Reluctance Quotes

My bravery however was the effect of assurance for could I have believed the current report, I should have fled as fast as any man, no man can possibly have a greater reluctance to an intimacy with Sir William Howe than my Self. ~ Henry Laurens

In one way, I'm sympathetic to the institutional reluctance to face the music. I'd give a lot to mark my weight to 'model' rather than to 'market.' ~ Warren Buffett

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future. ~ John Steinbeck

I am political in spite of myself. I don't want to do the things I know I have to do, don't want to expose myself to disapproval, to retribution, don't want to go to meetings and demonstrations, distribute leaflets, don't want to ask people for signatures, for money.

I don't do these things as naturally as I breathe, the way I imagine real political people do, real communists, real socialists and feminists, real radicals, real troublemakers, real champions of the people. I do them because I know I've got to, because I am convinced it's the only way to make changes, to stop abuses. I do them almost as a last resort. I do them because I've been putting off doing them, avoiding them for months, because finally the necessity has gripped me and overcome my reluctance, my desire for the warmth of my room, for my books, for my people, for the reassurance of my homely habits. ~ Rosario Morales

Matt Le Tissier had firm views about Austria's reluctance to allow Turkey full membership of the EU last Saturday, I seem to recall. ~ Jeff Stelling

Not until something challenges you to rise up, you shall always stay down; not until you realize your enough is enough, you shall always have enough. When you keep exerting your energy, time and attention on things which least invoke your courage to rise up and climb to the distinctive best, you shall always stay at your best with the same energy, time and attention time on the less better you because of reluctance, ignorance and fear! The lion that hunts, is always on the move! Awake, challenge and change something! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

People who insist on being addressed as "doctor" because they have Ph.D.'s, as if these degrees represent an important achievement, rather than a reluctance to leave college; ~ Dave Barry

I contend that the cry of 'Black Power' is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years." - Martin Luther King, Jr., 60 Minutes Interview, 1966 ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer. ~ Charles Dickens

Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

The soul loves to meditate, for in contact with the Spirit lies its greatest joy. If, then you experience mental resistance during meditation, remember that reluctance to meditate comes from the ego; it doesn't belong to the soul. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Dodd acknowledged Congress's reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, "I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them. ~ Erik Larson

Regardless of whether one subscribes to the aims of the four movements whose stories we have told, there is much to appreciate about them as movements. They have overcome schisms; disbandment; leadership scandals; and/or the deaths of their founders. They have developed a highly innovative strategy - bypassing the state - to overcome the obstacles that their ideological strictness; ambitious agendas; and reluctance to compromise present. They have shown a strong entrepreneurial spirit in building effective social service agencies, medical facilities, schools, and businesses that often put the state's efforts to shame. While they are not the Christian militias, al-Qaeda cells, or Jewish extremist groups whose terrorism has attracted much attention, the Muslim Brotherhood, Shas, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Salvation Army, with their strategy of rebuilding society, one institution at a time, may well prove more successful in sacralizing their societies than movements that use violence. ~ Robert V. Robinson

Prayer is not getting man's will done in heaven, but getting God's will done on earth. It is not overcoming God's reluctance but laying hold of God's willingness. ~ Richard Chenevix Trench

Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawful and faithful guides, in most things that relate solely to this life; and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence. Every act of compliance with their motions facilitates a second compliance, every new step towards depravity is made with less reluctance than the former, and thus the descent to life merely sensual is perpetually accelerated. ~ Samuel Johnson

Who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn't that you don't feel motivated; it's that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway. ~ Oliver Burkeman

. . .our whispered words, faintly in the darkness, dissolving
within the trees - then, fleeting words of consolation
would not suffice if feigned, and flippant words
confessed reluctance - our words
were meaningless uttered on the wind. . . ~ John Daniel Thieme

In Paris, Julien's position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.

In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural. ~ Stendhal

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I knew that there were several, among African-American leaders, who had been put out by me because of my failure or reluctance to endorse Sen. Kerry. ~ Rodney Alexander

Good!" the creature echoed. "Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast?" All four symbols in the query were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard them rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he had any warning that he might be selected for such an honor. He had not known that the food supply was such that it was necessary to reduce the corporate group. He was filled with mild regret, since there was still so much to grok of these new events, but no reluctance. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

He released her with obvious reluctance and shoved open his door, then came around to open her door. His chivalry brought an even broader smile. "Bet this doesn't last long", she teased. He took her hand. "You keep waiting for me to open it, and I will keep coming around. ~ Colleen Coble

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it with reluctance. ~ Jean Racine

What was happening to him? - he wondered. The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right - wasn't it the basic formula of moral corruption? To recognize one's guilt, yet feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference. ~ Ayn Rand

Fellow senators balked at punishing Senator Alfonse D'Amato of New York though he was caught in a series of transactions that earned him the label "Senator Sleaze." D'Amato explained their reluctance as he defended his own behavior. "There but for the grace of God go most of my colleagues," he said. ~ William Greider

Medora Manson, in her prosperous days, inaugurated a "literary salon"; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it. ~ Edith Wharton

Widespread introduction of the process [of irradiating foods] has thus far been impeded, however, by a reluctance among consumers to eat things that have been exposed to radiation. According to current USDA regulations, irradiated meat must be identified with a special label and with a radura (the internationally recognized symbol of radiation). The Beef Industry Food Safety Council - whose members include the meatpacking and fast food giants - has asked the USDA to change its rules and make the labeling of irradiated meat completely voluntary. The meatpacking industry is also working hard to get rid of the word 'irradiation,; much preferring the phrase 'cold pasteurization.' ... From a purely scientific point of view, irradiation may be safe and effective. But he [a slaughterhouse engineer] is concerned about the introduction of highly complex electromagnetic and nuclear technology into slaughterhouses with a largely illiterate, non-English-speaking workforce. ~ Eric Schlosser

[ ... ] students should be told that an effort is always required, when you start to read a serious author, to overcome mental laziness and reluctance, because you are about to enter the mind of someone who thinks differently from yourself. And that is the whole point and the only point: the literary treasure-house has many mansions. ~ Doris Lessing

The woman was a menace. He would hate it if she were his. Only a man very strong and able to do without any malefriends could have a siren like her. She was more than a handful; she was a disaster waiting to happen.
Are you reading the human's thoughts, ma petite femme? Gregori's satisfied voice whispered in her mind. Even one such as he knows you are wild like the winds. With great reluctance he loosened his hold on her. Go inside the house.
Her eyes widened in mock surprise. You mean he might think we were making love? We would have been if he hadn't wandered out and interrupted us.
Push me further, cherie, and I may do something you will not like.
She laughed out loud, totally unafraid as she sashayed through the courtyard. As she passed Gary, she leaned over and blew warm air into his ear.
Savannah! Gregori roared her name, a distanct threat.
I'm going, I'm going, she said, completely unrepentant. ~ Christine Feehan

Sloth kept him in bed awhile. Restlessness drove him downstairs to the tiny court behind his kitchen, where the sun made more mist. Under its warmth everything gave off ghosts. They work from the bricks, rose with a deep reluctance, disappeared. ~ Denis Johnson

Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have bound her, once more, all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of whose companionship she was grown more than weary.
I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a racking sort of struggle. ~ Charlotte Bronte

It's not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I am apt to think, if we knew what it was to be an angel for one hour, we should return to this world, though it were to sit on the brightest throne in it, with vastly more loathing and reluctance than we would now descend into a loathsome dungeon or sepulchre. ~ George Berkeley

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. ~ Mark Twain

She saw it over and over again in her male patients, she said - 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. ~ Wally Lamb

Caroline, sister of William, was trained by him as a singer in the Bath days and had considerable success in Handel's oratorios under her brother's conductorship. (The method of training adopted was for her to sing the violin parts of concertos with a gag in her mouth.) It was with great reluctance that she dropped music to be trained as an assistant astronomer, yet she made discoveries - eight minor planets, one of them named after her. ~ Percy Scholes

Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads. ~ James M. Barrie

And therefore, all of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout form the heart - perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example - but authentically always and absolutely carries a a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.
Alas, if you fail to do so, you are betraying your own authenticity. You are hiding your true estate. You don't want to upset others because you don't want to upset your self. You are acting in bad faith, the taste of a bad infinity.

Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: those who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would communicate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the bodhisattva vow). And therefore, if you have seen, you simply must speak out. Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out with skillful means, but speak out you must.
And this is truly a ~ Ken Wilber

An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. ~ Agatha Christie

At the opposite end of the spectrum from pacifism, we have a pusillanimous reluctance to use religious names for warring factions. In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are euphemized to 'Nationalists' and 'Loyalists' respectively. ~ Richard Dawkins

Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book's worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over. ~ Rex Stout

In Debt, the anthropologist David Graeber tells the story of Tei Reinga, a Maori villager and "notorious glutton" who used to wander up and down the New Zealand coast, badgering the local fishermen by asking for the best portions of their catch. Since it's impolite in Maori culture (as in many cultures) to refuse a direct request for food, the fishermen would oblige - but with ever-increasing reluctance. And so as Reinga continued to ask for food, their resentment grew until "one day, people decided enough was enough and killed him."
This story is extreme, to say the least, but it illustrates how norm-following and norm-enforcement can be a very high-stakes game. Reinga flouted an important norm (against freeloading) and eventually paid dearly for it. But just as tellingly, the fishermen who put him to death felt so duty-bound by a different norm (the norm of food-sharing) that they followed it even to the point of building up murderous resentment. "Couldn't you just have said no to Reinga's requests?!" we want to shout at the villagers. ~ Kevin Simler

Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation. ~ Isaac Asimov

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

It is at this very point that the Spirit of God helps us so much. In each text, Paul links a willing "servant heart" to the gospel itself. And what is that gospel? It is that you are so lost and flawed, so sinful, that Jesus had to die for you, but you are also so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for you. Now you are fully accepted and delighted in by the Father, not because you deserve it but only by free grace. My reluctance to let Kathy serve me was, in the end, a refusal to live my life on the basis of grace. I wanted to earn everything. I wanted no one to give me any favors. ~ Timothy Keller

they shared mortals' reluctance for either reading instructions or calling customer support. ~ Rick Riordan

Fatal illness has always been viewed as a test of moral character, but in the nineteenth century there is a great reluctance to let anybody flunk the test. ~ Susan Sontag

Don't let your life be steered by your reluctance to do a little extra thinking. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

You don't have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver's chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions - nursing homes and intensive care units - where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. ~ Atul Gawande

…it perished with beautiful reluctance, like an evening star - ~ Emily Dickinson

A sturdy, hardened sinner shall advance to the utmost pitch of impiety, with less reluctance than he took the first step while his conscience was yet vigilant and tender. ~ Francis Atterbury

And then they would watch her closely as the dark, coagulated masses took form before her eyes, became flesh and bone, became gradually human. For all their show of reluctance, she had a sense that they enjoyed introducing her to these horrors, as seducers took pleasure in the corruption of innocence. ~ Philip Sington

I stepped out of the circle of his arms with reluctance and patted him on his butt. "That'll do, donkey," I said, in my best Scottish accent. ~ H.D. Gordon

It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, and with a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things. ~ Virginia Woolf

I couldn't take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant/ sisters and brothers. It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange that Neal and Frank also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that. At one point I saw Neal leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and he stopped rubbing his belly and gaped and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen. ~ Jack Kerouac

As long as he retains externally the habits of a Christian he can still be made to think of himself as one who has adopted a few new friends and amusements but whose spiritual state is much the same...And while he thinks that, we do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognised, sin, but only with his vague, though uneasy, feeling that he hasn't been doing very well lately. This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up...if you suppress it entirely...we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient's reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold...In this state your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike, his religious duties...He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. ~ C.S. Lewis

One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans' reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. ~ Frank Rich

Never say savor when you only mean taste –
one is a holding on the tongue and an intoxication
and the other is cursory, a sampling, connoting
reluctance to bask. Never say a thing you don't mean. ~ Bryana Joy

Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance. ~ Anita Rau Badami

I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy. ~ Dick Cavett

At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive. Because of this, he set into motion the entire redemptive process that culminated in the cross and was confirmed in the resurrection. The usual notion of what Jesus did on the cross was something like this: people were so bad and so mean and God was so angry with them that he could not forgive them unless somebody big enough took the rap for the whole lot of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it. This is why Jesus refused the customary painkiller when it was offered him. He wanted to be completely alert for this greatest work of redemption. In a deep and mysterious way he was preparing to take on the collective sin of the human race. Since Jesus lives in the eternal now, this work was not just for those around him, but he took in all the violence, all the fear, all the sin of all the past, all the present, and all the future. This was his highest and most holy work, the work that makes confession and the forgiveness of sins possible…Some seem to think that when Jesus shouted "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" it was a moment of weakness (Mark 15:34). Not at all. This was his moment of greatest triumph. Jesus, who had walked in constant communion wit ~ Richard J. Foster

Two movements in human life are important: (a) deep reluctance to let loose of a world that has passed away, and (b) capacity to embrace a new world being given. ~ Walter Brueggemann

People - whether you like to hear what people have got to say, not you have got to listen to them, and turning your back on people I found very insulting. If you're going to really make peace, you have got to confront each other and look each other in the eye, and that's what's happen - I'm always remember Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat and the reluctance in - Yasser Arafat put his hand down and the reluctance of Yitzhak Rabin, but then he had that second and then he just shook the hand. ~ Warren Mundine

I daresay in a way he deserved it, Joseph agreed with reluctance. But which of us can afford what we deserve? I need better, don't you? ~ Anne Perry

With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President
Obama ... is stepping once again - and with understandably great reluctance - into the chaos
of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but
gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism -
the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire a century ago. ~ Hisham Melhem

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror.
Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura. ~ Irving Howe

The young man of leadership caliber will work while others waste time, study while others snooze, pray while others daydream. Slothful habits are overcome, whether in thought, deed, or dress. The emerging leader eats right, stands tall, and prepares himself to wage spiritual warfare. He will without reluctance undertake the unpleasant task that others avoid or the hidden duty that others evade because it wins no public applause. As the Spirit fills his life, he learns not to shrink from difficult situations or retreat from hard-edged people. He will kindly and courageously administer rebuke when that is called for, or he will exercise the necessary discipline when the interests of the Lord's work demand it. He will not procrastinate, but will prefer to dispatch with the hardest tasks first. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

Ah". Tzimisces smiled. "Let me guess. Flowery periphrases, back-to-back literary allusions and quotations from thousand-year-old authors. A marked reluctance to use one word when twelve can be jammed in if you sit on the lid. ~ K.J. Parker

Shame, which is the reluctance to be who we're not even sure we are, could end up being the deepest thing about us, deeper even than who we are, as though beyond identity were buried reefs and sunken cities teeming with creatures as we couldn't begin to name because they came long before us. ~ Andre Aciman

I clung tighter and tighter to my mother. I became a ball and chain around her neck. I could sense her reluctance, fell her urge to pull away from me. I didn't care. I clung harder and tighter than ever. One horrible afternoon, while I was watching my mother smiling at me from her NordicTrack, our separateness hit me like a bolt of lightning. I doubled over with anxiety and tried not to think about puking. ~ Terry Spencer Hesser

Without individuals feeling safe and having an environment of safety, they then have reluctance of taking part in the city of being active. They wind up wanting to leave the city. That's more detrimental. ~ Dick Powell

At almost every challenge, the bastions of tradition run up a white flag. It's almost as if they've been neutralized, neutered even, as though there were nothing left on the inside. Could it be the emptiness, reluctance to stand on and defend the tradition and its institutions, a shaky hold on principle, a failure to draw conclusions and make judgments, are the real legacy of the 'American Century'? If so, who really won all of those wars? ~ Diana West

Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. ~ Ronald Reagan

People are ready to acknowledge some of their faults, but will admit to others only with reluctance. ~ Epictetus

As he lowered his lips to mine - slowly, this time - I let my eyes flutter closed. And at the first touch of his mouth, all my nervousness magically disappeared. He felt wonderful. Amazing. Impossibly fabulous. Without even thinking about it, I slid my hands up his shoulders, and at the same time I felt his arms come around my waist. His lips were firm, warm . . . perfect. I thought I might just die from happiness. Even though it was about five times longer than our first kiss, it was still over way too soon. With obvious reluctance, he pulled away, then planted one last feather-light kiss on the corner of my mouth before straightening up. "If I don't have the best game of my life now, it'll be a miracle. ~ Brenda Hiatt

I wasn't sure if I was charmed by his reluctance to share a bed with a girl or insulted that, apparently, I wasn't hot enough for him to charge the mattress like a bull. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I guessed that only at the last possible minute did the soul in a determined fashion flee the dying flesh. Who could blame it for its reluctance? We loved our lives more than we ever knew, and at the end felt the bounty of them, as one would say in church, felt even the richness of their missed opportunities, or just understood that they were more than we had realized during the living of them and a lot to give up. ~ Lorrie Moore

Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity ... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them. ~ Alan Brennert

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle. ~ Phillips Brooks

All reluctance is a lack of confidence. ~ Todd Duncan

The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. ~ Rebecca Pepper Sinkler

When Clive stood from the piano and shuffled to the doorway to turn out the studio lights, and looked back at the rich, beautiful chaos that surrounded his toils, and had once more a passing thought, the minuscule fragment of a suspicion that he would not have shared with a single person in the world, would not have even have committed to his journal and whose key word he shaped in his mind only with reluctance ; the thought was, quite simply, that it might be going too far to say that he was ... a genius. A genius. Though he sounded it guiltily on his inner ear, he would not let the word reach his lips. ~ Ian McEwan

Nicholas broke the seal and scanned the contents. He looked up at Marcus with a chuckle. "Why, it appears you may get your wish for perpetual bachelorhood after all. She wants to end your engagement."
Marcus started from his chair. "The hell she does! What's possessed her?"
"Perhaps she realizes your extreme reluctance to tie the knot after waiting ... what is it? Five years since your betrothal announcement?"
"Six," Marcus snapped. "But who's counting."
"Perhaps Miss Trent?" Nick needled with a quirk of his lips.
- A BREACH OF PROMISE ~ Victoria Vane

Oh, yes. I know all about vampires and their crazy ways. Apparently, Fernando didn't have the same reluctance as Matthew and Ysabeau did to tell vampire tales. ~ Deborah Harkness

When the rains make your feathers wet, don't sit and cry and don't wait for your wet feathers to get dry before you start to fly; start flying and your wet feathers will start drying! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance. ~ Ron Suskind

Don't let religious-sounding reluctance fool you. When you plead "unworthy" and refuse to be served by God, you place your judgment about yourself above God's. You say you would prefer to go it alone, and you imply that your unworthiness goes beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace. You must think that God cleanses you only from ordinary sins, not from the spectacular ones. ~ Edward T. Welch

Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher. ~ Octave Mirbeau

The young John Quincy Adams begins it lifelong habit of keeping a journal with reluctance that he might one day have to read it. He hopes, though, that the flaws in his earlier entries will be balanced by the progress he is able to see. ~ Paul C. Nagel

I am a very good housekeeper. which I have no reluctance in doing, because I really think it is my peculiar excellence, and for this reason, I always take care to provide such things as please my own appetite, which I consider as the chief merit in housekeeping. ~ Jane Austen

To-day all our novels and newspapers will be found to be swarming with numberless allusions to the popular character called a Cave-Man. He seems to be quite familiar to us, not only as a public character but as a private character. His psychology is seriously taken into account in psychological fiction and psychological medicine. So far as I can understand, his chief occupation in life was knocking his wife about, or treating women in general with what is, I believe, known in the world of the film as 'rough stuff.' I have never happeend to come upon the evidence for this idea; and I do not know on what primitive diaries or prehistoric divorce-reports it is founded. Nor, as I have explained elsewhere, have I ever been able to see the probability of it, even considered a priori. We are always told without any explanation or authority that primitive man waved a club and knocked the woman down before he carried her off. But on every animal analogy, it would seem an almost morbid modesty and reluctance, on the part of the lady, always to insist on being knocked down before consenting to be carried off. And I repeat that I can never comprehend why, when the male was so very rude, the female should have been so very refined. The cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes. And the loves of the giraffes and the river romances of the hippopotami are affected without any of this preliminary fracas or shindy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Mr. Rochester continued to be blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near -- that knit us so very close; for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw nature -- he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of the field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam -- of the landscape before us; of the weather around us -- and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary conducting him where he wished to go; of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad -- because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance; he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes. ~ Charlotte Bronte

J.K. Rowling said Bellatrix's role was going to be significant in the last one, when I showed some reluctance in playing a tiny bit part. Up front, they said, 'You're very significant in the last one.' But significant could mean a lot of things. That could just mean a significant plot point. Doesn't necessarily equal big part. ~ Helena Bonham Carter

I stepped into the passage.
I was aware of...a reluctance. Nothing major. Not a big don't for God's sake go in there siren. Merely a note of caution, spiraling up from the deep back brain, a little like the feeling I'd had while sitting along early the previous morning. ~ Michael Rutger

Americans ... automatically equate dissension with disloyalty. They view any criticism of our existing social, economic, and political forms, as sedition and subversion ... (" The growing reluctance of Americans to criticize, and their increasing tendency to condemn those who, in ever dwindling numbers, will still voice dissent") is disturbing, deplorable, and truly dangerous. ~ J. Paul Getty

And above all, you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling…the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness there? Does my conscience move me towards this? Is my reluctance to move to this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike for this particular door-keeper? ~ C.S. Lewis

The fact that the world today is what it is suggests, to say the least, that this concept is far from being cherished universally. The reasons for its unpopularity are twofold. First, what is required for this concept to be put into effect is a margin of democracy. This is precisely what 86 percent of the globe lacks. Second, the common sense that tells a victim that his only gain in turning the other cheek and not responding in kind yields, at best, a moral victory, i.e., quite immaterial. The natural reluctance to expose yet another part of your body to a blow is justified by a suspicion that this sort of conduct only agitates and enhances Evil; that moral victory can be mistaken by the adversary for his impunity. ~ Joseph Brodsky

I wonder whether our adoption of Shrink-ese as a second language, the move from religious phrases of judgment to secular words of acceptance, hasn't also produced a moral lobotomy. In the reluctance, the aversion to being judgmental, are we disabled from making any judgments at all? ~ Ellen Goodman

The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at the South, had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we might say, demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been the snare of our national life. We have not been willing to believe how hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power may become. When ~ John McElroy