"Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... woman to read the unspoken thought! Courtenay and Christobal and Tollemache need not have striven to couch their warnings in ambiguous words. Elsie could have told them all that was left unsaid at breakfast. The ship had fought her own enemies; now the human beings she had saved must defend themselves from a foe against ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... telling 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
... way." Then, still with her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride of it in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move—she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scattered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscure and ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whom it was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look. "But I've walked so much out of my way with you only just to show you that—that"—with this she paused; it was not after all so easy ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Zeno returned ambiguous answers, which seemed to leave the question as to the legitimacy of Odovacar's rule an open one. The Senate were sharply rebuked for having acquiesced in the dethronement of Nepos, and a previous Emperor who had been sent to them from the East.[50] ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... propriety, nay, the 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 ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... sent for his shield back again. Some time afterwards, he came to see me, and asked why I had returned it. 'You sent for it by your nazir,' I said. 'My nazir,' he replied, (although the man was present and looking on with an ambiguous smile,) 'is a rogue and a storyteller; give me a hundred toumans and I will let you have the shield, which indeed is yours. I begged you to accept it as well as every thing else I may possess.' And so ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale; But with his friends, when nightly mists arise To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff (Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home In ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... mists arise, To Juniper's Magpie or Town-Hall[1] repairs: Where, mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... kept to ambiguous speech. "Wouldn't it be better to give up and take your—misfortune, and begin again? Professor Ward and I will do all we can to ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... agriculture, it almost necessarily follows that the practice of distributing the Filipino laborers, as allowed by the aforesaid laws of the Indies, under all circumstances, is the only alternate left. Even if, against the adoption of this measure, it should be attempted to urge the ambiguous sense of the concluding part of the second clause, it would be easy to comprehend its true intent and meaning, by referring to Law 1, Title 13, Book 5, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... does this gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate! The myrtle (ensign of supreme command, Consign'd to Venus by Melissa's hand), Not less capricious than a reigning fair, Oft favours, oft rejects a lover's prayer. In myrtle shades oft sings the ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... good sailer and solid in its timbers; it could not fear gales of wind, and it ought, according to the calculation of D'Artagnan, to have either returned to Brest, or come back to the mouth of the Loire. Such were the news, ambiguous, it is true, but in some degree reassuring to him personally, which D'Artagnan brought to Louis XIV., when the king, followed by all the court, returned ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... obstacle in the way of his daughter's silly romance, even to the extent, it is said, of locking her in her room, and closing his door in the face of her lover. "If your reputation, my lord, were equal to your rank," he told him in no ambiguous terms; "and if your fortune matched your family, I should have naught to say against your suit. But as it is, I tell you frankly, I would rather see my girl dead than wedded ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... rather she had been offended fifty times than have had such practices with my poor little girl!" said Major Delavie. "No wonder the proposals struck me as strange and ambiguous. Whose ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Beware, your Majesty!" which had been his chief task hitherto, a more and more questionable thing; and suggests to him at last: "Plainly ask her Hungarian Majesty, What is your meaning by those Bohemian Campings?" "Pshaw," answers Friedrich: "Nothing but some ambiguous answer, perhaps with insult in it!"—nevertheless thinks better; and determines to do so. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally committing ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... behavior; she was so sensible, so clever in everything. In the most delicate situation she could so well maintain a woman's dignity, while side by side she displayed a maiden's innocence. When his comrades were at the table, Topandy strove always by ambiguous jokes, delivered in his cynical, good humor, to bring a blush to the cheeks of the girls, who were obliged to do the honors at table; on such occasions Czipra noisily called him to order, while Melanie cleverly and spiritedly avoided the arrow-point of the jest, without opposing to it any ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... France; Lord Raglan and 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 Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... with the Parliament, to bridle the power of Lewis, to efface the shame of the late ignominious war, to restore England to the same place in Europe which she had occupied under Cromwell, became more and more urgent in his representations. Arlington's replies were for some time couched in cold and ambiguous terms. But the events which followed the meeting of Parliament, in the autumn of 1667, appear to have produced an entire change in his views. The discontent of the nation was deep and general. The administration ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... usually ambiguous and it is rash to make general assertions as to its meanings. But phrases which commence with 'this' or 'that' are usually demonstrative, whereas phrases which commence with 'the' or 'a' are often descriptive. In studying the theory of propositional ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... "The savage here the settler slew," is ambiguous. Savage may be the subject, following the regular order of subject; or settler may be the subject, the order being inverted. In Latin, distinct forms would be used, and it would not matter which one ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... neither honesty, conscientiousness, nor the careful and industrious habits which distinguished the servants of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers; that domestics no longer know their place; that the introduction of cheap silks and cottons, and, still more recently, those ambiguous "materials" and tweeds, have removed the landmarks between the mistress and her maid, between the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... naming. Freedom of the Press, in the case of these Journals, was never violated, nor was any need for violating it. General Freedom of the Press Friedrich did not grant, in any quite Official or steady way; but in practice, under him, it always had a kind of real existence, though a fluctuating, ambiguous one. And we have to note, through Friedrich's whole reign, a marked disinclination to concern himself with Censorship, or the shackling of men's poor tongues and pens; nothing but some officious report that there was offence to Foreign Courts, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reception that she was not wanted back again. She had told her father that she was going to transfer herself to the Monograms for a time, not mentioning the proposed duration of her visit, and Mr Longestaffe, in his ambiguous way, had expressed himself glad that she was leaving the Melmottes. She did not think that she could go back to Grosvenor Square, although Mr Brehgert desired it. Since the expression of Mr Brehgert's wishes ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... receive all 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 bill, in explicit ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... was not 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
... relations of labor and capital" has not hitherto been very fruitful. It has been confused by ambiguous definitions, and it has been based upon assumptions about the rights and duties of social classes which are, to say the least, open to serious question as regards their truth and justice. If, then, we correct and limit the definitions, and if we test the assumptions, we shall find out ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... 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; ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... action, together with a certain intensity of expression which would naturally come to a young woman who had to make her way in the world, not only for herself, but for her young brother, and a seriousness born of some doubts, some anxieties, and some ambiguous hopes, had all entirely disappeared as if they had been morning mists rolling away from a summer landscape. Under the rays of a sun of fortune, shining, indeed, but mildly, she had ripened into a physical beauty which was her ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... then to speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling with his own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so wonderful was his memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damasked chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over the landscapes brooded a wan spirit of evil that was very troubling. He loved the mysterious ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... time against both the Conservative Junkers and the National Liberal trust magnates on the one side and the radical Socialists on the other. Neither side could claim him; neither could interpret his ambiguous utterances as support of its policies, and between the antagonisms of the two he maintained his position until at last he was overthrown by the attack of Erzberger, leader of the more liberal wing of the Catholic party, the traditional holders ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... contrives to give an abstracted and somewhat perplexing view of things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether truth is elicited in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know; but I confess the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy to be very amusing to my plain understanding. For light summer reading, it is like walking in a garden full of traps and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes, and there are some very bold ones in the Essays, which would ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... before the hour appointed, Apollo Hall was filled. Ministers had preached and editors written their ambiguous views on the justice of the McFarland verdict. Reporters had interviewed the murderer and described (probably from imagination) the conduct and statements of Mrs. Richardson. John Graham had informed ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander's, Dr. Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account, withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to diminish ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Love is; and is not thy name Love? Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art; Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above; And simply, as some gage of flower or glove, Stakes with a smile ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... speculation, on the unemblazoned name which but a day before had seemed slipped out of date,—obsolete as that of an actor who figures no more in play-bills. Unquestionably the sensation excited was due, in much, to the "ambiguous voices" which Colonel Morley had disseminated throughout the genial atmosphere of club-rooms. "Arrived in London for the season!"—he, the orator, once so famous, long so forgotten, who had been out of the London world for the space of more than half a generation. "Why now? ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves specially by their warlike instincts; mature states in literature; old and decaying ones in industry and commerce. Davenant very happily remarks, that the development of commerce among a people has an ambiguous value. It, indeed, increases wealth, but, at the same time, it may introduce luxury, covetousness and fraud, destroy virtue, do away with simplicity of manners and customs, and then it inevitably ends in internal or external slavery. (Works II, 275.) The simplicity of the patriarchal state, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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. And even more. The fact that ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... "Lucid, but ambiguous; pathetic, but amusing; poetical, but comprehensive; prosaical, but full of emphasis. That's my nature. Plain-dealing, too, is my nature, and I adore the same quality in others; most especially in those I could wish ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... commented upon. "Our title to the country of the Oregon," said he, "is clear and unquestionable." The text of the Baltimore platform read, "Our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable." Did President Polk mean to be ambiguous at this point? Had he any reason to swerve from the strict letter of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... present article I shall act upon this suggestion. In one province more especially, relating to the external evidences for the Gospels, silence occupies a prominent place. This mysterious oracle will be interrogated, and, unless I am mistaken, the response elicited will not be at all ambiguous. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... sort are almost in all cases of ambiguous interpretation. From the context of this passage it is clear, that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words, words tending to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that shew in the man who speaks "a will most ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... ambiguous term. When the Chamber of Notables met at the end of December, 1881, the army put forward through the Minister for War a demand for an increase of 18,000 men. This increase the European controllers refused to sanction, on the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... truth! all oracles 430 By thee are given, and what confessed more true Among the nations? That hath been thy craft, By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies. But what have been thy answers? what but dark, Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding, Which they who asked have seldom understood, And, not well understood, as good not known? Who ever, by consulting at thy shrine, Returned the wiser, or the more instruct ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... With these ambiguous words the Stadtholder moved forward, leaving the deputies covered with shame and swelling with indignation, while his countenance had speedily brightened. With more friendly gestures he now accepted the written petitions, and even listened patiently and condescendingly ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... "Tragic, but ambiguous," said he, pulling up the blind. "Look at this—a sheet from a note-book, with 'For God's sake come at once—P. T.,' scrawled upon it in pencil. Our friend, the doctor, was hard put to it when he wrote this. Come along, my dear fellow, for it's an ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... authors; but many authorities prefer to translate "to avenge our labours and sorrows for Helen's sake"—"to avenge all that we have endured in the attempt to win back Helen." Thus the evidence of this passage is ambiguous. The fairer way to seek for Homer's real view of Helen is to examine all the passages in which she occurs. The result will be something like this:—Homer sees in Helen a being of the rarest personal charm and grace ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... as can be judged, without any serious sense of loss. He spent some time in obscurity, teaching, and studying laboriously, and at length beginning to write. Michel Levy, the publisher, found him out, and opened to him a literary career, and in due time he became famous. He has had the ambiguous honour of making the Bible an object of such interest to French readers as it never was before, at the cost of teaching them to find in it a reflection of their own characteristic ways of looking at life and the world. It is not an easy thing ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... afraid of their knowing; impatient to pursue her, yet dreading to have them join in the pursuit. He offered to despatch messengers in quest of her, but the chief Knight, no longer keeping silence, reproached Manfred in bitter terms for his dark and ambiguous dealing, and demanded the cause of Isabella's first absence from the castle. Manfred, casting a stern look at Jerome, implying a command of silence, pretended that on Conrad's death he had placed her in sanctuary until he could determine how to dispose of her. Jerome, who trembled ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... empress!" exclaimed Corilla, with an ambiguous smile. "But in order properly to watch and preserve all her children and subjects, she should keep them in her own country. Take this Princess Tartaroff with you to Russia, and then she will be ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... woman only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity preached contempt for woman. It also preached abstinence, the mortification of the flesh, then so sinful, and it pointed with its ambiguous phrases to a prospective kingdom, which some interpreted as of heaven, others as of earth, and which was to bring freedom and justice to all. With these doctrines it found fertile ground in the submerged bottom of the Roman Empire. Woman, hoping, along with all the miserable, for freedom and deliverance ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... had sent over to report upon the condition of affairs. Even after Hervey's return bringing with him a favourable report, he had still the king's permission to gain. Early in 1170 he again sought Henry and this time received an ambiguous reply, which, however, he chose to interpret in his own favour. He sent back Hervey to Ireland, accompanied by Raymond Fitzgerald, surnamed Le Gros, and a score of knights with some seventy archers. These, landing in Kilkenny, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... letter to Moore (September 17, 1821) he had written to Murray (September 12): "If ever I do return to England ... I will write a poem to which English Bards, etc., shall be New Milk, in comparison. Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar." Hence the somewhat ambiguous title. The word "Avatar" is not only applied ironically to George IV. as the "Messiah of Royalty," but metaphorically to the poem, which would descend in the "Capacity of Preserver" (see Sir W. Jones, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... with the stern joy of believing that the war which then raged around them was intended to put their moral armor to the proof, and that out of the triumph of their victories were to flow honor and security to the church. Then came ambiguous qualifications, which left it questionable whether a return of the invisible powers, that had been known to be so busy in the Provinces, were not the judgment intended. It is not to be supposed that Meek himself had the clearest ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... constantly thus blurred in meaning through being used as party catchwords; and to use them with any certainty in an argument one must thus go back to their origin, and then dissect out, as it were, the ambiguous implications which have grown ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... 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 insolvency of this manufacturer. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Byron, not only moral earnestness and religious revival but the optimism and the materialism of commercial prosperity. As time went on, a severer and more intelligent criticism was brought to bear on his handiwork as a poet. It was pointed out that his constructions were loose and ambiguous, that his grammar was faulty, that his rhythm was inharmonious, and it was argued that these defects and blemishes were outward and visible signs of a lack of fineness in the man's spiritual texture; that below the sentiment and behind the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of this ambiguous speech, but sat in silence looking with contemplative eyes across the valley. Sarrion was seated a few yards away. At times he glanced through the cigarette smoke at Juanita and Marcos. Suddenly he drew in his ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... the child this was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... that language and definitions can be instruments of investigation as well as of thought, but lest, as too often happens, we should waste time over trash. There are many books to which one may apply, in the sarcastic sense, the ambiguous remark said to have been made to an unfortunate author, "I will lose no ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... burned the brighter for its dark, ambiguous background—those many questions which Prince Victor persisted in leaving unanswered. Sofia knew bad times of perplexity and depression, when the price of translation from drudge to princess seemed a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... The words were ambiguous; startlingly so, she felt; but, in hope that they would strike him otherwise, she found courage at last to raise her eyes in search of what lay in his. Nothing, or so she thought at first, beyond the glint of a natural ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are degrees of merit in subjects—in spite of the fact that to treat even one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as POSSIBLY absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely good—since with such alone is it one's theory of one's honour to be concerned—there is an ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... not to be committed rashly to improper hands. If the rhetoricians of Newmarket, who may be supposed likely to conceive in its full strength the dignity of the subject, should undertake to express it, there is danger lest they admit some phrases which, though well understood at present, may be ambiguous in another century. If posterity should read on a publick monument, that the lady carried her horse a thousand miles in a thousand hours, they may think that the statue and inscription are at variance, because one will represent the horse as carrying his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... relation who combines the functions of a lady companion and a housekeeper; but she suffered from none of the humiliations which, for the most part, weigh upon the women who are so unhappy as to be obliged to fill these ambiguous situations. Lisbeth and Valerie offered the touching spectacle of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable, that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... had been sent to him by the Elector to urge an armistice, was refreshingly plain, while the argument which accompanied it was completely unanswerable. When nevertheless the Elector continued to resort to shilly-shallying and all sorts of ambiguous tactics, Gustavus lost his patience, marched his army to the gates of Berlin, and compelled him to make his choice of party once, for all. The treaty of alliance was then signed, on the Elector's part reluctantly and with a heavy heart; for these two brothers-in-law were so vastly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... represents the fall of man from his primitive innocence, through greed and avarice, which refused to recognise the common ownership of things, and also the method by which the blind greed of human nature might be controlled and regulated. It is this ambiguous origin of the institution which explains how the Fathers could hold that private property was not natural, that it grew out of men's vicious and sinful desires, and at the same time that it was a ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... mystery? But women delight in it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by hints, suggestions, ambiguous terms, allusions, phrases that may mean anything or nothing, and then leave at the end, in obscurity, the whole matter, which could have been explained and made perfectly clear and settled on a satisfactory basis in a few short sentences. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... some messages between Tilly and the duke, and he gave always such ambiguous answers as he thought might serve to gain time; but Tilly was not to be put off with words, and drawing his army towards Saxony, sends four propositions to him to sign, and demands an immediate reply. The propositions ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... no time in making him acquainted with her wishes, and the confidence she reposed in him. He was surprised, and rejoiced at the proposal. She was urgent in the request that he might always remain her friend, and never shade that sacred name with the ambiguous claims of a lover. She made him acquainted with some difficulties which then perplexed her, and on which his experience would enable him to give the best advice, and propose the most speedy means for her relief. In return for this confidence, he did not hesitate to disclose to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... LENGTH, and DEPTH, and HEIGHT, are words that in themselves are both ambiguous, and to wonderment; ambiguous, because unexplained, and to wonderment, because they carry in them an unexpressible something; and that something that which far out-goes all those things that can be found in this world. The Apostle here was under a spiritual surprise, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... breaks in the original book were ambiguous: text ended at mid-line, but the following line was not indented. These are shown as single blank lines. Unambiguous paragraph breaks are shown with two blank lines. Sidenotes are shown in [[double ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... till Jupiter fastened it by adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea. Apollo and Diana were born there, and the island was sacred to Apollo. Here Aeneas consulted the oracle of Apollo, and received an answer, ambiguous as usual,—"Seek your ancient mother; there the race of Aeneas shall dwell, and reduce all other nations to their sway." The Trojans heard with joy and immediately began to ask one another, "Where is the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... no longer entertained any doubt of her innocence, I told her that I thought the behaviour of her friend very ambiguous. I said that, notwithstanding the pleasure I felt in seeing her, the trick played upon me by her friend was a very bad one, that it could not do otherwise than displease me greatly, because it was an insult ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... they use, have no meaning to them, but that they have a meaning different from ours, without our being able to perceive it. Thus, while they seem to be answering us very correctly, they are really addressing us without understanding us, and without our understanding them. To such ambiguous discourse is due the surprise we sometimes feel at their sayings, to which we attach ideas the children themselves have not dreamed of. This inattention of ours to the true meaning words have for children seems to me the cause ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... so much as her Consent. His Heart can flutter by the Force of Imagination, but cannot fix from the Force of Judgment. It is not uncommon for the Parents of young Women of moderate Fortune to wink at the Addresses of Fribblers, and expose their Children to the ambiguous Behaviour which Melainia complains of, till by the Fondness to one they are to lose, they become incapable of Love towards others, and by Consequence in their future Marriage lead a joyless or a miserable Life. As therefore I shall in the Speculations ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... suspended by accidental circumstances, was, however, by mutual agreement and express assent, considered as pending and to