willing horse

Example Sentences

• "[A]fter a good deal of discussion (some of it angry) among the Major-Generals, it was settled as such things are everywhere—the willing horse (which SHERMAN always is) getting the work to do."
• "[S]he said to me as quietly as a maiden might ask one to carry a glove, "Jan Ridd, carr thic^([sic]) thing for me." So I carried it for her, without any words; wondering what she was up to next, and whether she had ever heard of being too hard on the willing horse."
• "Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext."
• ""When he hears of it he'll be more anxious than ever to fight." / Valencia nodded. "A spur to a willing horse.""
• "There is certainly the need to reward performance and offer incentives for success, but flogging a willing horse is not the way to do it."