Matthew Arnold Quotes

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

I have hesitation making any kind of decision, really in my life. I'm really slow at it.

I'm the worst at making decisions!

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul.

People who think too much before they act don't act too much.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.

I'm pathologically incapable of making decisions. Just ask my wife how long it took me to propose - on second thought, best not to bring it up.

I was disappointed a little in Stevenson because I did think he couldn't make up his mind. It's the feeling I always had. Perhaps all of us have self-doubt, and we should have, and most of us do, but it doesn't show. It doesn't show as much as it did in Adlai; he seemed to do it in public.

There's always a reason not to do anything... to flee the need to make decisions.

I'm the kind of person who can paralyze myself very easily by over-thinking decisions.

I can be indecisive about things - and the less important something is, the more indecisive I am.

Caught between the tongue and the taste.

If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.

Action isn’t my forte. I’m an expert on contemplation and mild regret.

People who deliberate fully before they take a step will spend their lives on one leg

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

Malander had an idea and was trying to work it out, but it would take him time. Sometimes people never saw things clearly until it was too late and they no longer had the strength to start again. Or else they forgot their idea along the way and didn't even realise that they forgotten.

Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.

I somehow got this reputation of diddling and dithering. I don't remember dithering at all.