be speedily resumed. In the meantime another act of Parliament, so doubtful and ambiguous in its import as to have been misunderstood by the officers in the colonies who were to carry it into execution, opens again certain colonial ports upon new conditions and terms, with a threat to close them against any nation which may ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... principally to this, that when a new Law is agreed to pass, the great Council generally appoint such amongst them as are Lawyers by Profession, to word it, or (as we say) to draw it up, who always, in Order to promote the Business of their own Profession, contrive it in ambiguous Terms; so that there is a double Meaning runs thro' every Sentence. This furnishes eternal Matter of Dispute betwixt Party and Party, and at the same time gives the Caja (for so they call a Judge) a Power of putting what ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... appearances they have not resolved anything today. The answer proposed by the Admiralty was so obscure and ambiguous, that Amsterdam has given notice, that she will protest again that it was only necessary to communicate to France the resolution of the 26th instant, by which the republic repealed that of the 18th of November, which displeased France, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... upper house: a committee however was named, and the queen soon after required some members of both houses to wait upon her respecting this matter; when the lord-keeper explained their sentiments in a long speech, to which her majesty was pleased to reply after her darkest and most ambiguous manner. "As to her marriage," she said, "a silent thought might serve. She thought it had been so desired that none other trees blossom should have been minded or ever any hope of fruit had been denied them. But that if any doubted that she was by vow or determination ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the colonel said carefully, "the tapes are supposed to show that certain ... ah ... 'highly-placed persons' in the Imperial hierarchy are influencing members of the Government illegally. You figure out what that might mean, Sire; it's a little too ambiguous ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the word "supremacy," so often used in this controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, Parliament is likewise supreme in New Zealand; but the two supremacies are of widely different kinds. Supremacy consists of two ingredients—authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the latter the former is little more ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... his eye-brows at this ambiguous compliment, and for a moment seemed at a loss how to take it, especially as he remarked a peculiar expression on the faces ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Dante's that has moulded Michelangelo's verse. In many ways no sentiment could have been less like Dante's love for Beatrice than Michelangelo's for Vittoria Colonna. Dante's comes in early youth: Beatrice [87] is a child, with the wistful, ambiguous vision of a child, with a character still unaccentuated by the influence of outward circumstances, almost expressionless. Vittoria, on the other hand, is a woman already weary, in advanced age, of grave intellectual qualities. Dante's ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... what happened then. I have a vague memory of the man accompanying us in the lift and giving some unintelligible account of things. I was stunned. We had interpreted the ambiguous telegram in all other ways than this. Adrian was dead. That was all I could think of. The only coherent remark I heard the man make was that it was a dreadful thing to happen at Christmas. Barbara gripped my hand tight and did not say a word. The next phase ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... affairs. On 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 ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... united to bodies contemplate spirit and enjoy absolute happiness. Other souls not united to bodies, but solicited by a certain instinct to unite themselves to bodies, are of ambiguous but still very exalted nature. Souls united to bodies (our own) have descended far, but can raise themselves and be purified by contemplation of the eternal intelligence, and by relative union with it. This contemplation has several degrees, so to speak, of intensity, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... and not merely those of his aunt. 'As to the money,' she said, 'it would be simply nonsense now for us to have any talk of money. It is yours in any way, and you had better manage about it as you please. I have written an ambiguous letter to Mr Green, which will simply plague him, and which you may go and see if you like.' Then she added her postscript, in which she said that she should now at once tell her father, as the news would remove from his mind all solicitude ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... in at one confused glance. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on Earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous—it rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled Phobar was its definite possession of rational life. More, its very thoughts were transmitted to him as clearly as though ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... 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 of society. We need some test by ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... and a gentle depression of the head to one side, may be either interpreted as a mute assent to what is said, or as a cautious deprecation of farther prosecution of the subject. It was a keener, more scrutinizing glance, which he bent on the youth, as he said, with an ambiguous smile, "So, young man, is it the wont of Scotland to suffer your Princes to be endangered for the lack of aid in such emergencies as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Lady Chichele looked up quickly as if at a reminder. 'The ambiguous attachment of the country,' I went on, limping but courageous, 'half declared, half admitted, that leads vaguely nowhere, and finally perishes as the man's life enriches itself—the thing we ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests were sometimes ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Judith Gautier. Daudet himself refers to the equally absurd report that Gambetta was the original of Numa Roumestan,—a report over which the alleged subject and the real author laughed together. Daudet's own attitude toward his creations is a little ambiguous or at least a little inconsistent; in one paper he asserts that every character of his has had a living original, and in another he admits that Elysee Meraut, for example, is only in part a ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough macaroni or of an ambiguous frittura sufficed to transport me to the Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caffe ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... deduced the phases a priori from his metaphysical principles, but he condescended to review in some detail the actual phenomena. He conceived the final cause of the world as Spirit's consciousness of its own freedom. The ambiguous term "freedom" is virtually equivalent to self-consciousness, and Hegel defines Universal History as the description of the process by which Spirit or God comes to the consciousness of its own meaning. This freedom does not mean that Spirit could choose at any moment ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Cambridge. In literary matters I notice that he does not think the poetry of 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
... 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, and took the pedestrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... did every few days, he listened with patience which grew to pleasure as time went on. When at last he repeated to Doctor Fleming himself, the question which he had put to Allison, the doctor's rather ambiguous ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... which Madame Faragon longed to ask; but she was almost too much afraid of her young friend to put it into words. At last she plucked up courage, and did ask her question after an ambiguous way. ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... pride in his political triumphs was added a passionate devotion to the man himself. His opponents have cheerfully borne tribute to the fascination he exercised over young and old. Holton's delightfully ambiguous remark, on the occasion of Macdonald's marvellous restoration to office in 1878, is historic: 'Well! John A. beats the devil.' Sir Oliver Mowat said, 'He was a genial man, a pleasant companion, full of humour and wit.' Even his ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... have to bear in looking on, quite powerless, and silent, while you are subjected to this treatment, which I refuse to characterize—so blind is it for blindness. I think I ought to understand what a father may exact, and a child should comply with; and I respect the most ambiguous of love's caprices if they give never so slight a clue to their all-justifying source. Did I, when you signified to me the probable objections—you remember what—to myself, my own happiness,—did I once allude to, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... intellectual structure. When I speak of Theism or Monotheism, I am not throwing together discordant doctrines; I am not merging belief, opinion, persuasion, of whatever kind, into a shapeless aggregate, by the help of ambiguous words, and dignifying this medley by the name of Theology. I speak of one idea unfolded in its just proportions, carried out upon an intelligible method, and issuing in necessary and immutable results; understood indeed at one time and place better than at another, held here and there ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... than Lord Dymchurch merited after that deliberate neglect of opportunity under the great tree. Of course nothing irrevocable must come to pass; it was the duty of man to commit himself, the privilege of woman to guard an ambiguous freedom. But, within certain limits, she counted on dramatic incidents. A brisk answer to her tap on the door in the park wall made her nerves thrill delightfully. No sooner had she turned the key than the door was impatiently pushed open ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... there were, and those writ large and deep, on the face of Warren Rodney; and, in default of an expression of deeper significance, the wavering lines of instability produced a curiously ambiguous effect of a fine head modelled by a 'prentice hand; a lady's copy of the Belvidere, attempted in the ardors of the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of "the father." Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stated that the Duke Barnim gave an ambiguous answer to Otto upon the subject; but the knight, after his visit to Wolgast, was so certain of seeing his daughter in a short time Duchess of Pomerania, that he already looked upon the Jena dues as his own, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... is, perhaps, ambiguous. At least it has been construed to mean more than the truth. It is undoubtedly true that "we all agreed that we could not with prudence stretch out any more," but we did not agree in the conclusion "and therefore there ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... grew into disquietude; for a letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,—written up in the Catskills,—warned him that scorn was not the only emotion with which he should honour Smith. After reading Bemis' confidential and ambiguous scrawl, Barclay drummed for a time with his hard fingers on the mahogany before him, stared at the print sketches of machinery above him, and paced the floor of his office with the roar of the mill answering something in his ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... one sentence where the author speaks of "the vehicles in the street and buildings about him". Surely he does not mean that the vehicles were in the buildings as well as in the street. The use of the definite article before the word "buildings" would do much toward dispelling the ambiguous effect. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Lord spake these words from the divine law inscribed on marriages, still if the understanding cannot support that law by some reason of its own, it may so warp it by the turnings and windings to which it is accustomed, and by sinister interpretations, as to render its principle obscure and ambiguous, and at length affirmative negative;—affirmative, because it is also grounded in the civil law; and negative, because it is not grounded in a rational view of those words. Into this principle the human mind will fall, unless it be previously instructed respecting the above-mentioned ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... make plain to myself what is the essential quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious vibration, this impersonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An awkward word—a perpetual begging of the question; too current in use, too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too wide—a word, in fact, too glib to know at all what it means. And how dangerous a word—often misleading us into slabbing with extraneous floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, be Art! To be decorative where decoration is not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at him, but he vaguely felt a certain ambiguous quality in the silence which followed, and congratulated himself that they ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the commencement of the reign of a prince, he pretended to foretel the events that would take place and the length of its continuance; but, at the same time, he was cautious enough to wrap them up in such ambiguous and mysterious expressions that, like most prophecies of the kind, they might admit of a variety of interpretations. This manner of expounding the lines of Fo-shee by Confucius, the supposed system of binary arithmetic ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... gotten us into war, his diplomacy helped to get us out, and as it was a peace without dishonor, Clay's reputation did not materially suffer. In fact, the terms of peace were so ambiguous that Congress gave out to the world that it was a victory, and the exact facts were quite lost in the smoke of Jackson's muskets that hovered over the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 be ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... bunting had once represented a British Union Jack! and the colourless, poverty-stricken thing flapped and cracked as it tore itself into the finest threads of misery in the gale, too truly representing the result of our ambiguous position according to the terms of the Cyprian occupation. I felt ashamed that such an exhibition should meet the eye of any foreign ship upon entering the harbour of Kyrenia, and I was informed "that it was ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... they were nevertheless compelled to pay—nothing could avail to prevent it. The church was then, contrary to every one's wish, placed in the fort. The honor and ownership of that work must be judged of from the inscription, which is in our opinion ambiguous, thus reading: "1642. Willem Kieft, Director General, has caused the congregation to build this church."(1) But whatever be intended by the inscription, the people nevertheless paid ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... 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 ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... correctness and she consistently preferred isolation to inferior contacts. So her daughter was subjected only to the maternal; it was not necessary to be definite in qualifying that. The girl had by this time a collection of ideas, gathered by impenetrable processes; she had tasted, in the ostracism of her ambiguous parent, of the acrid fruit of the tree of knowledge. She not only had an approximate vision of what every one had done, but she had a private judgment for each case. She had a particular vision of her father, which did not interfere with his being dear to her, but which was ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... messenger to the French King at Lyons, "to entreat him to explain the cause of these affronts, and to advise him, as a good master, how he had better act." [20] But this somewhat servile proceeding produced no adequate result, as his envoy received only ambiguous answers, and all he could accomplish was to extort a promise from Henri III that on his return to Paris he would discuss the affair with the Queen-mother and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... 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 them put to Lucy, in response ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... at more even handed justice, or at least some conciliatory measures were adopted. The authorities at Laurel, Mississippi, were cautioned to treat negroes better, so as to prevent their leaving. There is cited the case of a negro arrested on an ambiguous charge. He was assigned to the county chain gang and put to work on the roads. At this time the treatment in the courts was being urged by negroes as a reason for leaving. This negro's case was discussed. He was sent back from the county roads alone for ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... in the text, at this place, and also in the preface, that the "historic method of study" is the great feature of this century. The term is ambiguous. The meaning of it however is, that each problem ought to be approached from the historic side. Whether the problem be a fact of society, or of thought, or of morals, in each case the questions are asked—What are its antecedents? how did it happen? How ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Jean, partly in French, and partly in English. It informed Hal, in somewhat ambiguous phrases, that La Chre Madame was very ill, and daily growing weaker, and she, Jean, was very worried and unhappy about her. She thought if mademoiselle could possibly get away, she should come at once. It then went on to make a statement ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... is considered that the vast majority of the Greeks in the United States, has never had any opportunity to attend a Christian meeting, or hear the Gospel preached in their own language, it is to their credit that, with all the temptations and the ambiguous associations which the laboring class is often in contact with they have not been worse than they are; it is an indication that the primitive and strong character of the Greek seldom yields to temptation; they hold fast to ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... Williams, in his Middle Kingdom places the date about 350 A.D. But somewhere between 500 A.D. and 700 A.D. Tea had become a favorite beverage in Chinese families. Some of the written records of that ancient people push the epoch of tea-drinking back as far as 2700 B.C., appealing to ambiguous utterances of Confucius for corroboration. Tea in China had obtained sufficient importance in political economy in 783 or 793 A.D. to become an object of taxation ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... Parliament, the body which, under any view, had legal authority to alter the Constitution. No doubt there would be a great deal to be urged on the other side. The attention of the Judge would be called to the singular and ambiguous use throughout the Constitution of the term Imperial Parliament, which it might be argued was meant to show that what I have called the British Parliament was to be identified with the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Reference would also be made to the ambiguous saving of powers ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... self-upbraidings. You have disclosed not only a thousand misdeeds (as you have thought them) which could not possibly have come to my knowledge by any other means, but have laboured to ascribe even your commendable actions to evil or ambiguous motives. Motives are impenetrable, and a thousand cases have occurred in which every rational observer would have supposed you to be influenced by the best motives, but where, if credit be due to your own representations, your motives were far ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... music? He knows nothing about those things. In philosophy, then? What is it to him how large the sun is? or what means has he which may enable him to judge what the chief good is? What then will he judge of? Of what combination or disjunction of ideas is accurate,—of what is an ambiguous expression,—of what follows from each fact, or what is inconsistent with it? If the science of dialectics judges of these things, or things like them, it is judging of itself. But it professed more. For to judge of these matters is not sufficient for the resolving of the other numerous and important ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... anything similar, prepared by the Kaiser in view of the Boer War, or forwarded such to England (hear, hear, on the Right and Centre). But I must also defend our policy against the reproach of being ambiguous vis-a-vis the Boers. We had—the documents show it—given timely warning to the Transvaal Government. We called its attention to the fact that in case of a war with England it would stand alone. We put it to her directly, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the first to speak. He was the first to grasp the full meaning of this deliberately ambiguous ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... is certainly ambiguous. That /h[a]liges/ refers to Andrew, and not to God, is shown by the use of /h[e]/ ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the American character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution." The words are a little ambiguous, though he is his own reporter. But what he meant evidently was, that any protection of the trade would dishonor the nation; for at another point of the debate, on the same day, he said that "he thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... have been seen that I had acted directly against that infamous traffic from the commencement of the work, according to the explicit instructions of my firman; at the same time I had made due allowances for the ambiguous position of the traders upon the White Nile, who were actual tenants of the government. Thus I never visited the interior of their camps, nor had I disturbed their stations in any way, but I had passed them as without the pale of my jurisdiction; at the same time I gave the vakeels ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... called him, took him aside, and gave him the affront in such sort as 'twas never before given to any man reviling him as a disloyal and perjured traitor. The gallant, who by his two previous lessons had been taught how to value the friar's censures, listened attentively, and sought to draw him out by ambiguous answers. "Wherefore this wrath, Sir?" he began. "Have I crucified Christ?" "Ay, mark the fellow's effrontery!" retorted the friar: "list to what he says! He talks, forsooth, as if 'twere a year or so since, and his villanies and lewdnesses were ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... useless now to surmise what would have been the result if the action of the Federal Government in reference to the question of secession at the beginning of the rebellion, had been less ambiguous. It is enough to know, what was for many weeks so painfully realized by every Northerner in the South, that had the Southern people, by any means, been brought to understand that Federal laws were protected by sanctions, and that an attempt at disunion would certainly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... assertion that God and man is one Christ, "as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man," is orthodox; read apart from this context, it is ambiguous. If the simile be kept as a simile, as a mere suggestion or hint as to how, in general, two may compose one and yet remain two, then no exception can be taken to it. If, however, the clause be interpreted as a proportion sum, assigning ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... I felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to sink to a point where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior is. Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period, compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest questions of form into the very substance of its activity. It dares not accept ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... was glorious news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous remark ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... Indian of the forests in language as well as manners and mental disposition; both have an idiom abounding in spirited and bold terms; but the language of the former is harsher, more concise, and more impassioned; that of the latter, softer, more diffuse, and fuller of ambiguous expressions. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... kings of Israel, and from kings of Israel to kings of Judah, that the narrative is obscure in the reading. In the same book the history sometimes contradicts itself: for example, in 2 Kings, i. 17, we are told, but in rather ambiguous terms, that after the death of Ahaziah, king of Israel, Jehoram, or Joram, (who was of the house of Ahab), reigned in his stead in the second Year of Jehoram, or Joram, son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; and in viii. 16, of the same book, it is said, "And in the fifth ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... says he, with a rather ambiguous smile. What is he remembering now? Joyce's mouth takes a grave curve as she follows Beauclerk down the marble steps that lead ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... 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 cannot be advanced, I think the effect will ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... could possibly happen was recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. Every natural occurrence—an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a fire—stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event concealed behind a phenomenon. The allegorical interpretation of the Bible was carried to the point of abstruseness ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... but there was no evidence of abnormal vice; indeed, all the evidence seemed to me to be against this universal belief. The assumption that the dedication was addressed to Lord William Herbert I had found it difficult to accept, at first; the wording of it is not only ambiguous but familiar. If I assumed that "Mr. W.H." was meant for Lord William Herbert, it was only because that seemed the easiest way out of the maze. In fine, I pointed out to Oscar that his theory had very little that was new in it, and more that was untrue, and advised him not ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... rehabilitation. Oh, that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still coupled with Walter Majendie's in ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... south at 10.46 p.m. This looked promising. Emden, which I had inclined to on the spur of the moment, was out of court in comparison, for many reasons; not the least being that it was served by three trains between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., so that the phrase 'night train' would be ambiguous and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... 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
... reign too that we first hear of Indian influence spreading northwards. His Empire included Nepal and Kashmir, he sent missionaries to the region of Himavanta, meaning apparently the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and to the Kambojas, an ambiguous race who were perhaps the inhabitants of Tibet or its border lands. The Hindu Kush seems to have been the limit of his dominions but tradition ascribes to this period the joint colonization of Khotan from India ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... word disbelieved was the one thing fatal to Gammon's temper. He strode off in a towering rage, determined to hold no more communication with Miss Sparkes, and blaming himself for having got into such an ambiguous position towards her. As if he had ever really cared one snap of the fingers for the red-headed spitfire! She to tell him to his face that his word was not to be trusted! He had never stood that ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... With that spirit of ambiguous contradiction which would seem to prevail among the youth of all nations, Doocheek ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne |
