Quotes About Reluctance

And a cool four thousand, Pip!" I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

The trouble with forgiveness is that some people don't want to be forgiven.

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

Catriana sighed. "I'm hard to make friends with," she said at length. "I doubt it's worth your effort.

One of the enduring mysteries of America's occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations.

I went to SXSW in 2011. God, that was awful. I mean, I only went because my publisher wanted me to promote the book and the organizers invited me and it seemed silly not to go, especially for a relatively unknown first-time author. This is just not my cup of tea; the fewer such events I do on an annual basis, the happier I feel.

Sometimes guys avoid things they don't know how to do well.

I have always told my family that I don't want my birthday to be celebrated and that they shouldn't get me anything, even though if they didn't I'd probably write a standup routine about it.

I am drawn towards the sort of characters who are in situations where they don't want to be in. But that's a staple in pretty much in any hero's journey because if you have non-reluctant protagonist then how is there any conflict?

Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.

My test of a good novel is dreading to begin the last chapter.

I loved the feel of the place: the tranquil, bucolic look, the sense of peace that spoke from every doorway, from each plot of well-tended grass, from every newly blooming garden. I loved the solidity and agelessness of it, of the passersby themselves, simple country people with simple country faces. There was a sense of veneration for that which had gone before, a rigid, disciplined effort to preserve things as they were—even, perhaps, a reluctance to acknowledge things as they are.

I don't particularly like entertaining. I know I should, but I just don't.

The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster.

She rose slowly. She didn't want to go. She also rather resented staying.

Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise."*

It could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness, this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really-tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News. And yet, it was comic, too—the lengths most men went to to prove that they were tough guys.

And yet when the cup of power neared his lips, he became strangely hesitant, reluctant, perhaps coy.

Though her husband often went on business trips, she hated to be left alone. "I've solved your problem," he said. "I've bought you a St. Bernard. Its name is Great Reluctance. Now, when I go away, you shall know that I am leaving you with Great Reluctance!" She hit him with a waffle iron.

I've never done it before—I don't like doing things I've never done before.

The summer and the country... have no charms for me. I look forward anxiously to the return of bad weather, coal fires, and good society in a crowded city. I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.

I must confess I did not always relish his misquotations, which sometimes made absolute nonsense of the passages; but what author stands upon trifles when he is praised?

Aries: "I was going to do that but then you told me to."

War is absolutely the last card any national leader should play, and only when every other alternative has been exhausted. If the hand was being played by an old soldier, a war veteran, I can assure you he would guard that war card to the bitter end and play it reluctantly and with the fear and trepidation of experience.