, which was to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... had come, I was loath to see him go. I seem to remember carrying him that evening to the window with uncommon tenderness (following the setting sun that was to take him away), and telling him with not unnatural bitterness that he had got to leave me because another ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... and town-clerk come to an arrangement. Beckmesser shall sing his song, and Sachs, whose criticism he so unwontedly desires, shall act as Marker; but Sachs, who contends that he is loath to stop work on his shoes, instead of marking with chalk, shall mark the singer's mistakes by blows of his hammer on the last, and so, peradventure, while listening, forward his work. A disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror lest the lady leave ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... if loath to die, linger with a certain persistence in mind and ear. This is the "mighty line" which critics talk about! And just as in an infant's face you may discern the rudiments of the future man, so in the glorious hymn ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... weight; for while the celestial writing was upon them, they carried their own weight and did not burden Moses, but with the disappearance of the writing all this changes. Now all the more did Moses feel loath to give the tables without their contents to Israel, and besides he thought: "If God prohibited one idolatrous Israelite from partaking of the Passover feast, how much more would He be angry if I were ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... I am loath to say anything to discourage any scheme framed for the purpose of benefiting our art, but I cannot honestly say that, in my opinion, the establishment of a Dramatic Academy would, in any way, serve that purpose. The question was fully gone into by a most influential committee called together ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... learned men assembled and consulted what they should advise, for all were loath to abandon the emperor in his great distress, but they were all at a loss. They sat in silence, till at last one very old and very wise man, a great physician from Arabia, arose ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... cheeks. In reality she was neither passive nor passionless, for her body quivered and Phillips knew that his touch had set her afire; but rather she seemed to be exhausted and at the same time enthralled as by some dream from which she was loath to rouse herself. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Laith, loath. Laithfu' sheepish, bashful. Landscip, landscape. Lane, lone. Lang, long. Lap, leaped. Lave, rest. Lav'rock, lark. Lear, learning. Leel, loyal. Lee-lang, live-long. Leeze me on, commend me to. Leglen, leglin, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... nothing loath. I might turn down the job, but I would not turn down a challenge. I stepped back, and my coat was already on the floor by the time the Swede had a chance to form his words. And his words showed him also cognizant ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... not loath to agree to this, and they parted—he proceeding to the shed where malting processes were being exhibited, and Arabella in the direction taken by Jude and Sue. Before, however, she had regained their wake a laughing face met her own, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... this she pored over her new treasures, until one day Miss Fletcher brought her a primer, and the seventeen-year-old girl grappled for the first time with the alphabet. After that she was loath to have the book out of her hand, going painfully and slowly over the lessons, mastering each ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... capable of so great a happiness. They are almost all of them very firmly persuaded that good men will be infinitely happy in another state: so that though they are compassionate to all that are sick, yet they lament no man's death, except they see him loath to part with life; for they look on this as a very ill presage, as if the soul, conscious to itself of guilt, and quite hopeless, was afraid to leave the body, from some secret hints of approaching misery. They think that such a man's appearance ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... Celebrity, in the flesh, faultlessly groomed and clothed, with frock coat, gloves, and stick. He looked the picture of ruddy, manly health and strength, and we saw at once that he bore no ill-will for the past. He congratulated us warmly, and it was my turn to offer him a cigarette. He was nothing loath to reminisce on the subject of his experiences in the wilds of the northern lakes, or even to laugh over them. He asked affectionately after his friend Cooke. Time had softened his feelings, and we learned that he had another girl, who was in Paris ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dead; and dead I am, Albeit living, if my lady wed, Perchance constrained." "Certes," spake Saladin, "A noble dame—the like not won, once lost— How many days remain?" "Ten days, my prince, And twelvescore leagues between my heart and me: Alas! how to be passed?" Then Saladin— "Lo! I am loath to lose thee—wilt thou swear To come again if all go well with thee, Or come ill speeding?" "Yea, I swear, my king, Out of true love," quoth Torel, "heartfully." Then Saladin, "Take here my signet-seal; My admiral will loose his swiftest sail Upon its ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... moment, shocked by her reception. She had not realized that she was no longer the idol of that household and of its central mind; and we are all loath to give up faith in our being loved still, where we have been loved ever. She was not aware that since she had left home she had been disinherited. She would not have cared had she known; but she was now facing what was involved in the disinheritance—dislike; and in the beginning ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... Adventurer, there remained—the police. If she telephoned the police and sent them to the Pug's room, they would of a certainty recover the money, and with equal certainty restore it to its rightful owners. She had already thought of that when she had been with Pinkie and the Pug, and had been loath even then to take such a step because it seemed to spell ruin to her own personal plans; but now there was another reason, and one far more cogent, why she should not do so. There had been murder committed back there in that underground drug-dive, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... hand on his horse's neck, and loath to ride away, he told her that he was on his way to the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hearing with surprise the sound of our own voices in the empty vestibule of youth. As far, and as hard, as it seemed then to look forward to the grave, so far it seems now to look backward upon these emotions; so hard to recall justly that loath submission, as of the sacrificial bull, with which we stooped our necks under the yoke of destiny. I met my old companion but the other day; I cannot tell of course what he was thinking; but, upon my part, I was wondering ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loath perhaps, assented, and they took possession of the rustic seat where Albert had listened to her history the night before. Perhaps a little of its pathos came to him now as he watched her sweet face while she gazed far out to seaward ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... lessened; its roar diminished; only occasional rocks came down. Then came silence, vast, still and awesome after the uproar. But it was broken by the belated descent of tardy stones, loath to be left behind. Miniature slides started, hesitated ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... night I slew my wife, Stretched her on the parquet flooring; I was loath to take her life, But I ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... are my guest, and we have sat down together as friends to this simple meal in good comradeship. I must tell thee, however, though I am loath to disturb our harmony, that thou art the first who hast adventured to speak a word before Gilbert Greenleaf in favour of that outlawed traitor, Robert Bruce, who has by his seditions so long disturbed the peace of this realm. Take ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... last that the longer he kept her the more uncertain he became as to what disposal he should make of her, or else he was more loath to part with her; he didn't exactly ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... inexorably closed; so we learned from a talkative lodge-keeper, who gave what grace she could to her refusal. This good woman's dilemma was almost touching; she wished to reconcile two impossibles. The castle was not to be visited, for the family of its master was staying there; and yet she was loath to turn away a party of which she was good enough to say that it had a grand genre; for, as she also remarked, she had her living to earn. She tried to arrange a compromise, one of the elements of which ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Calabressa had at length finished his letter and dusted it over with sand, he was not at all loath to show it to this master of modern speech. Calabressa was proud of his French; and if he would himself have acknowledged that it was perhaps here and there of doubtful idiom and of phonetic spelling, would he not have claimed for it that it ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... went to her father, who was dressing to attend a banquet at the house of Herr Berthold Vorchtel, the first Losunger—[Presiding Officer]—in the Council, from which he would be loath to absent himself for the very reason that his host's family had been hostile to him ever since the rumour of the betrothal of Wolff Eysvogel, whom the Vorchtels had regarded as their daughter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... observation which he had made of an entirely different nature; and this was, that the third cask when set loose, and more especially the fourth, instead of falling into the wake of the Catamaran, kept close by her side, as if loath to part company with a craft to which they had been so ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... they don't pass off, in connexion with the entreaties of the Chief, and those about me, made me consent to give up the Officers' Council I was proposing to hold at Amsterdam next week, putting on Lectures on the evenings of the two days which I would otherwise have used for Councils. I am very loath to do this, from feeling that the Officers are the great need. So far I have been delighted with what I have seen of the Officers in the country. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face innumerable obstacles—'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a lion'—and a constant devotion ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... want to tackle the job?" the sergeant asked, and I understood by his tone that he was as loath to leave the place as ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... last days of the year Jean suggested that her presence at Bracondale was no longer required. But her patient seemed very loath to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... giue The world thy Workes: thy Workes, by which, out-liue Thy Tombe, thy name must: when that stone is rent, And Time dissolues thy Stratford Moniment, Here we aliue shall view thee still. This Booke, When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke Fresh to all Ages: when Posteritie Shall loath what's new, thinke all is prodegie That is not Shake-speares eu'ry Line, each Verse Here shall reuiue, redeeme thee from thy Herse. Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said, Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once inuade. Nor shall I e're ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... British arms. These were not only elegant, but were such as befitted the hand of a real soldier. It was said, that ten thousand stand of such arms had been received from England, in the previous summer, for arming the Canadian militia. These people were loath to bear them in opposition to our rights. From the first barrier to the second, there was a circular course along the sides of houses, and partly through a street, probably of three hundred yards or more. This second barrier was erected across and near the mouth of a narrow street, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... was reasonable for a man to be angry at another whom a woman had preferred to him;—JOHNSON. 'I do not see, Sir, that it is reasonable for a man to be angry at another, whom a woman has preferred to him: but angry he is, no doubt; and he is loath to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... spite of all, so strong was the instinct to live, that, almost without thought, I clambered along the rocky ridge which jutted out from the mainland, while the baffled waves raced hungrily on either side of me, as if even now loath to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... century, Hughes went as military substitute for a farmer's son. He got L80, a watch, and a suit of clothes. His mother was loath to let him go, and when he joined his regiment, she followed him from Amlych to Pwlheli to try and buy him off. He would not hear of it. "Mother," he said, "the whole of Anglesey would not keep me, I want to be off, ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... sorely missed, without being quite conscious of it. He has been able to give me mental companionship, at a time when my mind was starving for an idea or two beyond the daily drudgery of farm-work. He has given a fillip to existence, loath as I am to acknowledge it. He's served to knock the moss off my soul by more or less indirectly reminding me that all work and no play could make Chaddie McKail a ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... who was loath to have her leave, who held her interests at heart, and who knew what she would forfeit in losing the help which the teacher was giving her daily in her studies, undertook to add his expostulations to that of the brethern ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Arthur was loath to bring this passing brave youth into peril by giving him so high an adventure; but at the desire of Griflet the King at the last gave him the order of knighthood, and he rode away till he came ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... that they may be seen even now, and I know those who say that they have seen them, but that they are the mere shadows of those dainty creatures that used to gambol in the moonshine and help the poor and weary in their household work. The present-day pixies, whom I am loath to imagine are the descendants of the old-world pixies—though, of course, on the other hand, they may be merely degenerates, a much more pleasant alternative—are I think still to be occasionally encountered in lonely, isolated districts; such, for instance, as the mountains ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... the first night, dauncing that quarter of a myle backe againe thorow Romford, and so merily to Burnt-wood. Yet, now I remember it well, I had no great cause of mirth, for at Romford townes end I strained my hip, and for a time indured exceeding paine; but being loath to trouble a Surgeon, I held on, finding remedy by labour that had hurt mee, for it came in a turne, and so in my daunce I turned it out of ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... scoundrel on this shoal. And mutt'ring quick a ghastly oath As turgid mists veil shadows vague, She plucks his lying tongue that stole Her husband's love and honour old, And smites him stark and cold, tho' loath, It peers to me her demon-ague That binds her to this perjured soul, She drinks his gore from carvels cold And leers with fiendish lips at him, Now tossed in phosphorescent holes. And as I list to aspen cries, Veiled augueries in vapours hie And spell these tokens ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... with whatever you desire.' This, I say, may be possible. But I confess I would rather make such an experiment, when the issue of it was matter of more indifference. Till then, I shall be loath to employ towards our allies a language, to which if they yielded, we should ourselves despise them. I doubt whether it is wise, even in this House, to indulge in such a strain of rhetoric; to call 'wretches' ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... between the well-known lawyer and his strange client was not ceremonious. It consisted of a couple of nods and a brief good-morning. Then Gladys was requested to leave them alone. Nothing loath, she ran up-stairs to Walter, whose sorrow lay ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Nothing loath, the overdressed boy opened the bag and displayed his plunder. He brought two big hares out of the bag by their ears and held them up ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... thy men have taken me, and I am to thee come, and I would learn what is thy will, and for what thing I am brought to the king?" Then said the king with quick speech: "Merlin, thou art hither come; thou art son of no man! Much thou longest after loath speech; learn thou wilt the adventure—now thou shalt hear it. I have begun a work with great strength, that hath my treasure well much taken away; five thousand men work each day thereon. And I have lime and stone, in the world is none better, nor in any land workmen so good. All that ...
— Brut • Layamon
... little biography is finished—"would it were worthier!"—and I must take leave of my illustrious subject, "kissing hands" in imagination, with profound respect. If I back out of the presence, it is not in unrepublican abasement, but because I am loath to turn my eyes away, from the kindly and now familiar face of the good woman, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... loath to leave and I suppose I showed it. The truth was that little Enid Faye had captivated me. It was hard ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve |
