"Equivocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jew, no doubt must hang over the negotiation. The money, with pledges, and thine own conscience for arbiter between us; but no equivocal dealings, to be followed by a disappointment, under the pretence that ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and with many forebodings and anxious fears, made his first attempt, brings it to his teacher. The teacher, if he is a kind-hearted and considerate man, perhaps briefly commends the effort with some such dubious and equivocal praise as it is "Very well for a beginner," or "As good a composition as could be expected at the first attempt," and then proceeds to go over the exercise in a cool and deliberate manner, with a view of discovering and bringing out clearly and conspicuously ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... now was to do for me a thousand things that hitherto I had been forced to do for myself, was almost naive. I could not hide it. I was at last a man's woman. I had a protector. Yes; I must not shrink from the equivocal significance of that word—I ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... sonorous, resonant, canorous, audible, piercing; pure, unmixed, unadulterated, unalloyed; in full, net; passable, unimpeded, unobstructed, open; acquitted; unburdened, exempt; clarified. Antonyms: opaque, obscure, indecipherable, ambiguous, equivocal, vague, cryptic, abstruse, inexplicable, roily, turbid, enigmatical, inexplicit, inaudible, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... puts a constraint on her feelings only so long as by giving vent to them, she might make her firmness of purpose appear equivocal. When, however, she is being led forth to inevitable death, she pours forth her soul in the tenderest and most touching waitings over her hard and untimely fate, and does not hesitate, she, the modest virgin, to mourn the loss of nuptials, and the unenjoyed bliss of marriage. Yet she never in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, but ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... illuminations and offerings to the ancestors. Kunjra men are usually clean-shaven with the exception of the beard, which is allowed to grow long below the chin. Their women are not tattooed. In the cities, Mr. Crooke remarks, [46] their women have an equivocal reputation, as the better-looking girls who sit in the shops are said to use considerable freedom of manners to attract customers. They are also very quarrelsome and abusive when bargaining for the sale of their wares or arguing with each other. This is so much the case that ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... yours, I am come merely with a design to gratify it, and only expect you will judge of my desire to oblige you by my readiness in obeying your commands; were I myself the subject, the motive for my obedience might be equivocal.' ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... his own way unhampered by the caprices of the gentle sex, agreed!—so under the dominion of love had he become! for a woman, too, who in herself combined three things he had always disliked. She was an American, she was very young, and she had an equivocal position. But the little god does not consult the individual before he shoots his darts, and punishes the most severely those who have denied ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... an air of equivocal bonhomie upon the countenance of the sergeant; but the adventure of the vault might have excited the curiosity of the man, and it was not surprising that he allowed some of the feelings which agitated his mind to appear in his face. Athos closed the doors carefully, confiding ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in French in Molly's presence which that young lady could not understand, and felt that it was not intended she should. She even regarded with a certain veneration the cap itself, which she had once met in equivocal circumstances, journeying with a plait of white hair ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of which I speak, Tom Hopkins was of an age somewhat equivocal; public fame called him fifty, whilst he himself stuck obstinately at thirty-five; of a stout active figure, rather manly than gentlemanly, and a bold, jovial visage, in excellent keeping with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... house in —-shire, about fifty or sixty acres in land, and three or four hundred a year into the bargain. Poor old lady! I heartily wish she had kept him out of possession by living to a hundred; or, dying, had left every farthing to "endow a college or a—cat." To Harrington she has left a very equivocal heritage. For with this and his little patrimony he is entirely placed above the necessity of professional life and fully qualified to live (Heaven help him!) as a gentleman;—but, unhappily, as a gentleman whose nature is deeply speculative,—whose ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... voices beneath her window. The Chevalier was making equivocal jokes, foreign witticisms, vulgar and clumsy. She listened, in despair. Servigny, just a bit tipsy, was imitating the common workingman, calling the Marquise "the Missus." And all of a sudden he said to Saval: "Well, Boss?" That caused a ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... Indeed, until I read Professor Hodge's article, I had not supposed that any of them denied its sinfulness. It is true, that a large proportion of them refuse to take a stand against it. Let them justify to their consciences, and to their God, as they can, the equivocal silence and still more equivocal action on this subject, by which they have left their Southern brethren to infer, that Northern piety sanctions slavery. It is the doctrine of expediency, so prevalent and corrupting in the American Church, which has deceived you into the belief, that a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Penelope's web. Carpenters and bricklayers have been at work for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand and wonder whether anything has really been done. One exploit in last June was, however, by no means equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the limes shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was not a creature in the house but the workmen), so he had all the leaves stripped from every tree. There they stood, poor ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Saxinghams—my Lord, at least—is by no means so sure that I shall be Templeton's heir as not to feel a doubt lest I should some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place. Lord Saxingham is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other I have an equivocal amphibious kind of place in London society, which I don't like; on one side I am a patrician connection, whom the parvenu branches always incline lovingly to—and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet, whom the noble relations ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... give an answer on the basis proposed to us by the British then it would not have been necessary for the people to come together at Vereeniging. But in matter of fact we have come here with a proposal, which, rightly understood, is nearly equivocal to the Middelburg proposal, and which meets the wishes of the English Government as ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... the Feng Yao bridge, Hsiao Hung makes known sentimental matters in equivocal language. In the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, Tai-y gives, while under the effects of the spring lassitude, expression to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a weak spot in Hooker's character than the odd pride he took in Mr. Lincoln's somewhat equivocal letter to him at the time of his appointment, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... jealous, excite his Canadian prejudices, and prevent him from dealing with me frankly, or adopting my views when he can help it."[477] He elsewhere complains that Vaudreuil gave to both him and Levis orders couched in such equivocal terms that he could throw the blame on them in case of reverse.[478] Montcalm liked the militia no better than the Governor liked the regulars. "I have used them with good effect, though not in places exposed to the enemy's fire. They know neither discipline nor subordination, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... expression of opinion from him, but were invited to come again in the evening; they did so, and were then much surprised to meet all the members of the cabinet except Mr. Seward. An outspoken discussion ensued, in which Mr. Chase found his position embarrassing, if not equivocal. On the following morning, he, with other members of the cabinet, came again for further talk with the President; in his hand he held a written resignation of his office. He "tendered" it, yet "did not advance to deliver it," whereupon the President ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... furnish excuses for reasonable fears. Why was the Spaniard, so superfluously punctilious at times, now heedless of common propriety in not accompanying to the side his departing guest? Did indisposition forbid? Indisposition had not forbidden more irksome exertion that day. His last equivocal demeanor recurred. He had risen to his feet, grasped his guest's hand, motioned toward his hat; then, in an instant, all was eclipsed in sinister muteness and gloom. Did this imply one brief, repentant relenting at the final ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... progress in civilization, Quetelet gives statistics, more or less reliable, from every nation of Northern Europe, showing a gain of ten to twenty-five per cent, during the last century. Where the tables are most carefully prepared, the result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva, where accurate registers have been kept for three hundred years, it seems that from 1560 to 1600 the average lifetime of the citizens was twenty-one years and two months; in the next century, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... together. Don't you see that she had a lover, and that he was about her in London and other places? Stop! Fact 10.—Those two were married for years, and had no child but this equivocal one; and now four years and a half have passed, during all which time they have had none, and the young parson has ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to be punished as allies of Perseus. Acting on secret orders from the senate, Paullus in one day gave up seventy townships in Epirus to plunder, and sold the inhabitants, 150,000 in number, into slavery. The Aetolians lost Amphipolis, and the Acarnanians Leucas, on account of their equivocal behaviour; whereas the Athenians, who continued to play the part of the begging poet in their own Aristophanes, not only obtained a gift of Delos and Lemnos, but were not ashamed even to petition for the deserted site of Haliartus, which was assigned ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... all your Duchy two hearts more faithful to Babbiano," was the equivocal reply. "It was on the matter of this very peril that threatens you that ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... friendship for Keats, I think the points you mention look equivocal; but Hunt was a many-laboured and much belaboured man, and as much allowance as may be made on this score is perhaps due to him—no more than that much. His own powers stand high in various ways—poetically higher perhaps than is I at present admitted, despite his detestable flutter and airiness ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... with the morning—when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch—I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... less equivocal, Lydia, if you added that the money is to build baths in our Shelter ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... for me," she said, casting Crossman a look whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black Dawn'—n'est-ce-pas? Though I have heard him call me in the night—by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... made a speech to the men, in which be reminded them of the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such favourable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a successful issue to their enterprize, which were now every day becoming plainer and less equivocal. He besought them to be exceedingly watchful during the night, as they well knew that in the first article of the instructions which he had given to all the three ships before leaving the Canaries, they were enjoined, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... even to Mrs. Huntington, whom he felt he could trust, partly because he had reason to know that the mother had favored the suit of his brother whom Helen had rejected in India, and partly because at present of his own equivocal situation. But to Helen herself he felt that he might, indeed that he must reveal the important truth, and that very evening as they sat together in one of the spacious apartments of the mission house, he took her hand within his own, and asked her if he might confide in her as he ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Such a fresh, strawberry and cream complexion under a plenteous harvest of flaxen hair would not be associated in America with anyone very serious. There she would have been thought arrayed by Nature as a tearing blonde, suitable for the equivocal light stage, or as a frivolous artist's model, or as promenade girl in a suit and cloak house. But in Fraeulein the extraordinary combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness daily worked ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... must be remembered that "day" and "night" in those regions are very equivocal terms). There are, besides, a cooking-apparatus, of which the fire is made in spirit or tallow lamps, one or two guns, a pick and shovel, instruments for observation, pannikins, spoons, and a little magazine of such necessaries, with the extra clothing of the party. Then the provision, the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... half like the equivocal office which my friend Mark had prepared for me. If family squabbles were to arise, I had no fancy to mix in them; and I did not want a collision with Mr. Larkin either; and, on the whole, notwithstanding his modesty, I thought Wylder very well able to take care of himself. There ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... believer in the L10,000 dot, he could not, of course, fully appreciate the moral beauty of Mr. Blandy's insistence on the unprofitableness of deceit; but, taxed with being a married man, "As I have a soul to be saved," swore he, "I am not, nor ever was!" The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lordship, as ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound, she swept lightly round and left him alone. He saw her form get smaller and smaller along the damp belt of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... prize boldly about, plunging Marianne into the ranks of vulgar mistresses, and had not the mad woman's superior intelligence, will, and even her disgust, ruled at once over this first lover and the equivocal surroundings into which he had thrust her, she would have ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Uncle Johnston's sense of waggery keeping him from telling his friend of the gray's last exploit at Hartree Mill, or her leaping over the "best man" at Thriepland, my father was the last to hear of this equivocal glory of "the minister's meer." Indeed, it was whispered she had once won a whip at Lanark races. They still tell of his feats on this fine creature, one of which he himself never alluded to without a feeling of shame. He had an engagement to preach ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city library of Prague, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret, 'Is His Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (sic) he will go to Dux, too; and he may ask ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... when Sneak mentioned a few cases of equivocal courage as an offset to Boone's compliments, "blast me, if I haven't killed more Indians than any of you, since I have been ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... is of a nature altogether equivocal and ambiguous, or, rather, it must appear so to those who believe the hypothetical order of their own ideas to be the real order of things, and who see nothing in the infinite chain of existences but a few apparent points to which they will ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... occasionally find expression in its pages, and he even introduces himself under the imperfect anagram of Philisides, and shadows forth his friendship with the French humanist Languet. More than this it would be rash to assert, and Greville did his friend an equivocal service when he sought to find a deep philosophy underlying the rather formal characters of the romance[148]. These characters, as we have seen, are for the most part essentially courtly; the pastoral guise is a mere ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... led the way along a dark passage and down a flight of stone steps into a cellar fitted up as a drinking room. There was another low-toned consultation before we were admitted. I surmised that Balmerino stood sponsor for me, and though I was a little disturbed at my equivocal position, yet I was strangely glad to be where I was. For here was a promise of adventure to stimulate a jaded appetite. I assured myself that at least I should ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... consecrated locks, Our safety still should be my only thought: Uplift thy soul above this weak despair; Desponding doubts but hasten on our peril. Apollo pledg'd to us his sacred word, That in his sister's' holy fane for thee Were comfort, aid, and glad return prepar'd. The words of Heaven are not equivocal, As in despair the poor oppress'd ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Berkshire, a man of equivocal private character. In the heat of the civil wars he had been committed to the Tower for a short time by the Parliament, for speaking too openly against the person of the King. When he attempted to speak against the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Fathers, in defence of lies. Nor does there seem to me other difference when I consider their respective grounds, except that the ancients frankly called those modes of speech lies, and the more recent writers, not a few of them, call them amphibological, equivocal, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... into a roll of that sudden, graceful, but somewhat equivocal laughter that was habitual with ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... the meal, gritting his teeth, and crushing down the rage that bade fair to suffocate him. He disdained to challenge Jack's equivocal tale. The laughter of one's friends is hard enough to bear sometimes, still, it may be borne with a grin; but when it rings with scarcely concealed hate it stings ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... was no more in the thought of the Prince than it could have been in Celio's performance. He was young, and as chivalric an admirer of the Princess as he was loyal in his devotion to her husband. Had he discovered anything equivocal in her conduct, wild horses could not have torn her secret from him, and it is possible that the Prince counted ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... will be quite likely, when B., C., and D. erect factories in his immediate neighborhood, to hold his peace when sundry varieties of swill milk are offered at his door, instead of speaking out an equivocal protest against the insult thus offered to his professional pride ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... I attended a lady in labor, who was afterwards quite ill and feverish; but at the time I did not consider her case a decided puerperal fever. On the 8th I attended one who did well. On the 12th, one who was seriously sick. This was also an equivocal case, apparently arising from constipation and irritation of the rectum. These women were ten miles apart and five from my residence. On 15th and 2Oth two who did well. On 25th I attended another. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the emblem—to the accompaniment of a significant clash of arms and roll of drums from the mustered garrison outside—in the normal manner; and after a solemn warning from the commandant that vengeance would follow any act of aggression, the council broke up. To the forest leader's equivocal announcement that he would bring all of his wives and children in a few days to shake hands with their English fathers, Gladwyn deigned ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... kind of delirious enchantment, to all her elevated and eloquent admirer uttered; and in return for his praises of her charms, and his equivocal replies in respect to his designs towards her, she gave to him her most undisguised thoughts, and her ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... P. has no doubtful standing in the Presbyterian church with which he is connected. He has been regarded as one of its brightest ornaments.[A] To drive the slaveholding church and its members from the equivocal, the neutral position, from which they had so long successfully defended slavery—to compel them to elevate their practice to an even height with their avowed principles, or to degrade their principles to the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... pursue a course so equivocal without arousing suspicion. In after years many who had been committed to it became ashamed of their actions, and loudly proclaimed that they had really been devoted to the Union; to which it was sufficient to answer that if this had been the case, and if they ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Scot flushed, somewhat angrily, at this equivocal compliment. "What Time hath done with me I cannot tell," said he, with less than his wonted ease, "save that nothing Time can do can avail to quench old feelings. This is the first liberty that I have had since we landed. I have used it to ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... equivocal position it would have been natural either to have abandoned the enterprise at the termination of my own engagement, or to have placed a Mahommedan officer in charge of the new provinces. Instead of this, His Highness adhered most strictly to his original determination, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... membranes of their fins thickly covered with scales; creatures bristling over with thorns; others glistening in an enamelled coat, as if beautifully japanned; the tail in every instance among the less equivocal shapes formed not equally, as in existing fish, on each side the central vertebral column, but chiefly on the lower side—the column sending out its diminished vertebrae to the extreme termination of the fin. All the forms testify of a remote ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Fyne and the dog. Then I adjusted it to the matter in hand which was neither more nor less than an elopement. Yes, by Jove! It was something very much like an elopement—with certain unusual characteristics of its own which made it in a sense equivocal. With amused wonder I remembered that my sagacity was requisitioned in such a connection. How unexpected! But we never know what tests our gifts may be put to. Sagacity dictated caution first of all. I believe caution to be the first duty of ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... are being cheated, and are going to be: at the end you know still more certainly that you have been. You have had nothing of the "Life" but a great deal round rather than about the birth, and a few equivocal, merely glanced at, and utterly unco-ordinated incidents later. If you have had any "opinions" they have been chiefly those of Mr. Tristram Shandy's father and other members of his family, or those of its friends and circle, or of those shadowy personages ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... invitations to an Irish nobleman was rather equivocal. He wrote, "I hope, my lord, if you ever come within a mile of my house you ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... serving under Prince Eugene. Sitting at table once in company with a prince of Wurtemberg, the latter gave a fillip to a glass of wine, so as to make some of it fly in Oglethorpe's face. The manner in which it was done was somewhat equivocal. How was it to be taken by the stripling officer? If seriously, he must challenge the prince; but in so doing he might fix on himself the character of a drawcansir. If passed over without notice, he might be charged with cowardice. His mind was made up in an instant. "Prince," said ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... a peace, for which the door stood open in the repeal of the Orders in Council. Rufus King insisted that the name all had in mind be given in the resolution; although, he admitted, no one knew whether Clinton would pursue a policy different from Madison's. No man in the country, he said, was more equivocal in his character. He had disapproved the embargo and then receded from his opinion; and, to restore himself to the confidence of his party, he had published a tirade against the Federalists. "If we succeed in promoting his election," thundered ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was impersonally suave and tender, with its gentle haze and autumn premonitions. Mr. Leicester said a few equivocal words, while Mrs. Edwards gazed helplessly into the grave. The others fell back behind the minister. Between her and her uncle down there something remained unexplained, and her ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... marked with inverted commas, however equivocal in their meaning, are expressed so in Churchill's Collection, from which this article is adopted. The meaning of Herrera probably is, "That having ordered the nature of their crime, and the sentence which it merited to be proclaimed, he pardoned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Squire Vane doesn't exist, and that he's only an allegory for a weathercock." Something a shade too cool about this sally drew the lawyer's red brows together. He looked across the table and met the poet's somewhat equivocal smile. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... he entered, with an equivocal eye, for he knew well now what was coming. Only a few days before he had predicted an ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Saunt more than once and that if he were interested in my work I should be happy to show him what I had done. Mr. Geoffrey Dawling, the person thus introduced to me, stumbled into my room with awkward movements and equivocal sounds—a long, lean, confused, confusing young man, with a bad complexion and large, protrusive teeth. He bore in its most indelible pressure the postmark, as it were, of Oxford, and as soon as he opened his ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... passages of the Sagas is not dulness or want of sensibility; it is a consistent mode of procedure, to allow things to make their own impression; and the result is attained by following the order of impressions in the mind of one of the actors, or of a looker-on. "To see things as they are" is an equivocal formula, which may be claimed as their own privilege by many schools and many different degrees of intelligence. "To see things as they become," the rule of Lessing's Laocoon, has not found so many adherents, but it is more certain in meaning, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... young couple when they return from their bridal trip. Two cards at each place will be sufficient in this case. When invited to the church only, leave or send cards to the bride's parents and the young couple. As the card to the church only, is rather an equivocal compliment, mailing cards in this case could be excused. Leave personally cards for the patroness who has asked you to a subscription ball, within a week after the invitation. In cases of death, leave cards within a fortnight. In answer to letters of condolence, it is best to send your ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... people acknowledging the Spanish. A suit was instituted for a divorce, and awarded by a Spanish tribunal. There was probably little ceremony or strictness of legal proceeding in the matter, as all government and law was equivocal, and of but little force just at that time in the country. It was after this that Jackson came and married her, in the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... needs, in all cases, proceed from a living parent is nowhere expressly maintained by Harvey, though such an opinion may be thought to be implied in one or two passages; while, on the other hand, he does, more than once, use language which is consistent only with a full belief in spontaneous or equivocal generation.[3] In fact, the main concern of Harvey's wonderful little treatise is not with generation, in the physiological sense, at all, but with development; and his great object is the establishment of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... contempt for the civil authorities by simulating their inability to elucidate to the native petty governors the true intent and meaning of the order. At the same time, the Archbishop of Manila issued instructions on the subject to his subordinates in very equivocal language. The native local authorities then petitioned the Civil Governor of Manila to make the matter clear to them. The Civil Governor forthwith referred the matter back to the Director-General of Civil Administration. This functionary, in a new circular dated November 4, confirmed his previous ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... assemblage around me. With some difficulty I was permitted to reach my much admired steed, and with a cheer, which was sustained and caught up by every denizen of the village as I passed through, I rode on my way, not a little amused at my equivocal popularity. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... de Berri. At a dinner at Baron Rothschild's, Careme, the Delmonico of those times, surprised her with a column of ingenious confectionery architecture on which was inscribed her name spun in sugar. It was a more equivocal compliment when Walter Scott christened two pet donkeys ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... young friend to one of the most amiable and frivolous duchesses of the day, a lady whose adventures caused an explosion five years later. Just then, however, she was in the full blaze of her glory; she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man. Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are left in peace. This woman was, in fact, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... was too much preoccupied in reflection to notice the equivocal nature of this tribute, and, after a few moments' silence, said, ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... Old Moze was a Missouri hound that Jones had procured in that State of uncertain qualities; and the dog had grown old over coon-trails. He was black and white, grizzled and battlescarred; and if ever a dog had an evil eye, Moze was that dog. He had a way of wagging his tail—an indeterminate, equivocal sort of wag, as if he realized his ugliness and knew he stood little chance of making friends, but was still hopeful and willing. As for me, the first time he manifested this evidence of a good heart under a rough ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... with Masinissa, and not contented with the humiliation of their old rival, aimed at her absolute ruin, though she had broken no treaties. The Carthaginians, broken-hearted, sent embassy after embassy, imploring the Senate to preserve peace, to whom the senators gave equivocal answers. The situation of Carthage was hopeless and miserable—stripped by Masinissa of the rich towns of Emporia, and on the eve of another conflict with ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... transported? No road, no track behind me, but a wall, Impenetrable, insurmountable, Rises obedient to the spells I muttered And meant not—my own doings tower behind me. [Pauses and remains in deep thought. A punishable man I seem, the guilt, Try what I will, I cannot roll off from me; The equivocal demeanor of my life Bears witness on my prosecutor's party. And even my purest acts from purest motives Suspicion poisons with malicious gloss. Were I that thing for which I pass, that traitor, A goodly outside I had sure reserved, Had drawn the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... their way. The subterraneous and half-concealed passage in the rock, or rather shale, on which the castle stands, always under the ban of some vague and silly apprehension, had been reported of late as manifesting more than equivocal symptoms of supernatural possession. Dick Empson, or long-nebbed Dick, a sort of shrewd, half-witted incarnation, it might be, of the goblin or elfin species, a runner of errands from the abbey of Furness to the castle, and a being ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... perpetuate babyhood, in the vain hope of preferring innocence: nor could I shelter myself by saying how little I understood of the dialect it was written in, as the action was nothing less than equivocal; and in the burletta which was tacked to it by way of farce, I saw the soprano fingers who played the women's parts, and who see more of the world than these friars, blush for shame, two or three times, while the company, most of them grave ecclesiastics, applauded ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... In this way girls who have themselves had experience of the marriage bed are said to detect the virgin. The virgin's eyes are cast down and almost motionless, while she who has known a man has eyes that are bright and quick. But this sign is equivocal, says Schurig, for girls are different, and can simulate the modesty they do not feel. Yet this indication also rests on a fundamentally sound psychological basis. (See "The Evolution of Modesty," in the first ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which overcame, were of the same nature. The pleasure of doing good to others and of bodily self-indulgence, the pleasures of intellect and the pleasures of sense, are so different:—Why then should they be called by a common name? Or, if the equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral ...
— Philebus • Plato
... seems to me time to renounce those timid and restrictive definitions and to free our mind of them. A true classic, as I should like to hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought, observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... superfluous to say that no disrespect is intended to the Author of the "Ring and the Book"; but it would be difficult to find another poet who has had so many of the equivocal ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... did I ever pretend to be, a statesman; and that character is so tainted and so equivocal in our day, that I am not sure that a pure and honourable ambition would aspire to it. I have not enjoyed for thirty years, like these noble Lords, the honours and emoluments of office. I have not set my sails to every passing breeze. I am a plain and simple ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions, and does not lead prosperity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... borrow the just expressions of M. Philarete Chasles, "at the moment even of his embarkation men did not believe in his promises, they were suspicious of his exaggerations, and dreaded the results of an expedition directed by a man so fool-hardy, and of a morality so equivocal." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... so detained the declaration of war is said to have a retroactive effect, and to render it liable to be considered as the property of enemies taken in time of war. The property is seized provisionally—an act hostile enough in the mere execution, but equivocal as to its effects, and liable to be varied by subsequent events, and by the conduct of the government, the property of whose subjects is so detained. Where the first seizure is equivocal, if the matter in dispute terminates in reconciliation, the seizure is converted into a mere civil ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... when he was roused from his slumbers by the entrance of the proprietor of the barn, a sturdy, good-humoured peasant, more surprised, than pleased, to find upon his premises a stranger of Paco's equivocal appearance. The muleteer's exterior was certainly not calculated to give a high opinion of his respectability. His uniform jacket of dark green cloth was soiled and torn; his boina, which had served him for a nightcap during his imprisonment, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... monarque, Louis XIV., who gave him palaces, money, and all that he required, and, moreover, gave him a fine army and fleet to go to Ireland and recover his kingdom, bidding him farewell with this equivocal sentence, "That the best thing he, Louis, could wish to him was, never to see his face again." They may further recollect, that King James and King William met at the battle of the Boyne, in which the former was defeated, and then went back ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... arose, the maiden crept to his side, but in an instant, with a hideous crash, she was borne away by the rude grasp of the tempest. He awoke, with a mortifying discovery that the crash had been of a somewhat less equivocal nature. A cabinet of costly workmanship lay overturned at his feet, and a rich vase, breathing odours, strewed the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... quarters in the box—the hatchways at that time having been constantly open for many months previous. Add to these considerations that of the scene of bloodshed and terror so lately witnessed by my friend; his confinement, privations, and narrow escapes from death, together with the frail and equivocal tenure by which he still existed—circumstances all so well calculated to prostrate every energy of mind—and the reader will be easily brought, as I have been, to regard his apparent falling off in friendship and in faith with sentiments rather ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... example, Lady Emily remained as insupportably natural and sincere as she was beautiful and piquante. At six years old she had declared her intention of marrying her cousin Edward Douglas, and at eighteen her words were little less equivocal. Lord Courtland, who never disturbed himself about anything, was rather diverted with this juvenile attachment; and Lady Juliana, who cared little for her son, and still less for her niece, only wondered how people could be such fools as ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... taste for worldly pleasures is greater than it should be. She is expected by her cousin Lescaut, a Garde du Corps, and while he is looking for her luggage, the young beauty is accosted by Guillot-Marfontaine, an old roue, and rich farmer, who annoys her with his equivocal speeches, and offers her a seat in his carriage. He is quickly driven away by Lescaut on his return; the young man is however enticed away by his comrades to play a game of cards, for which purpose he leaves ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... your hasty departure when I add that I know all about the little house in Versailles, that my knowledge is shared by the chief of the Parisian police and the minister of war. If you annoy Miss Harrigan with your equivocal attentions...." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... a numerous company was assembled in her salon, one of her young lady friends picked up a couple of letters which had been dropped on the floor, bearing no signatures, but in a feminine handwriting, and of a somewhat equivocal style. They were read, and a thousand jokes perpetrated concerning them, and some effort made to discover the author. They were from a woman who wrote tenderly to some one whom she did not hate. Madame de Montbazon pretended ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... vocation, advocate, irrevocable, vociferous, provoke, revoke, evoke, convoke; (2) vocable, vocabulary, avocation, equivocal, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the chief luxury of living consisted in dealing death about vigorously. Life indeed was loved, and the beauty and pathos of it were felt exquisitely; but its beauty and pathos lay in the divineness of its model and in its own fragility. No one paid it the equivocal compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force. Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself, which life might illustrate and to which it might fitly be sacrificed. Nothing ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... indirectly, but harder, more unjust to him, to pause without dissipating the cloud we have unexpectedly cast over him. The temptation to scrutinize his conduct and bearing is irresistible. Is it not better to lay bare all the facts, than to leave matters in the equivocal condition ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... That the Governor was plotting no treason is sufficiently obvious from the context of his letters: At the same time, with the expansiveness of his character, when he was dealing with one whom he deemed has close and trusty friend, he occasionally made use of expressions which might be made to seem equivocal. This was still more the case with poor Escovedo. Devoted to his master, and depending most implicitly upon the honor of Perez, he indulged in language which might be tortured into a still more suspicious shape when the devilish arts ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... outset, the presence which in itself he conceived to be a challenge was to demonstrate itself for this in no equivocal terms. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was considered to be haunted—that I had a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a reputation—that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. "Sir," said Mr. J——, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... personally known to her," he repeated. "Now I should like to remind you of young Charles Rambert's equivocal behaviour in the course of the evening that preceded the crime. It struck President Bonnet and shocked the priest. I also recall his hereditary antecedents, his mothers insanity, and finally——" Juve broke off ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... of mind; for in that case he would have sunk on the earth or started backward; whereas he kept his ground and smiled at Jacob, who nodded his head up and down, and said, "Hoich, Zavy!" in a painfully equivocal manner. David's heart was beating audibly, and if he had had any lips they would have been pale; but his mental activity, instead of being paralysed, was stimulated. While he was inwardly praying (he always prayed ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... for it, that nothing Mr. John Effingham can do will be thought mal a propos by Mrs. Jared Jarvis. His position in society is too well established, and hers is too equivocal, to leave any ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of fear had passed, and she seemed less concerned about the equivocal situation than a girl should be; at least, this is the way Tom's thought was shaping itself. He tried to imagine Ardea in Nan's place, but the thing was baldly unimaginable. A daughter of the Dabneys would never run and cower and beg to be hidden at the possible cost of her good ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... his chin thoughtful. "Now I fully understand. And, as you suggest, there has been for some time past something—er—equivocal about your position here. However, just at this moment I have hardly time to—— By Jove!" Here he breaks off and glances at the clock. "Two-fifteen, and a general council of our attorneys called for half-past in the directors' room! Someone else must attend to Miss Verona's ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... repeat—that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with (an equivocal[1]) success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... that Mrs D—— looks to in the present alliance. Though at the age of forty, she is, I assure you, very far from being cold and insensible; her fire may be covered with ashes, but it is not extinguished.—Don't be deceived, my dear, by that prudish and sanctified air.—Warm devotions is no equivocal mark of warm passions; besides, I know it is a fact, (of which I have proofs in hand, which I will tell you by word of mouth) that our learned and holy prude is exceedingly disposed to use the means, supposed ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... directions for it are as follow:—"Scene—An ale-house room.—Several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco; Tony at the head of the table, &c., discovered." Never perhaps, in any previous representation, was the mise en scene so perfect. It drew three rounds of applause. A very equivocal compliment to ourselves it may be; but such jolly-looking "shabby fellows" as sat round the table at which our Tony presided, were never furnished by the supernumeraries of Drury or Covent-garden. They were as classical, in their way, as Macready's Roman mob. Then there was no make-believe puffing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was considered to be haunted, that I had a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a reputation; that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. "Sir," said Mr. J——, with great courtesy, "the house is at your service, for as short or as long a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Victoria, from Galindo, etc., are inserted, with the remark that the Mexican public will thus see the uniformity and decision of the whole republic in favour of order, and especially will receive in the communication of his Excellency, General Santa Anna, an equivocal proof of this unity of sentiment, notwithstanding the assurances given by the rebels to the people, that Santa Anna would either assist them, or would take no part at all in the affair. It must be confessed, however, that his Excellency ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... had had a considerable influence on the king's thinking. His conduct toward France became from this time, more and more equivocal, and it was this that decided Napoleon to write to him personally, without going through the usual diplomatic channels, to ask "Are you for me or against me?" This was the tenor of the letter which I had given the king. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... case is that the people will not elect them, and the people are perfectly in the right, for at the glorious epoch when, without bloodshed, the burghers and plebeians upset the despotism of Bern, the conduct of the noblesse was very equivocal. La Harpe was the leader of this beneficial Revolution, for which, however, the public mind was fully prepared and disposed; and La Harpe was a virtuous, ardent ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... therefore, to say whether the strange lady (Mme. Willemsens, as she styled herself) belonged to the upper middle or higher classes, or to an equivocal, unclassified feminine species. Her plain dress gave rise to the most contradictory suppositions, but her manners might be held to confirm those favorable to her. She had not lived at Saint-Cyr, moreover, for very long before her reserve excited the ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... of observation may be set aside; first, because the so-called facts are in their own nature equivocal; secondly, because they stand on insufficient authority; thirdly, because they are not sufficiently numerous. But, in this case, the disease is one of striking and well-marked character; the witnesses are experts, interested in denying and disbelieving the facts; the number of consecutive cases ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Tallien, the son of the Marquis of Bercy's butler and ci-devant lawyer's clerk, who had blossomed into "a Terrorist of the first water." He obtained her release and she became his mistress. She took advantage of the equivocal but influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... day something occurred that referred to business matters in Prince Edward Island; and becoming annoyed at Plaisted's equivocal answers, Mr. Sherwood took the copy of the letter Dexie had brought home with her, and laid it before his eyes. Plaisted read it with a puzzled brow ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... vehicle of character. The action of a man pulling his hat over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generally speaking, may mean anything or nothing; but in the circumstances in which Macduff is placed, it is neither insignificant nor equivocal. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His countenance had a strong masculine cast; not properly human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or the domestic boar; something equivocal and wheedling, something greedy, brutal and dangerous. The upper lip was inordinately full, as though swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were quaintly and almost comically ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... in Germany—though, in view of the fact that it was conditional on the abandonment of the greater part of the rest of the Treaty, it could hardly be regarded as a serious one.[143] But the German Delegation would have done better if they had stated in less equivocal language how far they felt able ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... the manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Captain Larimore in 1704 played an equivocal part in the case of Quelch and his pirate crew (see no. 104, post), assisting their attempts to escape, but his testimony as to prize-money is to be valued, as that of an experienced shipmaster and privateer. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... abundance, of all nature—not excluding our own. They tried to explain how it came about that the sanest man is liable, under the stress of desire, to acts of which he vainly repents at leisure. I don't suppose they meant to justify those acts. If they had, they would have given a less equivocal position to Priapus in their celestial hierarchy. Priapus, you know, was not wholly divine. I think they only wanted to make it quite clear that we cannot drive out nature with a fork. I wish we could," ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas |
