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More "Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inadequate definition of goodness is that it is adaptation to environment. This is a far more important conception than the preceding; but again, while not untrue, is still, in my judgment, partial and ambiguous. When its meaning is made clear and exact, it seems to coincide with my own; for it points out that nothing can be separately good, but becomes so through fulfillment of relations. Each thing or person is surrounded by many others. To them it must fit itself. Being but a part, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... conclusion to which Mr. Daubeny hinted in East Barsetshire that he had arrived. The East Barsetshire men themselves,—so said the Liberals,—had been too crass to catch the meaning hidden under his ambiguous words; but those words, when read by the light of astute criticism, were found to contain an opinion that Church and State should be dissevered. "By G——! he's going to take the bread out of our mouths again," said ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... "Government" as understood by the man in the street; he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who, smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of prisoner and escort passed ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually, he was personally altogether a mystery. His professions, somehow, were all half- professions, and his allusions to his work and circumstances left something dimly ambiguous in the background. He was modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic matters. He was evidently poor; yet he must have had some slender independence, since he could afford to make so merry over the fact that his culture of ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... Beuthen in Sagan Country; and strides forward direct upon Berlin: Lacy, with 15,000, has started from Silesia, we saw how, above a week later (September 29th), but at a still more furious rate of speed. Soltikof,—theoretically Soltikof, but practically Fermor, should the dim German Books be ambiguous to any studious creature,—with the Main Army (which by itself is still a 20,000 odd), moves to Frankfurt, to support the swift Expedition, and be within two marches of it. Here surely is a feasibility! Berlin, for defence, has nothing but weak palisades; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... frequent Converse of that holy Man, that when she used this Language, she intended thereby to express her Resignation to the Divine Will in what had lately pass'd: And this might be the Meaning of her Heart, (tho' one ignorant of the Particulars of her Case, might not fully understand it from such ambiguous Words; ) "It is well on the whole. Though my Family be afflicted, we are afflicted in Faithfulness; tho' my dear Babe be dead, yet my Heavenly Father is just, and he is good in all. He knows how to bring Glory to himself, and Advantage ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... the city's right to the water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress. I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in. I told you to write a non-committal letter to the aldermen—an ambiguous letter—a letter that should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you—any shame—surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to evoke it, when its words fall ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... depths—as one hot and hasty soul placarded upon her looking-glass the single word "PATIENCE." To people whose tempers are quick and whose actions too often match their tempers, one of the most difficult of daily duties is to reserve judgment upon that which appears ambiguous in the conduct of their associates. The dreary list of slain friendships that makes retrospect painful to those of mature years; the disappointments that to the young have the bitterness of death; the tale of trusts betrayed and promises broken—how would the story be shortened and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the social celebrations of his class; he seemed to regard both sets of exercises with a tolerant amusement, his own "crowd" "not going in much for either of those sorts of things," as he explained to Lucy. What his crowd had gone in for remained ambiguous; some negligent testimony indicating that, except for an astonishing reliability which they all seemed to have attained in matters relating to musical comedy, they had not gone in for anything. Certainly the question one of ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... idea that I was not alone in the tavern. At the other end of the room stood a hideous group with haggard faces and harsh voices. Their dress indicated that they belonged to the poorer class but were not bourgeois; in short they belonged to that ambiguous class, the vilest of all, which has neither fortune nor occupation, which never works except at some criminal plot, which is neither poor nor rich and combines the vices of one class with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... genius of Irish oratory stands forth in the naked majesty of untutored nature, its eye glancing wildly round on all objects, its tongue darting forked fire: the genius of Scottish eloquence is armed in all the panoply of the schools; its drawling, ambiguous dialect seconds its circumspect dialectics; from behind the vizor that guards its mouth and shadows its pent-up brows, it sees no visions but its own set purpose, its own data, and its own dogmas. It "has no figures, nor no fantasies," but "those which busy care ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... not consider those Thoughts which are, in their own Nature, Vicious; as the Ambiguous, the Pointed, the Insipid, the Refined, the Bombast, and the rest. But of those Kind of Thoughts which are in themselves good, only these three do properly belong to Pastoral; namely, The Agreeable, or Joyous; The Mournful, or Piteous; And the ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... his making a free selection of proper persons for these [newly created] offices from the whole body of his fellow-citizens." Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II, 698, 701. The statement is ambiguous, but its apparent intention is to claim for the President unrestricted power in determining who are proper persons ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the other tent, determined to carry myself erect, and to be firm in spite of my ambiguous position; and before I had taken a couple of steps forward in the well-lit scene of our last conversation, the rajah rose quickly, scanned me from top to toe, and then his eyes flashed with satisfaction as he strode to meet ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... vote at the polls; she has no need for the exercise of her intellect (and woman, we grant, may have a great, a longing, a hungering intellect, equal to man's) to be gratified with a seat in Congress, or a scuffle for the ambiguous honour of the Presidency. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... The immediate occasion of the trouble was the tariff—a matter on which Jackson did not have any very decided views. His mind did not run naturally to abstruse economic questions; and owing to the divided opinion of the country it was "good politics" to be vague and ambiguous in the controversy. Especially was this true, because the tariff issue was threatening to split the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... of my creation of mankind. And here the terms of your accusation are ambiguous. I have to choose between two distinct possibilities. Do you maintain that I had no right to create men at all, that I ought to have left the senseless clay alone? Or do you only complain of the form in which I designed them? However, I shall ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... were ambiguous, and he wished to be understood. "You observe, no doubt, Miss Melcombe," he said, "that I am ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Licinius Mucianus held Syria with 10 four legions.[25] He was a man who was always famous, whether in good fortune or in bad. As a youth he was ambitious and cultivated the friendship of the great. Later he found himself in straitened circumstances and a very ambiguous position, and, suspecting Claudius' displeasure, he withdrew into the wilds of Asia, where he came as near to being an exile as afterwards to being an emperor. He was a strange mixture of good and bad, of luxury and industry, courtesy and arrogance. In leisure he was self-indulgent, but ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... some foundation unknown to me. "I may be a stranger to the grounds of your belief. Pleyel loaded me with indecent and virulent invectives, but he withheld from me the facts that generated his suspicions. Events took place last night of which some of the circumstances were of an ambiguous nature. I conceived that these might possibly have fallen under his cognizance, and that, viewed through the mists of prejudice and passion, they supplied a pretense for his conduct, but believed that your more unbiased ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... principle "Let no error be charged upon any man which he truly disclaims," and that the errors of some of the sect ought not to be charged upon all, yet maintains that the Confession of the seven Baptist Churches of London was but an imperfect and ambiguous declaration of the opinions of the English Baptists. He attributes to them collectively the following tenets, in addition to those of mere Antipaedobaptism and rigid Separatism:—"They put all church-power in the hand of the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... him if he had heard any thing, that he ought to have come to him, and let him know, before he began loading pistols. He then demanded to know, what he had heard. Humphreys answered at first in a very suspicious and ambiguous manner, but at length said, that Gilbert Smith, the boat-steerer who was saved, and Peter Kidder, were going to re-take the ship. This appeared highly improbable, but they were summoned to attend a council at which Comstock presided, and asked if they had ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... and labelled, but without any Latin name, a captured crumpet, a collection of buns, a dinner-roll, and a something novel to us, called Pumpernickel, that we had rather be without, or rather—for the expression is ambiguous—that we had rather not be without, but altogether remote from. And all these things have been tested by an analyst, with the most painful results. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and the like nasty chemical things seem indeed to ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... with an ambiguous smile, that did not escape Zetto. He drew forth his pocket-book, and took from it a small, folded paper, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... ambiguous. Common sense testifies that, in very many things, every Christian must, more or less, conform to the world. Many of the world's customs are not only harmless, but salutary, beautiful, ennobling, necessary to the very being ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience, is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... is the process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... surprise this proposition met with but scant enthusiasm. It seemed the Tancreds' plans were uncertain; perhaps it might be better for Fay and the children to come home in spring instead of Jan going out to them. Hugo's letters were ambiguous and rather cold; Fay's a curious mixture of abandonment and restraint; but the prevailing note of both was "would she please do nothing in ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... achievement, to give satisfying, determinate forms to the indeterminate and miscellaneous materials at his command. Formlessness is for the creator of beauty the unpardonable sin. To give clarity and coherence to the vague ambiguous scintillations of sound, to chisel a specific perfection out of the indefinite inviting possibilities of marble, to form precise and consecutive suggestions out of the random and uncertain music of words, is to ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... savage isle By poisonous black enchantment. Not in vain Were Doughty's words on that volcanic shore Among the stunted dark acacia trees, Whose heads, all bent one way by the trade-wind, Pointed North-east by North, South-west by West Ambiguous sibyls that with wizened arms Mysteriously declared a twofold path, Homeward or onward. But aboard the ships, Among the hardier seamen, old Tom Moone, With one or two stout comrades, overbore All doubts and questionings with blither tales Of how they sailed to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... to Caesar, delay is injurious to anyone who is fully prepared for action. I remember also to have read somewhere that such waste of time in diplomacy and palavering is the favourite resource of feeble and timid minds, who regard the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as an evidence of the most ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... laws also need revision. Those sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... from a vast arena of golden splendour to a mysterious shadowy land of dreams. A fierce light still reveals every object on the hill towards the east; but westwards beneath yon purple ridge all is wrapped in dim, ambiguous shade. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and daughter? How would they regard him if he maintained an obstinate and ambiguous silence towards them? They were no longer little children, scarcely separate from their father, seeing through his eyes, and touching life only through him. They were separate individuals, living souls, with a personality of their own, the more free from his ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... grotesque dream, with the ever-moving coach, the lonely road, the dark woods, and—so near, she could almost place her hand upon him—this man, muttering and mumbling. He had offered her the key of the mystery, but she had failed to use it. His ambiguous, loose talk, only perplexed and alarmed her; the explanation was none ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was the spirit in which Mirabeau urged departure, and in which Bouille came to the rescue; and it is that which made the queen odious to the expatriated nobles. But it was not the policy of Breteuil. He refused to contemplate anything but the restoration of the unbroken crown. The position was ambiguous. Contrary forces were acting for the moment in combination. Between the reactionary statesman and the constitutional general, there was no security in the character of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Sumner entered the senate, free speech could hardly be said to exist there. To him, as much as to any man, was due the breaking of the chain that fettered free speech. On all important subjects he spoke his mind eloquently and in words that were not ambiguous. In August, 1852, he made a speech—the more accurate phrase would be, he delivered an oration—under the title, "Freedom National, Slavery Sectional." It may easily be guessed that this highly incensed the slave power and the fire-eaters never ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the particular situation about which the inquiry was made. When the questions were not known beforehand we are in the dark as to the source of the answers. Sometimes, doubtless, they were happy or unhappy guesses; sometimes they were enigmatical or ambiguous in form, so that they could be made to agree with the events that actually occurred. In most cases the authorities would know how to explain the issue in such a way as to maintain the credit of the oracle. The best-known and the most impressive of the utterers ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... her hands crossed over her knees, Jacqueline seemed no longer a creature of indefinite or ambiguous purpose. On the contrary, her profile was rimmed in light, and very ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... even ambiguous; Pole was desired to wait till an answer could be received from England; and the emperor wrote to Renard (August 3), desiring him to lay the circumstances before the queen and his son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself meant well, but he had not the same ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... and awfully significant— "for goodness sake don't say I told you!" They were an appeal to my pity, to my sense of honor, to my power of secrecy, for I felt convinced that the bird had seen something—in fact that, to use De Kock's convenient if ambiguous phrase, something had happened! Then to think of its recognizing me too, after so long an interval! What an extraordinary thing to do! But I remembered, and hope I shall never forget, how exceeding small do the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the stairs and listen while our palled dinner, just arrived from the traiteur, is cooling; and the bucket of the draw-well hangs suspended while a history is finished, of which the relator knows as little as the hearer, and which, after all, proves to have originated in some ambiguous phrase of our keeper, uttered in a good-humoured paroxysm while receiving ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... itself rather facilitates the practice; but that practice is most dangerous to the language. When a democratic people doubles the meaning of a word in this way, they sometimes render the signification which it retains as ambiguous as that which it acquires. An author begins by a slight deflection of a known expression from its primitive meaning, and he adapts it, thus modified, as well as he can to his subject. A second writer twists the sense of the expression in another way; a third takes possession ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... latter are particular conceptions, for the very reason that their content is greater than that which is cogitated in the general conception. And yet the whole intellectual system of Leibnitz is based upon this false principle, and with it must necessarily fall to the ground, together with all the ambiguous principles in reference to the employment of the understanding which have ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... but owing to the confusion which is constantly arising in the minds of persons imperfectly acquainted with chemistry between chloride of lime and chloride of calcium—two perfectly distinct bodies—the less ambiguous expression "bleaching-powder" will be adopted here.] either in the solid state or as a liquid extract. The essential constituent of bleaching-powder from the present aspect is calcium hypochlorite, which readily oxidises ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the City daily of a girl, for the sake of walking back in winter weather with her father, struck her as ambiguous: either a jealous foolish mother's device, or that of a weak man beating about for protection. But the woman of the positive world soon read to the contrary; helped a little by the man, no doubt. She read rather too much to the contrary, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Fields, and the Temple. Some where behind the black gables and smutty chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell Street, Chancery Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world; and it is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, brandy-ball and hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical prints for youth, dealers in dingy furniture and bedding suggestive of anything but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark casements ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the last descendant resembled the old grandsire, from whom he had inherited the pointed, remarkably fair beard and an ambiguous expression, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... before you and God, say in justice, that I have never had anything in my heart but complete submission, and that in my most terrible moments I have not soiled my soul with evil wishes." Further on, he tells her that nothing in him is changed; and suddenly seized with a terrible doubt from the ambiguous tone of her letter, he cries, in allusion to a picture of Wierzchownia which always hung in his study: "Oh! I am perhaps very unjust, but this injustice comes from the passion of my heart. I should have liked two words for myself in your letter. I have hunted for them in vain—two ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... issue, and by this, and this only, can they be explained and applied. And thus, to learn aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and, in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre- occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Montfaucon, (t. 2, Collect Patr. p. 55.) If Patavius, Bull, and others, who censure Marcellus, had seen this confession, they would have cleared him of the imputation of Sabellianism, and expounded favorably certain ambiguous expressions which occurred in his book against the Arises, which is now lost, and was compiled against a work of Asterius the Sophist, surnamed the advocate ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... own class, but the children born of her irregular union may claim and may be accorded some of the privileges of their father's class. In this way there is formed in most villages a class of persons of ambiguous status, debarred from full membership in the upper class by the bar-sinister. Such persons tend to become wholly identified with the upper or middle class according to the degrees of their ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Elizabethan be correctly rendered "entertain," and every contemporary reader would understand what was meant by saying that "Rome entertained the Aetolians and the Achaeans without augmenting their power." But to-day such a phrase would seem obsolete and ambiguous, if not unmeaning: we are compelled to say that "Rome maintained friendly relations with the Aetolians," etc., using four words to do the work of one. I have tried to preserve the pithy brevity of the Italian so far as was consistent ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... at once spies and judges, the prototypes of the most fearful tribunal of modern times. Theodosius, to whom the carrying into effect of these measures was due, found it, however, more expedient for himself to institute living emblems of his personal faith than to rely on any ambiguous creed. He therefore sentenced all those to be deprived of civil rights, and to be driven into exile, who did not accord with the belief of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria. Those who presumed ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Fox family. The spirits of our deceased relatives and friends announced themselves, and generally gave a correct account of their earthly lives. I must confess, however, that, whenever we attempted to pry into the future, we usually received answers as ambiguous as those of the Grecian oracles, or predictions which failed to be realized. Violent knocks or other unruly demonstrations would sometimes interrupt an intelligent communication which promised us some light on the other life: these, we were told, were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... Byron of a 'high order'; that he reads some essays of Shelley, which are unanimously voted 'unsatisfactory'; that he denies that Tennyson's 'Princess' shows higher powers than the early poems (a rather ambiguous phrase); that he considers Adam, not Satan, to be the hero of 'Paradise Lost'; and, more characteristically, that he regards the novels of the present day as 'degenerate,' and, on his last appearance, maintains the superiority of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the Commissioners, Massachusetts maintained her proud position with a firmness which almost perilled the stability of the confederation. A bitter altercation, between the representatives of the other colonies and the General Court, was terminated by an ambiguous ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... during the early part of December, 1915, the ambiguous, doubtful attitude of Greece was causing the French and the British much anxiety. It was a curious and, for the Allies, a very dangerous situation. Faced as they were by an enemy much their superior in numbers, there was danger ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... young and displaying an animated and rather wild countenance, was the soldier; the other, concealing his form under a brown cloak, and his gloomy features, which had something ambiguous in their expression, under his broad-brimmed hat, which he did not remove, was the officer. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... interesting because of its artistic musical landscape suggestion; and there are the songs, "Fallen Leaf," which is deeply morose, and "Loss," which has some remarkable details and a strange, but effective, ambiguous ending. Other songs are a superbly rapturous setting of E.C. Stedman's "Thou Art Mine," and a series of songs to the words of Richard Watson Gilder, a poet who is singularly interesting to composers: "Thistledown" is irresistibly volatile; "Because ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... was Dowson, the Home Secretary, advancing to greet her, with his grey shaven face, eyelids somewhat drooped, and the cool, ambiguous look of one not quite certain of his reception. He had been for long a close ally of Maxwell's. Marcella had thought him a true friend. But certainly, in his conduct of the Bill of late there had been a good deal to suggest the attitude of a man determined to secure himself ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... having no corporeal evidence, can be perceived and comprehended only by the discursive energies of reason. Hence the ambiguous nature of matter can be comprehended only by adulterated opinion. Matter is the principle of all bodies, and is stamped with the impression of forms. Fire, air, and water derive their origin and principle from the scalene triangle. But the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... speaking and Violetta returned his bows, she fixed her eyes, filled with apprehension, on the sorrowful features of her companions. The ambiguous language of those employed in such missions was too well known to leave much hope for the future. They all anticipated their separation on the morrow, though neither could penetrate the reason of this sudden change in the policy of the state. Interrogation ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... remains unaltered. Let any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents—how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat below the "gangway." There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Minas. At a consultation, held between Colonel Winslow and Captain Murray, it was agreed that a proclamation should be issued at the different settlements, requiring the attendance of the people at the respective posts on the same day; which proclamation would be so ambiguous in its nature, that the object for which they were to assemble could not be discerned, and so peremptory in its terms, as to insure implicit obedience. This instrument having been drafted and approved, was distributed according to the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... practised upon me at Baron Derschau's, and left the mansion with my purse lightened of about 340 florins. The Baron was anxious to press a choice Aldus or two upon me; but the word "choice" is somewhat ambiguous: and what was considered to be so at Nuremberg, might receive a different construction in London. I was, however, anxious to achieve a much nobler feat than that of running away with undescribed printed volumes, or rare old ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Mrs Belfield, wholly insensible of this ambiguous greatness, "if you mean to make your ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... what the defendant's attorney told me. He has taken up the case with zeal and interest. Aside from some ambiguous lines which this young man wrote to a young woman before departing for Europe, they have found no proof to sustain the accusation. In these few lines, the officers saw a plan and threat ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... on civil law system; derived from Soviet and continental civil code legal principles; legislature retains power to interpret statutes; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislation; has not ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... relative terms which pass into one another? Everything is and is not, as in the old riddle—'A man and not a man shot and did not shoot a bird and not a bird with a stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the world ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Ralph gave a mild ambiguous laugh. "What a rage you have for marrying people! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Which ambiguous remark may have been meant to apply to the Captain's mental outfit more than his moral one. When Rawson-Clew knew Julia better he came to the conclusion it probably did, at the time he thought it wise ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... man of fervid temperament suddenly convinced of sin, incapable of being satisfied with ambiguous answers to questions which mean life or death to him, the Church of England has little to say. If he is quiet and reasonable, he finds in it all that he desires. Enthusiastic ages and enthusiastical temperaments demand something more complete and consistent. ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... Riviere drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, her eyes dwelt on him with a humorous interest, or flash of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... qualities of shadows and lights not infrequently seems ambiguous and confused to the painter who desires to imitate and copy the objects he sees. The reason is this: If you see a white drapery side by side with a black one, that part of the white drapery which lies against the black one will certainly look much whiter than the part which lies against ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... fonder of Mary than of any one else in the world. Rose, who had, as it were, been brought up all over the world, divided her time now between two continents and quaintly diversified her dancing, hunting, yachting existence by the arduous study of biology. Jack, in appearance more ambiguous than either, looked neither useful nor ornamental; but, in point of fact, he was a much occupied person. He painted very seriously, was something of a scholar and devoted much of his time and most of his large ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... me, after my long journey and my cold, damp drive. I was for chatting with Mrs. Braithwaite when she came up to clear away. I thought she might be glad to talk after the life she must lead with her afflicted husband, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect on her. All I elicited was an ambiguous statement as to the distance between the cottage and the hall; it was "not so far." And so she left me to my pipe and to my best night yet, in the stillest spot I have ever slept in on dry land; one heard nothing but the bubble of a beck; ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... consequently they have difficulty in grasping it even when presented to them, and that as a further consequence they are not to be criticised for their hesitancy in accepting the doctrine of the "Personality of God." It must be admitted that if "personality" is to be defined in the various ambiguous and contradictory ways in which we have seen it defined by advocates of Oriental "impersonality" much can be said in defense of their hesitancy. Indeed, no thinking Christian of the Occident for a moment accepts it. But if "personality" is defined in the way here presented, which I judge ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... my condition and my whereabouts from all except near relatives and a few intimate friends who shared the secret. I quite enjoyed leading this legitimate double life. The situation appealed (not in vain) to my sense of humor. Many a smile did I indulge in when I closed a letter with such ambiguous phrases as the following: "Matters of importance necessitate my remaining where I am for an indefinite period." ... "A situation has recently arisen which will delay my intended trip South. As soon as I have ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... inadequate description of the Witch's hut is given in advance of the actual descent of the personally conducted gentleman for the somewhat ambiguous reason that he was to find it not ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Seventh Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the principal and interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859, we reply that said last clause of said section is certainly indefinite, general, and ambiguous in its description of the bonds to be issued by you; giving no time at which the bonds are to be made payable, no place at which either principal or interest are to be paid, and no rate of interest which the bonds ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... relief after that question and her own inspired answer. Last night she had possibly been ambiguous; to-day, at any rate, her words had a trenchant force which severed one of the thousand little threads that bound her to Hardy. After all, when it came to the point, there was an immense amount of decision in her character. ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... perplexity the Spartans sent to the oracle at Delphi to know what they were to do. The oracle gave, as usual, an ambiguous and unsatisfactory response. It directed the people to make both the children kings, but to render the highest honors to the first-born. When this answer was reported at Sparta, it only increased the difficulty; for how were they to render peculiar ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... among persons of any rank or fortune, a competence is generally provided for younger children, and the bulk of the estate settled upon the eldest, by the marriage-articles. Heirs also, and children, are favourites of our courts of justice, and cannot be disinherited by any dubious or ambiguous words; there being required the utmost certainty of the testator's intentions to take away ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... warning? No! And have I any right to go and peep under their cloaks to see what is not there? He would have pardoned me, he would certainly have pardoned me, if I had not said anything to him about that cursed baldric—in ambiguous words, it is true, but rather drolly ambiguous. Ah, cursed Gascon that I am, I get from one hobble into another. Friend d'Artagnan," continued he, speaking to himself with all the amenity that he thought due himself, "if you escape, of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that the window was scarcely five feet from the ground, and although he was fully cognisant of the necessity, under the above-mentioned circumstances, of throwing the Signora out of the window, he yet felt troubled by a sense of painful uneasiness, and the more so since she had imparted to him in no ambiguous terms an interesting secret as to her condition. He hardly dared to make inquiries; and he was not a little surprised about eight months afterwards at receiving a tender letter from his beloved wife, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... December 23, 1614, the corporation in formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare imploring him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the dramatist 'a note of inconveniences [to the corporation that] would happen by the enclosure.' But although an ambiguous entry of a later date (September 1615) in the few extant pages of Greene's ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part at Combe's conduct, {271} it is plain that, in the spirit of his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what, accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter. The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... and borne in the present case by a descendant of a family who for centuries had enjoyed a monopoly of some of the smaller consular offices of the Syrian coast. Signor Pasqualigo had installed his son as deputy in the ambiguous agency at Jaffa, which he described as a vice-consulate, and himself principally resided at Jerusalem, of which he was the prime gossip, or second only to his rival, Barizy of the Tower. He had only taken a preliminary puff of his chibouque, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the white gentleman, with an ambiguous playfulness, very like a sneer. 'I'm too old to play Horatio; but standing at his elbow, if the Prince permits, I have a friendly word or two to say, in my ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... vision; splendidly arrayed and pitifully tattered; the diamond ear- drops still glittering in her ears; and with the movement of her coming, one small breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces. At that ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... details of Darwin's treatment there is neither space nor need to enter. There are some ambiguous passages; but it may be said that for him, as for his followers to-day, instinctive behaviour is wholly the result of racial preparation transmitted through organic heredity. For the performance of the instinctive act no individual ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... was by no means over. The Duke of Longueville had during the troubles held a very ambiguous attitude, and it was evident that he and other nobles were not loyal to the court. The troops had shown signs of mutiny; the days of the League seemed likely to return. On August 29th Mazarin made certain suggestions to the Regent which testified ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[2] they certainly argue no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable waste which comes in maturer years. But in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be mistaken or depreciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785, when Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be pardoned for taking my instances from my own times. Indeed, the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... bank notes possessing all the characteristics described in the first and second sections, and that the Secretary of the Treasury would have no power to forbid their receipt. It must be confessed that the language is sufficiently ambiguous to give some plausibility to such a construction, and that it seems to derive some support from the refusal of the House of Representatives to consider an amendment reported by the Committee of Ways and Means of that House, which would substantially have given the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... his visit to R——, Philip was settled on his probation at Mr. Plaskwith's, and Mrs. Morton's health was so decidedly worse, that she resolved to know her fate, and consult a physician. The oracle was at first ambiguous in its response. But when Mrs. Morton said firmly, "I have duties to perform; upon your candid answer rest my Plans with respect to my children—left, if I die suddenly, destitute in the world,"—the doctor looked hard in her face, saw its calm ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for me. Do not, by impatience or needless anxiety for my safety, rashly interrupt our interview. Ere long, you shall know what warnings or what information the seer has to impart." Then, with a stately and determined step, and an eye kindled with an ambiguous expression of ardent hope or daring resolution, she bent her ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... necessity, of communicating with Fitzgerald. The difficulty is in what tone I should address him. I cannot say that the man directly affronted me—I cannot recollect any one expression which I could lay hold upon as offensive—but his language was ambiguous, and admitted frequently of the most insulting construction, and his manner throughout was insupportably domineering. I know it impressed me with the idea that he presumed upon his reputation as a DEAD SHOT, and that would be ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... same characteristic was markedly shown under the weight of far greater issues in his determination to pass the river forts, in spite of remonstrances from his most able lieutenant, of cautious suggestions from other commanding officers, and with only the ambiguous instructions of the Navy Department to justify his action. It was not that the objections raised were trivial. They were of the most weighty and valid character, and in disregarding them Farragut showed not only the admirable insight which fastened upon the true ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... from his account to Philip (explanatory of what he, in advance of his brother's slower judgment, thought to be a necessary step), that the Fosters had for some time received anonymous letters, warning them, with distinct meaning, though in ambiguous terms, against a certain silk-manufacturer in Spitalfields, with whom they had had straightforward business dealings for many years; but to whom they had latterly advanced money. The letters hinted at the utter ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who took Him for their Messiah, were both Christians (which means Messianites): the Jews would never have invented the term to signify Jesuans, nor would the disciples have invented such an ambiguous term for themselves; had they done so, the Jews would have disputed it, as they would have done in later times if they had had fair play. The Jews of our day, I see by their newspapers, speak of Jesus ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... telling Lady Ongar that she owed it to him for the good services he had done her, to read what he might say, and to answer him. He then gave her various reasons why she should see him, pleading, among other things, in language which she could understand, though the words were purposely as ambiguous as they could be made, that he had possessed and did possess the power of doing her a grievous injury, and that he had abstained, and—hoped that he might be able to abstain for the future. She knew that the words contained no threat—that taken literally they were the reverse of a threat, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... without evincing any undue squeamishness. . . . I spoke of AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult of Kore, or Pherephatta, and of the swine of Eubouleus, and of certain ambiguous maidens, whom those old Grecians fabled—oh, very ignorantly fabled, my lad, of course—to rule in a more quietly lit and more tranquil world than we blunder about. I think I could explain much which ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ours in that ambiguous And filmy phrase, why then you lie; And if to yours—we hope to be contiguous To our objective by-and-by, But for the present, though the end is sure, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... says Boggs, 'them outcries of theirs makes me feel a heap ambiguous. I'm drawin' kyards to a pa'r of fours that first howl they emits, an' I smells bad luck an' thinks to myse'f, "Here's where you get killed too dead to skin!" But as I takes in three aces, an' as the harvest tharof is crowdin' hard ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... more words different in origin and signification are pronounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be homophonous, or homophones of each other. Such words if spoken without context are of ambiguous signification. Homophone is strictly a relative term, but it is convenient to use it absolutely, and to call any word ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... limitation which is set to all power by the laws of God; others from thinking that it excluded generally the influence of the secular power on what were properly spiritual matters. When the clause was laid before them, at the morning sitting of Feb. 11, it was received with an ambiguous silence; but on closer consideration, it was so evidently their only possible resource, that in the afternoon, first the Upper House of Convocation, and then the Lower, gave their consent. Then the King accepted the money-bill, and granted them in ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... succession, would soon bring matters to extremities against the present establishment. The queen, weighing all these inconveniences, which were great and urgent, was determined to keep both parties in awe, by maintaining still an ambiguous conduct; and she rather chose that the people should run the hazard of contingent events, than that she herself should visibly endanger her throne, by employing expedients, which, at best, would not bestow entire security on the nation. She gave, therefore, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... people and gentles, and remained in the Bishop of Durham's house till July 11th. And the King, who was then at St. John's house, removed to the Bishop of London's palace, and thence to his house at Rotherhithe."[287] But the Chronicle suggests no reason for these movements and ambiguous proceedings. Thus, too, on the 23rd of September, the mere fact is stated that "Prince Henry came to the council with a huge people," supplying no clue as to the meaning and intention of the concourse. It cannot, moreover, escape observation, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... bear to do it. However, his friends were too hard for him, and pretended that nothing against Jews could be any impiety, and that he ought to prefer what was profitable before what was fit to be done, where both could not be made consistent. So he gave them an ambiguous liberty to do as they advised, and permitted the prisoners to go along no other road than that which led to Tiberias only. So they readily believed what they desired to be true, and went along securely, with their effects, the way which was allowed them, while ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will crow, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... attentions to his wife. The struggle was brief, for the vehemence of his enmity, triumphant, the hope of immediate emolument was sacrificed, and the rooking of the young man postponed to some future occasion. Then, subtly concealing his purpose, he nodded an ambiguous acceptance. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ambiguous looks, that scorn and yet relent, Denials mild, and firm unalter'd truth; Reluctant pride, and amorous faint consent, And meeting ardours, and exulting ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... course of building or equipment) nor purchased unless an appropriation be first made by law therefor." The building of the two cutters under contract can not be said properly to have commenced, although preparations have been made for building; but even if the construction be ambiguous, it is better that all ambiguity should be removed and thus the hazard of violating the pledged faith of the country ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... actually seemed to Hobbes and to the French economists, that the fewer the oppressors the better, and that therefore an absolute monarchy is the best. Experience, he thinks, is 'on the surface' ambiguous. Eastern despots and Roman emperors have been the worst scourges to mankind; yet the Danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are as 'well governed as any people in Europe.' In Greece, democracy, in spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results.[86] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... beginning to end. To every question he gave a prompt reply, showing the clearness of judgment by which every argument had been maintained. In order to explain why such a question should be brought up forty-seven years after the treaty had been signed, he showed that it was founded on some indefinite or ambiguous clauses of the treaty of 1783, but not proposed until 1820. Here was a delicate point for His Majesty to settle without giving offence to either English or Americans. But Sir Howard was resolved to support the claim which contended for the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... we have to do is both clearly to define and understand the meaning of that word "unity." I distinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the oneness ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Priestley's objections to the Trinity on the part of Jews, Mahometans, and Infidels, it burst upon me at once as an awful truth, what seven or eight years ago I thought of proving with a 'hollow faith', and for an 'ambiguous purpose', [29] my mind then wavering in its necessary passage from Unitarianism (which, as I have often said, is the religion of a man, whose reason would make him an atheist, but whose heart and common sense will not permit him to be so) through Spinosism into Plato ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... interrogation she gracefully looked up to the gentlemen; and after a glance towards Granville Beauclerc, unluckily unnoticed or unanswered, her eyes expected reply from Horace Churchill. He, well feeling the predicament in which he stood, between a fool and a femme d'esprit, answered, with his ambiguous smile, "that no doubt it was a great misfortune to have 'plus d'esprit qu'on ne ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... advanced in years, his character became fully known in the court, and was no longer ambiguous to either faction. Of the most harmless, inoffensive, simple manners, but of the most slender capacity, he was fitted, both by the softness of his temper and the weakness of his understanding, to be perpetually governed by those who surrounded him; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... kinds of physical courage—the active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations and consequences, of readiness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness, admitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the clouds from human intercourse, I have not known his equal. The great Sir Walter himself, as this book will prove, was not more manfully free from artistic jealousy or irritability under criticism, or more unfeignedly inclined to exaggerate the qualities ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of an English novel, reprinted by A. Hart, Philadelphia, illustrative of German life and character, and in all respects of more interest than would be predicted from its ambiguous designation. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye—the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself—and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.] But we all know, each knows by his own experience, that No. 5 is not forthcoming; and, in the absence of that, what avail for us the others? ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... spectacle! On the one hand, the infinitely ramified division of society into the most varied races, which confront each other with small antipathies, bad consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and precisely because of the ambiguous and suspicious positions which they occupy towards each other, such positions being devoid of all real distinctions although coupled with various formalities, are treated by their lords as existences on sufferance. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... with either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in direct communication ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... one of the gentlemen referred to uses the phrase "eternal death," as many do. I wonder what they mean? It is an ambiguous phrase. It might mean endless torment after death; or it might mean annihilation at death; or it might mean annihilation at some future time. It is surely misleading to use a phrase that may have so many meanings. If some definite idea ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... certainly not the least of the many crimes which stain the memory of Nero, but the circumstances of his death are not exactly described by the mediaeval scribe. Whether the philosopher and former tutor was implicated in the conspiracy of Piso may be doubted, but some ambiguous phrases he had used were reported to the Emeror, whose messenger demanded an explanation of their meaning. The reply of Seneca was either unsatisfactory or the tyrant had decided to be rid of his former guide. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... to the point, and a nice point it is I acknowledge; namely, what religion the Devil is of; my answer will indeed be general, yet not at all ambiguous, for I love to speak ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... and the universality of their influence, will generally serve to distinguish them from those partial efforts of diligence and self-denial, to which mankind are prompted by subordinate motives. All proofs other than this deduced from conduct, are in some degree ambiguous. This, this only, whether we argue from Reason or from Scripture, is a sure infallible criterion. From the daily incidents of conjugal and domestic life, we learn that a heat of affection occasionally vehement, but superficial and transitory, may consist too ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the jolting of the vehicle, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking "illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a little difficult to avoid the conclusion ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... living soul approaches the place of combat; not a hand gives aid. The boy can see the faces of the virgins who serve the temple. They are pale, but very still. Not a sound of pity escapes their white lips; their ambiguous eyes watch calmly for the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought of making what he looked upon as chance the umpire, and drew out of his pocket a piece of money, and tossing it into the air, it came down on its edge, and stuck in the clay. Though the determination answered not his wish, it was far from ambiguous, as it seemed to forbid both methods of destruction, and would have given unspeakable comfort to a mind less disordered than his was. Being thus interrupted in his purpose, he returned, and mounting his horse, rode on to London, and in a short time after shot himself. He dwelt in a house in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hand upon a, memorial praying that the city's right to the water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress. I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in. I told you to write a non-committal letter to the aldermen—an ambiguous letter—a letter that should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you—any shame—surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to evoke it, when its words ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... has many times appeared in our pages, and as it may prove ambiguous to a few of our readers and render them liable to confound its meaning with that of a fixed town, we will here stop and explain its signification when applied to Indians. An Indian village, as understood in border parlance, comprises the lodges, the women, children, old men, and such movable ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... quartos). Many who have hardly heard the painter's name will of course not admire it, being done neither by Titian nor Vandyke; but Mr. Beckford's taste is peculiar. He prefers a genuine picture by an inferior painter to those attributed to the more celebrated masters, but where originality is ambiguous, or at least if not ambiguous where picture cleaner, or scavengers, as he calls them, have been at work. In this room, suspended from the ceiling by a silken cord, is the silver gilt lamp that hung in the oratory at Fonthill. Its shape and proportion are very elegant, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by Strabo, with an ambiguous title of KwmopoliV, (Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121.) Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude (plhqoV) of Jews and Gentiles. under the corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and garden, three leagues ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Kapchack to try him), and therefore he would go so far as this, he would encourage the weasel without committing himself. "Return," he said to the humble-bee, "return to him who sent you, and say: 'Do you do your part, and Choo Hoo will certainly do his part'." With which ambiguous sentence (which of course the weasel read in his own sense) he dismissed the humble-bee, who had scarce departed from the camp, than the flag of truce arrived from Ki Ki, and the young hawk, bright ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... have done) although it is worded in a manner as little offensive to their feelings as the nature of things would admit of; and that having tried this measure, the mediators will next proceed to another, in which their sentiments in favor of the United States will be less ambiguous. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... after his visit to R——, Philip was settled on his probation at Mr. Plaskwith's, and Mrs. Morton's health was so decidedly worse, that she resolved to know her fate, and consult a physician. The oracle was at first ambiguous in its response. But when Mrs. Morton said firmly, "I have duties to perform; upon your candid answer rest my Plans with respect to my children—left, if I die suddenly, destitute in the world,"—the doctor looked hard in her face, saw its ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the living God. Some eminent Sanscrit scholars tell us that the Vedas teach Pantheism, while others assert that in their most ancient teaching they assert the doctrine of a living, personal God. From this divided opinion it is plain that the teaching of the Vedas on this vital subject is ambiguous. At any rate there cannot be a doubt that the modern Hindus have some notion of God as a living, conscious One apart from His creatures, although it is held with Pantheistic and Polytheistic notions, which are antagonistic to it, and greatly weaken its influence. Its being held ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Burke's face; it had an enigmatical quality that disquieted her, she could not have said wherefore. "It's rather an ambiguous term, isn't ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... enough. They are not only personal, but universal. Personal is habitually used in a certain contrast with legal, and it is very easy to lapse into the idea that personal relations, because distinct from legal ones, are independent of law; but to say the least of it, that is an ambiguous and misleading way of describing the facts. The relations of God and man are not lawless, they are not capricious, incalculable, incapable of moral meaning; they are personal, but determined by something of universal import; in other words, they are not merely personal ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... replied Peggy, and it was not her fault if Rosetta Muriel thought the remark ambiguous. "Good night," she added hastily and turned away, fearful that a longer interview would bring her to the point of speaking her mind with a plainness hardly allowable on slight acquaintance. Like many people noted ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... conference with some of his rabbis upon the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, which the other promised, but not having interest enough to obtain it he was poisoned." This rather ambiguous sentence means that Ainsworth was poisoned, not the Jew. Brooks's account of the story is that the conference took place, the Jews were vanquished, and in revenge poisoned the champion of Christianity afterwards. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... I dreamed I know not what, It seemed that certain apparitions were, Which sang uncanny words, significant And yet ambiguous—half-understood— Portending evil; and an awful spook, Even as I stood with my accomplices, Counted me out, as children do in play. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... strong accent, although he had been in the country forty years, and was a churchwarden. When the rector complained that a certain parishioner had called him a perfect ass, and asked advice, the reply, though well intentioned, sounded ambiguous: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... on iii., 23 (p. 184, Trans.), that "there are many passages in these dissertations which are ambiguous or rather confused on account of the small questions, and because the matter is not expanded by oratorical copiousness, not to mention other causes." The discourses of Epictetus, it is supposed, were spoken extempore, and so one thing after another would come into the thoughts of ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector's visits no ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... caring about truth, is by no means singular, either in philosophy or life. The singularity of this, as of some other (so-called) sophistical doctrines, is the frankness with which they are avowed, instead of being veiled, as in modern times, under ambiguous and ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... question of Hugh's time was certainly the Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine grew, as the power of the Church grew; as the one took a bolder tone so did the other. The word Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the disputants who do not define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's tentative terms had given way ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Inasmuch as it canceled both the former limitation to the twenty-one doctrinal articles and the phrase "in a manner substantially correct," the York Amendment was an improvement on the General Synod's basis. Yet the formula was left ambiguous, because the question was not decided whether all of the articles of the Augsburg Confession were to be regarded as fundamental doctrines of the Bible. The facts are: 1. While, indeed, all doctrines ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... words of distrust and indifference, but it was plain that the ambiguous language of the juggler, as usual, had succeeded in awakening interest. With the affectation of a mind secretly conscious of its own infirmity, he pretended to be indifferent to what the other professed a readiness to reveal, while with ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was "so glad to get the books back." I, however, sobered and wavered (by degrees) from seeing nothing of her, day after day; and in less than a week I was devoted to the Infernal Gods. I could hold out no longer than the Monday evening following. I sent a message to her; she returned an ambiguous answer; but she came up. Pity me, my friend, for the shame of this recital. Pity me for the pain of having ever had to make it! If the spirits of mortal creatures, purified by faith and hope, can (according to the highest assurances) ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... and commercial air, whose speech was brief and plain as that of a man who knows the value of minutes. He desired to know what I had to say to him. I stammered for some time, and became embarrassed in one of those labyrinths of ambiguous phrases under which one conceals thoughts that will and will not come to the point. I thought to gain courage by gaining time; at last I unbuttoned my coat, drew out the little volume, and presented it humbly with a trembling hand to M. Didot. I told him that I had ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, the 'Franciscans,' a long satire, compared to which the 'Somnium' was bland and merciful. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... matter of good usage, the verb or any other part of speech should be repeated wherever its omission either makes the sentence ambiguous or gives it ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, her eyes dwelt on him with a humorous interest, or flash of purpose, and she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doctrines which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... care should be taken to avoid ambiguity in the use of pronouns. It is very easy to multiply and combine pronouns in such a way that while grammatical rules may not be broken the reader may be left hopelessly confused. Such ambiguous sentences should be cleared up, either by a rearrangement of the words or by substitution of nouns ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... northern frontier derived increased interest from the ambiguous conduct observed by the inhabitants of that tract of country which now constitutes the state of Vermont. They had settled lands within the chartered limits of New York, under grants from the governor of New Hampshire; and had, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Austria looked up, endeavoring to discover through the mysterious mask, and this ambiguous language, the name of her companion, who expressed herself with such familiarity and freedom; then, suddenly, wearied by a curiosity which wounded every feeling of pride in her nature, she said, "You are ignorant, perhaps, that royal personages are never ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... science asks, Are absolute principles attainable? What are the limits of knowledge? The answer he receives from science itself is not ambiguous. What the moralist asks is, Shall we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit? Experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn ascertained truth into a dead letter, to make us all the phlegmatic servants of routine. The ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... of his books, printed on vellum and suitably bound, to the libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau, and such others as the King should appoint. About eight hundred volumes in the national collection represent the immediate results of this copy-tax; they are all marked with the ambiguous cypher, which might either represent the initials of the King and Queen or might indicate the names of Henri and Diane. Queen Catherine de Medici was an enthusiastic collector. When she arrived in France as a girl she brought with her from Urbino a number of MSS. that had belonged ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... a vagabond, because you are out here in the country and play the fiddle; but I am influenced by no such superficial considerations; I form my judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses—for ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... order to be projected, a retinal image has to be localized with reference to some point, generally the fixation-point of the eyes; and it is therefore clear that when two such fixation-points are involved, the localization will be ambiguous if for any reason the central apparatus does not clearly determine which shall be the point of reference. With regard to the oppositely moving streak Mach says:[9] "The streak is, of course, an after-image, which ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the rest of them—they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable substitute for the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... pounds lent out (without interest or security) though his pay is only fifteen shillings a week—with ten, ten, two, and a quarter—and he is anything but a miser. Many people would like a leaf out of his book. It is my privilege to be able to furnish this, though in a sort of ambiguous way, having received the information in confidence. Here ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Marshal St Arnaud were appointed to command the respective armies, Vice-Admiral Sir James Dundas and Sir Charles Napier having command of the Mediterranean and Baltic Fleets respectively. The attitude of Austria was ambiguous, and, after England and France were committed to war, she contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia, each country engaging to make limited preparations for war. At home, with a view to greater efficiency, the duties of the Secretary of State for War ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... satisfactory, the whole thing," replied the old lawyer. "Didn't you notice that the man avoided any direct reply? He said 'of course' about a hundred times, and was as ambiguous, and non-committal, and vague, as he could be. My dear Tertius, the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape at, and thus they break both their leagues and their faith; and this is done with such impudence, that those very men who ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... diseased. Cinna's republicanism is merely the cloak of another passion: he is a tool in the hands of Emilia, who, on her part, constantly sacrifices her pretended love to her passion of revenge. The magnanimity of Augustus is ambiguous: it appears rather the caution of a tyrant grown timid through age. The conspiracy is, with a splendid narration, thrust into the background; it does not excite in us that gloomy apprehension which so theatrical an object ought to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the Bahamas." There was no way by which accurate metes and bounds could be described. This fact disturbed the upright and conscientious Marbois, who thought that "treaties of territorial cession should contain a guaranty from the grantor." He was especially anxious, moreover, that no ambiguous clauses should be introduced in the treaty. He communicated his troubles on this point to the First Consul, advising him that it seemed impossible to construct the treaty so as to free it from obscurity on the important matter of boundaries. Far ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... had been the sort of man his accusers say he was, he would have betrayed himself in his plays. Consider merely the fact that young boys then played the girls' parts on the stage. Surely if Shakespeare had had any leaning that way, we should have found again and again ambiguous or suggestive expressions given to some of these boys when aping girls; but not one. The temptation was there; the provocation was there, incessant and prolonged for twenty-five years, and yet, to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent, And kept his ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... danger was by no means over. The Duke of Longueville had during the troubles held a very ambiguous attitude, and it was evident that he and other nobles were not loyal to the court. The troops had shown signs of mutiny; the days of the League seemed likely to return. On August 29th Mazarin made certain suggestions to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... singular spectacle of a punter at variance with himself because the cards fell favourable for him; and notwithstanding that the explanation of his behaviour was pretty patent, yet people looked at each other significantly and gave utterance in no ambiguous terms to the opinion that the Baron, carried along by his penchant for the marvellous, might eventually become insane, for any player who could be dismayed at his run of luck must ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the preceding note, is incorrectly rendered, "to cross the lake of Batu"—an error probably due to ignorance on the part of the translator, of the location of Polangui, although the language of the author is not at all ambiguous. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... look of inexpressible contempt, and then turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with sorcery and witchcraft, because he ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... time longer Lucretia's spouse remained in Rome, where the Pope had taken him into his pay in accordance with an agreement with Ludovico il Moro under whom Sforza served. His position at Alexander's court, however, soon became ambiguous. His uncles had married him to Lucretia to make the Pope a confederate and accomplice in their schemes which were directed toward the overthrow of the reigning family of Naples. Alexander, however, clung closely to the Aragonese dynasty; he invested King Alfonso with ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... been, his death affected Adams strangely. The magnetism of the man's character had taken a strong hold upon him, fascinating him with the fascination that strength alone can exercise. And the man he regretted was not the ambiguous being, the amended Berselius, so obviously a failure, but the real Berselius who had returned to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... is signified the use of good English. It precludes the use of all slang words, vulgar phrases, obsolete terms, foreign idioms, ambiguous expressions or any ungrammatical language whatsoever. Neither does it sanction the use of any newly coined word until such word is adopted by the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Bouille came to the rescue; and it is that which made the queen odious to the expatriated nobles. But it was not the policy of Breteuil. He refused to contemplate anything but the restoration of the unbroken crown. The position was ambiguous. Contrary forces were acting for the moment in combination. Between the reactionary statesman and the constitutional general, there was no security in ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... from quite a different sphere, is not Shakspeare's Julius Caesar, as respects the action, constructed on the same principle? Brutus is the hero of the piece; the completion of his great resolve does not consist in the mere assassination of Caesar (an action ambiguous in itself, and of which the motives might have been ambition and jealousy), but in this, that he proves himself the pure champion of Roman liberty, by the calm sacrifice ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... accompanied by a sneer and a chuckle, which the ambiguous old sinner could not for the blood of him suppress. "And now," he added, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... by courtiers who had most of their stocks in these loans, made the King go on horseback to the Parliament House in great pomp, and carry a wheedling declaration with him, which contained some articles very advantageous to the public, and a great many others very ambiguous. But the people were so jealous of the Court that he went without the usual acclamations. The declaration was soon after censured by the Parliament and the other bodies, though the Duc d'Orleans exhorted and prayed that they would not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of Value". 2. Gold and Silver, why fitted for those purposes. 3. Money a mere contrivance for facilitating exchanges, which does not affect the laws of value. Chapter V. Of The Value Of Money, As Dependent On Demand And Supply. 1. Value of Money, an ambiguous expression. 2. The Value of Money depends on its quantity. 3. —Together with the Rapidity of Circulation. 4. Explanations and Limitations of this Principle. Chapter VI. Of The Value Of Money, As Dependent On Cost Of Production. 1. The value of Money, in a state of Freedom, conforms to the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... into the ambiguous word "missing." Applied to a wife or an actress's jewellery it can mean anything. Applied to a man on active service it can mean one of three things. He may be dead, he may be a prisoner, he may be wounded and a prisoner. If he be dead he enters Valhalla. If he ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... was old enough I wouldn't be gittin' married," said fourteen-year-old Hiram, in a somewhat ambiguous burst of patriotism. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... to let justice take its course; and entreating that he would not endeavour to influence the sovereign on so serious an occasion, where his generous self-abnegation might involve his future safety; but Richelieu only replied with one of his ambiguous smiles that he could not, in order to save his own life, consent to sacrifice that of a Prince of the Blood; while at the same time he induced the King to exile the Duchesse de Vendome and her two sons, MM. de Mercoeur and de Besancon, from the capital. The members of the Court ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... so. A great deal has been entrusted to you. You hadn't the right to break off simply. Besides, you made no clear statement about it, so that you put them in an ambiguous position." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bring to bear upon a matter vital to the State one-half the intelligence, zeal and sense of responsibility you will throw this evening into some ambiguous question of fleeting policy of speculative finance. Here are one hundred and eighty souls to whose correction, cure and protection the State is pledged. No one of all these lives is safe a single day. In six weeks ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... sound, sure enough; though not what he supposed he had heard just before. That was like a human voice—some one laughing a long way off. It might be the "too-who-ha" of the owl, or the bark of a prairie wolf. The noise now reaching his ears is less ambiguous, and he has no difficulty in determining its character. It is that of water violently agitated—churned, as by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... confesses that ambition led him to do this; but in any case it was very close to a deed of downright treachery, unless the fact was that Tristan did not suspect Isolda's love for him, or thought his station too humble. Wagner's language is ambiguous, and probably he intended his meaning to be the same. Isolda has no two opinions about his conduct. It had been her duty to kill him in the first place, and her love, her destiny, Frau Minna—call it what you will—betrayed her; and now she is betrayed by the man whose life ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... in grasping it even when presented to them, and that as a further consequence they are not to be criticised for their hesitancy in accepting the doctrine of the "Personality of God." It must be admitted that if "personality" is to be defined in the various ambiguous and contradictory ways in which we have seen it defined by advocates of Oriental "impersonality" much can be said in defense of their hesitancy. Indeed, no thinking Christian of the Occident for a moment accepts it. But if "personality" is defined ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... had tried during my visit to the Fox family. The spirits of our deceased relatives and friends announced themselves, and generally gave a correct account of their earthly lives. I must confess, however, that, whenever we attempted to pry into the future, we usually received answers as ambiguous as those of the Grecian oracles, or predictions which failed to be realized. Violent knocks or other unruly demonstrations would sometimes interrupt an intelligent communication which promised us some light on the other life: these, we were told, were occasioned by evil or mischievous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... told Fouche that he was the only man who had talked with him about the past without using ambiguous language; that he was surprised at this, and compelled to recognize as true what formerly had been fettered on his tongue. He told him that he had promised his rescuer, with a solemn oath, never ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... mean to say I think he's got any idee of sich a thing, Bildad," replied Bildad himself, who took great delight in mystifying people, and who sometimes, in order to express the most unqualified negation, was accustomed to employ this apparently ambiguous form of speech. "I said for my part, Miss Prouty,—for my part. As for the Doctor, he'll prob'bly have his own notions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... right? Yes, I see that I am, by your bow. Very well, you may suppose what pain it gave me to have the privilege of intercourse with a perfect gentleman and an eloquent divine, and yet feel myself in an ambiguous position. In a few words I will clear myself, being now at liberty to indulge that pleasure. I have been here, as agent for Sir Duncan Yordas, to follow up the long-lost clew to his son, and only child, who for very many years was believed to be out of all human pursuit. My sanguine ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... historian, thoroughly appreciating its importance, have repeatedly come to the conclusion that the Declaration had no small part in the anarchy with which France was visited soon after the storming of the Bastille. They point to its abstract phrases as ambiguous and therefore dangerous, and as void of all political reality and practical statesmanship. Its empty pathos, they say, confused the mind, disturbed calm judgment, aroused passions, and stifled the sense of duty,—for of duty there is not a word.[1] Others, on the contrary, and especially ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... of grace in different characters—were deduced from three considerations. Each of these, in her view, was a decisive evidence against his suggestion, and a consoling reflection in this extraordinary and ambiguous moment. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. Whatever had or had not ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... was hundreds and hundreds of yards long and entirely paved with stone, were a number of Chinese dead—men of some resolution, who had met the charge in the open and died like soldiers. That, indeed, had been our own experience. Even with the ambiguous orders which must have been given in every command ranged against us, there were always men who could not be restrained, but charged right up to our bayonets.... Now as I ran forward firing was going on just as heavily, and the ugly rush and swish ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... was a quiet, inoffensive creature, without any principle or opinion whatsoever at variance with those of her husband, rose upon hearing this announcement; but so ambiguous were her motions, that we question whether the most sagacious prophet of all antiquity could anticipate from them the slightest possible clue to her opinion. The husband, in fact, had not yet spoken, and until he had, the poor woman did not know her own mind. Under any circumstances, it was difficult ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the stool, her hands crossed over her knees, Jacqueline seemed no longer a creature of indefinite or ambiguous purpose. On the contrary, her profile was rimmed in light, and very matter-of-fact and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... from what he said that it was born lifeless; still his words were somewhat ambiguous—even if she had lived several months, she might not have lived long ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
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