"Indecisive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Spaniards, holding their course towards Calais, after the long but indecisive conflict had terminated, were closely pursued by their wary antagonists. On Wednesday, 3rd of August, there was some slight cannonading, with but slender results; and on Thursday, the 4th, both fleets were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... afterwards wrote, "Jealousy is born with love, but does not die with it." He endeavoured to get Madame de Chatillon, the old mistress of the Duc de Nemours, reinstated in favour, but in this he did not succeed. The Duc de Nemours was soon after killed in a duel. The war went on, and after several indecisive skirmishes, the decisive battle was fought at Paris, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the Parisians first learnt the use or the abuse of their favourite defence, the barricade. In this battle, Rochefoucauld behaved with great bravery. He was wounded in the head, a wound which for a time deprived ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... Virginia and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been gained by either side. Battles had been fought of as great severity as had ever been known in war, over ground from the James River and Chickahominy, near Richmond, to Gettysburg and Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania, with indecisive results, sometimes favorable to the National army, sometimes to the Confederate army; but in every instance, I believe, claimed as victories for the South by the Southern press if not by the Southern generals. The Northern press, as a whole, did not discourage these claims; ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... seemed to rest heavily upon him. His eyes were slightly bleary, and had a look of weariness, as though he had endured much and was utterly tired. His mouth was flaccid, the lips pouting when he compressed his jaws, giving his face the sullen, indecisive look of the brooder lacking the mental and physical courage of independent action and initiative. The Judge could be led; Corrigan was leading him now, and the Judge was reluctant, but his courage had oozed, back in Dry ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ashamed of him, or of his cause? Shall we tremble to avow our attachment, if we feel it? This would expose us to the censure of our own consciences, to the reproach of a dishonourable, hesitating, indecisive conduct; and, above all, to the Saviour's final malediction, as the Judge of mankind. It is the design of Christ to establish an interest in the world; and this is to be maintained, not by fear, but by firmness: not ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... running fight was kept up; then the two fleets came face to face with each other off the town of Calais. The first day's encounter was indecisive; the Spanish fired over the heads of the English, while the little vessels, low down in the water, poured their broadsides full into the huge bulk of the Spanish galleons; yet when night came it was discovered that the English were running short of powder, while comparatively little ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... delicate a character to be trusted to the wires that would whisper the secret to every curious operator along the line. In my embarrassment, I caught at a slender thread of hope, and tried to derive consolation from it. I knew Mrs. Lincoln to be indecisive about some things, and I hoped that she might change her mind in regard to the strange programme proposed, and at the last moment despatch me to this effect. The 16th, and then the 17th of September passed, and no despatch ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... the French were sick of slaying, and the German dead were piled metres high on the slopes of Mort Homme and Cumieres; in those weeks at the end of May, when the Germans, conscious that their prestige had suffered irreparably in the hundred days—which were to have been four!—of desperate and indecisive fighting, were at the opening of that fierce last effort which gave them Fort Vaux and its hero-commander, Commandant Raynal, on June 7th—put them in short-lived possession of Thiaumont and Fleury later—and was then interrupted ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in blank astonishment. Place of residence? Why, heaven help him, he had none, none! For the first time since he left the Army the knowledge came home to him, and it struck rather deep. He caught up the pen, poised it an indecisive moment, then hastily scribbled Paris: as well Paris as anywhere. Then he took out his wallet, comfortably packed with English and French bank-notes, and a second wave of astonishment rolled over him. Altogether, it was a rare good chance that he ever came to the surface again. No plan, no ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... no mere affair of outposts, but a struggle to the death as to whether the Crescent or the Cross was in time to come to be supreme in the tideless sea. And yet—such is the irony of fate—this battle proved indecisive, and it was not until thirty years later, at the battle of Lepanto, that this momentous question was set at ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the Prince of Denmark. He was too indolent to acquire the vast store of facts indispensable for correct generalization on the varied theatre of human affairs, and often drew hasty and incorrect conclusions from the events which particularly came under his observation. Thus the repeated indecisive battles between the fleets of Charles II. and the Dutch, drew from him the observation, apparently justified by their results, that sea-fights are seldom so important or decisive as those at land. The fact is just ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Moltke, the nephew of the great man of that name, satisfied me that he did not really look with any pleasurable military expectation to the results of a war with the United Kingdom alone. It would, he observed to me, be in his opinion a long and possibly indecisive war, and must result in much of the overseas trade of both countries passing to a tertius gaudens, by which he meant ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... tensely. "Cousin Bess! I can't believe it." He took her by the shoulders compellingly, held her at arm's length; and the angel who watched halted with pen in air, indecisive. "We've known each other such a ludicrously short time—but a few hours. Can it be possible that you really meant that, that at least to someone it does really matter?" It was his turn to question, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... raise the trap-door—they all want to get through. From the multitude which are called, which will be chosen? When I was awake, only those were admitted which bore on the present situation. Now, in sleep, more vague images occupy my vision, more indecisive sounds reach my ear, more indistinct touches come to my body, and more vague sensations come from my internal organs. Hence those memories which can assimilate themselves to some element in this vague mass of very ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... that "the forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils." WESLEY, who published "Thoughts on a Single Life," advised some "to remain single for the kingdom of heaven's sake; but the precept," he adds, "is not for the many." So indecisive have been the opinions of the most curious inquirers concerning the matrimonial state, whenever a great destination has engaged ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... with the hypnotized fascination of utter horror. DEA attempts drawing GWYMPLANE away, but he resists, becoming again a victim to the old charm. The slave girl, with a wild gesture, offers herself to him. Simultaneously, DEA motions him with prayer to go with her. He makes some pitiful indecisive motions between them. DEA wrings her hands; the slave girl smiles; when, with a sudden gesture of despair, GWYMPLANE takes out his knife and makes a motion of cutting out his heart, then sinks upon the ground, ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... still severer ordeal was in store for the virgin fortress and its lord. After much indecisive strife, the whites and the Basutos were, in 1865, again engaged in a serious war. The people of what had then become (see Chapter XI) the Orange Free State had found the Basutos troublesome neighbours, and a dispute had arisen regarding the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fresh energy into the war; and Gonsalvo found his own forces greatly out-numbered. In the late autumn there was a sharp but indecisive contest at the Garigliano Bridge. Gonsalvo held to his position, despite the destitution of his troops, until he received reinforcements. Then, on December 28, he suddenly and unexpectedly crossed the river; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... pendant to the crushing of Mataafa, began to make itself heard of in obscure grumblings. It was but a timid business. One half of the Tupua party, the whole province of Atua, never joined the rebellion, but sulked in their villages and spent the time in indecisive eloquence and barren embassies. Tamasese, by a trick eminently Samoan, "went in the high bush and the mountains," carrying a gun like a private soldier—served, in fact, with his own troops incognito—and thus, to Samoan eyes, waived his dynastic pretensions. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... movements resemble skeletons of giants saluting an antediluvian tortoise; now she speeds straight toward the clumps of bamboo or against the amphibian structures, karihan, or wayside lunch-stands, which, amid gumamelas and other flowers, look like indecisive bathers who with their feet already in the water cannot bring themselves to make the final plunge; at times, following a sort of channel marked out in the river by tree-trunks, she moves along with a satisfied air, except when a sudden shock disturbs the passengers ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... grayish-black smoke befogged the cottage, and a section of splintered timber came buzzing through the air and fell into a puddle. From the house next to the one struck, a black cat came slinking, paused for an indecisive second in the middle of the street, and ran back again. Through the canvas partition of the ambulance, I heard the voices of my convalescents. "No more marmites!" I cried to them as I swung down a road out of shell reach. I little knew what was waiting ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... right thing to be done amid a thousand possible courses of action,—the power, in short, which gives confidence to will because it gives certainty to vision, and is as much removed from recklessness as from irresolution,—this power fades in mental age into that pausing, comparing, generalizing, indecisive intelligence, which, however wise and valuable it may be in those matters where success is not the prize of speed, is imbecile in those conjunctures of affairs where events match faster than the mind can syllogize, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... pity is akin to; he effects her release from jail, and together they go forth upon a journey that ends in the delirium of death. The promised land had proved a mirage—at least for the present. And it is upon this indecisive note that the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... indecisive actions in European waters, or near the West Indies, the British raiding policy was transferred to a new region, namely, the southern States, which thus far had known little of the severities of war. In ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... improvised ironclad of novel design, which had already wrought terrible destruction amongst the wooden frigates of the Federals. She was neutralised, however, by her Northern counterpart, the "Monitor," and after an indecisive action she had remained inactive for nearly a month. The York was less securely guarded. The channel, nearly a mile wide, was barred only by the fire of two forts; and that at Gloucester Point, on the north bank, was ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Bride' (afterwards Mrs. Gwyn) — 'as he actually lived among us; nothing can exceed its truth' (Prior's 'Life', 1837, ii. 380). In other words, it delineates Goldsmith as his contemporaries saw him, with bulbous forehead, indecisive chin, and long protruding upper lip, — awkward, insignificant, ill at ease, — restlessly burning 'to get in and shine.' It enables us moreover to understand how people who knew nothing of his better and more lovable qualities, could ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... was forced into exile. Conservative clerical forces subsequently crushed westernizing liberal elements. Militant Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979 and held it until 20 January 1981. During 1980-88, Iran fought a bloody, indecisive war with Iraq over disputed territory. The key current issue is how rapidly the country should open up to the modernizing influences of ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... indecisive of Napoleon's victories, one which had almost been a defeat and which left both armies so exhausted that months passed before either was in condition to resume the war. It was the month of June before the armies were again put in motion. Now the wintry desolation was ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... sat down. As he took his seat he was not at all sure of what he was really willing to say or do. He was not an indecisive person at home, but here in a Northern State, on what might be hostile ground, he was in doubt concerning that which he felt he honourably owed as a duty to his neighbour. The word had for him limiting definitions, as indeed it has for most of us. Resolving to be cautious, he said with ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement when he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked by the dust of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens |
