Hem And Haw Quotes

No hemming or hawing, no hinting or manipulation, no sledgehammer–subtlety may hold us back from claiming a climate of transparency and capturing an untainted and luminescent skyline, when the boldness of the truth is coming defiantly to the fore. ("Did not expect it would ever happen there" )

Men are so superior about their Latin," said Mrs. Blair. "But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches, they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.

He doesn't want to have sex unless he's in love, and yes, I know that virginity is a misogynistic and oppressive social construct,but I still want to lose it, and meanwhile I've got this boy hemming and hawing like we're in a Jane Austen novel. I wish boys didn't have all these feelings I have to manage like a fucking psychiatrist.

Haw said, “Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That’s life! Life moves on. And so should we.” Haw

...that, to repeat what I heard for years and years and suspect you’ve been hearing over and over, yourself, something’s meaning is nothing more or less than its function. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? What does she use now? No. What she did with me--I must have been eight, or twelve, who remembers--was to sit me down in the kitchen and take a straw broom and start furiously sweeping the floor, and she asked me which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or the handle. The bristles or the handle. And I hemmed and hawed, and she swept more and more violently, and I got nervous, and finally when I said I supposed the bristles, because you could after a fashion sweep without the handle, by just holding on to the bristles, but couldn’t sweep with just the handle, she tackled me, and knocked me out of my chair, and yelled into my ear something like, ’Aha, that’s because you want to sweep with the broom, isn’t it? It’s because of what you want the broom for, isn’t it?’ Et cetera. And that if what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom, and she illustrated with the kitchen window, and a crowd of the domestics gathered; but that if we wanted the broom to sweep with, see for example the broken glass, sweep sweep, the bristles were the thing’s essence. No? What now, then? With pencils? No matter. Meaning as fundamentalness. Fundamentalness as use. Meaning as use. Meaning as fundamentalness.

Hey,” I said before he could say anything else that would make the mood even weirder or break it entirely. “You wanna grab some coffee or something someday? I mean, some time when I’m not crawling with maggots,” I added with a laugh that sounded nervous to my own ears and probably sounded desperate and pathetic to his. I totally braced myself for him to hem and haw and say that he couldn’t or had a girlfriend or something. I was shocked instead when he gave me a nod. “That sounds nice. And I’m cool with the no maggots thing too.

As Haw prepared to leave, he started to feel more alive, knowing that he was finally able to laugh at himself, let go and move on. Haw laughed and announced, “It’s ... Maze ... time!” Hem

It’s time to find New Cheese.” Hem argued, “But what if there is no Cheese out there? Or even if there is, what if you don’t find it?” “I don’t know,” Haw said. He had asked himself those same questions too many times and felt the fears again that kept him where he was. He asked himself, “Where am I more likely to find Cheese—here or in the Maze?

She does know we're coming, right?' I ask. 'Well...' He hems and haws a bit. 'Not exactly.' Laney immediately smacks the back of his head. 'Jake! You mean we're showing up unannounced? That is so rude!' 'What if she isn't there? What are we going to do?' I smack him once, too, for good measure. 'What is *wrong* with you?' 'Can we please stop with the abuse?

Haw smiled. He knew Hem was wondering, “Who moved my cheese?” but Haw was wondering, “Why didn’t I get up and move with the Cheese, sooner?” As

behind the wall.” The next day, Hem and Haw returned with tools. Hem held the chisel, while Haw banged on the hammer until they made a hole in the wall of Cheese Station C. They peered inside but found no Cheese. They were disappointed but believed they could solve the problem. So they started

Having poured my drink, I may not live to taste it, or that it may pass a live man's tongue to burn a dead man's belly; that having slumbered, I may never wake, or having waked, may never living sleep. Having heard tick, will I hear tock? Having served, will I volley? Having sugared will I cream? Having eithered, will I or? Itching, will I scratch? Hemming, will I haw?

We cannot afford to dismiss or fetishize or marginalize or rear back from women’s anger any longer if we want this moment to be transformative. We have to look at it straight, stop hemming and hawing around it or trying to disavow it or worrying that it might offend and discomfit. It must be and always has been at the heart of social progress.

One of the world’s great investors once said to me, “Tom, what do you consider the number-one failing of CEOs?” After I hemmed and hawed, he said, “They don’t read enough.

la seguridad que Hem y Haw tenían en sí mismos se fue convirtiendo en la arrogancia propia del éxito.

After a while Hem's and Haw's confidence grew into the arrogance of success. Soon they became so comfortable they didn't even notice what was happening.

The hemming and hawing is courtesy of Mrs. Duchamps, head of nursing, a small, snippy woman who always seems to know best. She's French: she should have stayed in France. Arrogant and unsympathetic, but she does have a cute French accent.

The best laid schemes o’ mice and men often go astray.   Robert Burns 1759 -1796         “Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley.   But always, if we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us.”   A.J. Cronin Parts of All of Us The Simple and The Complex   The four imaginary characters depicted in this story— the mice: “Sniff” and “Scurry,” and the Littlepeople: “Hem” and “Haw”— are intended to represent the simple and the complex parts of ourselves, regardless of our age, gender, race or nationality.   Sometimes we may act like Sniff Who sniffs out change

exception proves the rule, the. A widely misunderstood expression. As a moment’s thought should confirm, it isn’t possible for an exception to confirm a rule – but then that isn’t the sense that was originally intended. Prove here is a ‘fossil’ – that is, a word or phrase that is now meaningless except within the confines of certain sayings (‘hem and haw’, ‘rank and file’ and ‘to and fro’ are other fossil expressions). Originally prove meant ‘test’ (it comes from the Latin probo, ‘I test’), so the exception proves the rule meant – and really still ought to mean – that the exception tests the rule. The original meaning of prove is preserved more clearly in two other expressions: ‘proving ground’ and ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’.

Of course. She’s a great mom.” Some would also tack on sentiments like, “I couldn’t do it without her,” and “It’s amazing how she keeps the house running.” I thought it was interesting that when I used the word “proud,” men almost always pointed straight to their wives’ role as a mother and caretaker. So I reframed the question, and asked, “Beyond her role as a mother or a wife,” I clarify, “are you proud of her?” The men whose wives forfeited the focus of their personal passion in the context of becoming a wife and a mom—those women with no connection to their Unicorn Space—had a hard time saying yes. They’d often hedge, hem and haw, then finally land on something their life partners did in the past that caused them to feel proud. I call this The Case of the She Used To’s, and it’s strong evidence that a woman’s gone missing.

He didn’t know how to help. If Max were anyone else, Jules would sit with him for a while, looking out at the night, and then start to talk. About nothing too heavy at first. Warming up to get into the hard stuff. Although, maybe, if he tried that now, the man would either open up—Ha, ha, ha! Riotous laughter. Like that would ever happen—or he’d stand up and move outside of talking range, which would put him away from the window with nothing to look at, at which point he might close his eyes for a while. It was certainly worth a try. Of course there were other possibilities. Max could put Jules into a chokehold until he passed out. So okay. Start talking. Although why bother with inconsequential chitchat, designed to make Max relax? And weren’t those words--Max and relax--two that had never before been used together in a sentence? It wasn’t going to happen, so it made sense to just jump right in. Although, what was the best way to tell a friend that the choices he’d made were among the stupidest of all time, and that he was, in short, a complete dumbfuck? Max was not oblivious to Jules’s internal hemming and hawing. “If you have something you need to say, for the love of God, just say it. Don’t sit there making all those weird noises.” What? “What noises? I’m not making weird noises.” “Yeah,” Max said. “You are.” “Like what? Like . . .?” He held out his hands, inviting Max to demonstrate. “Like . . .” Max sighed heavily. “Like . . .” He made a tsking sound with his tongue. Jules laughed. “Those aren’t weird noises. Weird noises are like, whup-whup-whup-whup”-- he imitated sounds from a Three Stooges movie—“or Vrrrrrr.” “Sometimes I really have to work to remind myself that you’re one of the Bureau’s best agents,” Max said.

Thakur still felt that he was groping in the dark. He needed numbers. Arun called in his executive assistant to help. Thakur asked the young man what percentage of the dossiers submitted to regulators contained data that did not match what the company had on file. The assistant was evasive: “It . . . varies from region to region.” “Give me an estimate in each region,” said Thakur. “How about in the U.S.?” The assistant thought for a moment, then estimated, “Perhaps between 50 and 60 percent?” Thakur could barely breathe. Ranbaxy had faked over half its dossiers to the FDA? And that was one of the better regions? “How about Europe?” “About the same,” came the assistant’s reply. “And India?” After some hemming and hawing, the assistant answered, “100 percent.” Testing the drugs for India was just a waste of time, he explained, because no regulators ever looked at the data. So the regional representatives just invented the dossiers on their own and sent them to the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). What was needed for the DCGI was not real data but good connections, which they had, the assistant explained. The scale of the deception stunned Thakur. He felt physically sick thinking about the patients. Thakur told the men he wanted a breakdown: each product by year, and the problem with each dossier.

It is deeply ironic that while America was hemming and hawing over whether to go metric on account of its shrinking place in world trade, a U.S. innovation sized in customary feet was becoming the most important measure of capacity ever to hit the global market.

What shocks and spasms we have seen in this past year or so: a United States that is about to take action in Syria, then one that could not without congressional approval and then later said maybe it didn’t need that approval after all; an administration arguing for the elimination of the standing authorization to use military force in Iraq and then just months later using it to justify an action it vowed it would never take; the United States hemming and hawing and disappointing allies from Eastern Europe to the Persian Gulf and then one acting boldly and celebrating the coalition with which it went to war. Who knew that the pivot the Obama administration would be remembered for was swiveling back to policies it opposed, rejected, and had turned away from just months or years before?

Sanborn customers threatened to boycott the product. The Chicago Tribune pronounced the show “vomitous,” and of course congressmen hemmed and hawed. The result, according to Time, was that a “thoroughly alarmed” NBC and J. Walter Thompson apologized publicly and “announced that they would never do it again.” Mae West became an instant persona non grata in radio: at NBC it was forbidden to utter her name on the air, an unwritten ban that was still in effect 12 years later.

Principal Carr hems and haws for a few seconds and then starts in on the details of my two-day suspension -- one for the dress code violation and one for "behavior unbecoming of a lady." That's the actual phrase he uses and I want to spit it back in his face.

Tell us about that ‘hoop snake’” suggested Willie. Thus urged and prompted, Cudgo seated himself near Willie and after hemming and hawing a few times by way of prelude,

He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes as I struggled to remain calm. I pressed him again. Finally he spilled the name. “Morgan Stanley.” I knew that for negotiating purposes I should pretend to be only mildly interested in the job. That way my headhunter wouldn’t think I was desperate or that I would switch jobs for a pittance. I knew I should preserve my bargaining power. The key to negotiating was saying I liked the job…but not that much. I fought to contain my excitement. I couldn’t. I nearly screamed. “I want it! I want it! Get me this job! When can I talk to them? I want it! I want this job!

But when you asked a Craftsperson a simple question about, say, theology, they’d hem and haw and “unless” at you until they begrudged that while without further research they couldn’t offer a definitive answer, their guess, which did not constitute advice in any professional sense and should not be relied upon as if it were same, was that you should under no circumstances and at the hazard of imminent eschatological consequence do whatever very simple and ordinary and profitable thing you very much wanted to do. As if that wasn’t bad enough: sometimes, just to mess with your head, they gave you a simple answer. Especially when your question was something like “How bad can this get?” The answer was, almost always, worse than you thought. And then you got their bill.

Waffling for Conclusions I'm not sure if I'm indecisive or just hemming and hawing. But one thing I'm sure of...or maybe it's two things I'm sure of?

chance the plant will survive.       Dr. Alton Mackey, Commissioner of the NRC gave the President a five-minute slide show with the pictures from 2011. Given the massive overtopping of the Garrison and Oahe dams, there was no way the two nuclear plants would survive the onslaught.     “How long does it take to shut down the reactors?”     Dr. Mackey hemmed and hawed. “When you turn your BBQ grill off, your steaks are still cooking even though the fuel is turned off.” The analogy was appropriate. “The control rods have already been disconnected which means the fission process has been stopped, but the fuel rods are still producing heat in the form of protons, helium nuclei, electrons, gamma rays, neutrons and positrons and a bunch of other radioactive crap. It takes years for the spent fuel rods to break down into less radioactive substances.

You want to get rid of the hemming and hawing, the “ums” and “uhs,” and anything that disrupts your flow. That takes practice.

Bekhir’s brow furrowed. He was a man of traditional sensibilities, and the question made him uncomfortable. But after some hemming and hawing, he growled, “Of course. He’s my child.

So I heard the big news.” “Oh. Yeah.” I blush but hide it by rubbing a wet washcloth over my face. “Are you excited?” “Yeah. I am. It’s a good thing. It’s just… unexpected.” “Eh, I’ve caught him staring at you a bunch of times. Think he was interested from the beginning.” If anything, my cheeks burn even hotter. “Really?” “Yes. That’s my take anyway. Plus things happen faster now than they used to. People don’t have time to play around and hem and haw and romanticize and waste months and years before they commit. And Jimmy’s been on his own a few years now. Ever since his wife died.” “He had a wife?” I lower my washcloth and turn around to face her. “Yeah, he did. She died like three or four years ago. They got married right out of high school, and I think they did pretty well together. They didn’t think she could get pregnant, but she finally did. But the baby came way too early, and then she and the baby both died.” “Oh.” My chest clenches. That must have been so hard for him. “That’s terrible.” “I’m sure it was. I wasn’t around here then, but that’s what I’ve heard about him. He seems like a decent guy. You could do a lot worse.” “I know. I’m glad about it. Kind of nervous since I’ve never done anything like it before, but still glad.

He hemmed and hawed for a minute, then said, "I'm sure you've got plans already, but I wanted you to know, I cleaned out the spare room at the museum last year." "What?" "The spare room in the back," he said patiently. "Next to my workshop. I knwo your mom's probably real excited to have you back home" - this was a profound lie, and we both knew it - "but you know, with the gout, I don't get around as easy as I used to right now, and if you wanted to stay here for a bit, I thought I'd offer.

But I know you. You’ll hem and haw for a bit, but in the end, you’ll go because you hate to lose—at anything.

You, however, by virtue of being able to hem and haw and procrastinate, are in a position of privilege to have the choices they don’t. The chores and tasks you have to endure to get to the goal you want to reach are opportunities they do not have. They’d love to have the time to learn a foreign language, develop a knowledgeable appreciation for art, or spend time learning to communicate with their loved ones. They’d also love the choice to not do something they need to do. They just don’t have the ability or time. You do.

I thought my life with Kelli could be balanced, mitigated,. That Irene had just been doing it all wrong these years. I' thought we could hang out like normal sisters, run errands, go for lattes with Jessica Hendy, and every now and then go off and have a little temper tantrum if Kelli go on my nerves--leave her in the car, assume she'd be fine. I'd assumed I could indulge myself if need be, that there could be some kind of fulfillment beyond my sister's care--that I didn't have to give myself over to it completely. But here's what I needed to understand--what Irene understood. Either you were all in with Kelli, or you were not. But if you were, Kelli had to become your joy. Kelli would be where you went for meaning. Kelli was what it was all about. And Irene was right about this too-- it was like faith. It was exactly like faith in that you had to stop futzing around and let it take you over. No more hemming and hawing. No more trying to have it both ways. And once you put your petty shit aside --your petty ego and your petty needs and your petty ambitions--that was when at last the world opened up. The world that was Kelli. It was a small world, a circumscribed world but it was your world and you did what you could to make it more beautiful. You focused on hygiene, nourishing meals, a pleasing home that always smelled good. That was your achievement and more important that was you. Once you accept that, you were--and this was strange to think, but the moment I thought it, I realized I put my finger on the savagely beating heart of my mother's philosophy--free. When I was a kid, my mother had a lavishly illustrated encyclopedia of saints she would sometimes flip through with me, and I remember how she always made a point of skipping over Saint Teresa of Avila . She didn't want to talk about the illustration that went with it. It was a photograph of the sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and it was pretty obvious to me even as a child why my mother disapproved. It was a sexy sculpture. The smirking angel prepares to pierce Teresa's heart with his holy spear, and boy oh boy is Saint Teresa ready. Her eyes are closed, her lips are parted, and somehow everything about her marble body, swathed in marble clothing looks to be in motion. Saint Teresa is writhing. She's writhing because that is what it is to be a Catholic Saint. This is your fulfillment. The giving over. The letting go. The disappearance. This is what it takes

People are perceived as more credible when they make eye contact and speak with confidence, no matter what they have to say. In a mock jury study, researcher Bonnie Erickson and her colleagues had people listen to a witness answer questions about a supposed accident-for example, "Approximately how long did you stay there before the ambulance arrived?" Some jurors heard the witness respond straightforwardly: "Twenty minutes. Long enough to help get Mrs. David straightened out." Others listened to the witness hem and haw: "Oh, it seems like it was about, uh, twenty minutes. Just long enough to help my friend Mrs. David, you know, get straightened out." What the witnesses said turned out to be less important than how they said it: the straightforward, confident witnesses were rated significantly more credible and competent.3

To Agrippinus, there should be no hemming and hawing about the right thing. There should be no weighing of options. “He who once sets himself about such considerations,” Epictetus said about Agrippinus, “and goes to calculating the worth of external things, approaches very near to those who forget their own character.” Character is fate, is how Heraclitus—one of the Stoics’ favorite influences—put it.

What I find is that we don’t even have the vocabulary to describe our feelings in useful detail—three-quarters of the people have a hard time coming up with a “feeling” word. When the words do come, they don’t usually tell us very much. People fumble around a bit, hem and haw, and then use the most commonplace terms we all rely on—I feel fine, good, okay …