"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to regard woman as chaste in mind as well as in body, to surround her with conceptions of purity and impregnable virtue; but the conclusion is irresistible that those who can gloat over others' lapses from virtue, and find delight in such questionable entertainments as the most recent case of seduction, or the newest scandal, have need to purify their hearts and re-enforce their waning chastity. Nevertheless, a writer says, and perhaps truly, that "the women comprise about all the real virtue there is in the world." ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... highways, the grade of which is much below the maximum permissible. If there are grades ranging from 0 to 4 per cent, with a few hills upon which it is impracticable to reach a grade of less than six per cent, it is questionable economy to reduce the grades that are already lower than the allowable maximum. It is especially unjustifiable to incur expense in reducing a grade from two per cent to one and one-half per cent on a road upon ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... Fetish worshippers ever imagined that a stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had a god within it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such matters as these, it is hardly questionable that mankind from the first took ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and re-accession to his old position there. He was succeeded by Rev. Colin Ferguson, a native of Kent county, and educated at Edinburgh University. Under him the college continued to flourish, until the withdrawal of the State's appropriation in 1805. The constitutionality of this withdrawal is questionable, as the original grant was to be paid annually "forever;" but the State refused to permit itself to be sued by the college and, some years later, on increasing its appropriation to the college, the legislature required a release of all claims on the ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... songs the sailor sings. The Mediterranean sailor is popularly supposed to chant snatches of opera over his fishing-nets; but, after all, his is only a larger sort of lake, with water of a questionable saltness. It can furnish dangerous enough storms upon occasion, and, far worse than storms, the terrible white-squall which lies ambushed under sunny skies, and leaps unawares upon the doomed vessel. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... much put to it that night, I recollect, by the questionable morality at one point of Captain Credence, who in general was my favourite hero, dividing that honour with General Boanerges for the most part, but exciting more sympathy by reason of his wound—so grievously I misread the allegory, or rather saw no allegory at all. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... earthly hurricane affords an image. What was the best yesterday, is it still the best in this changed theatre of a to-morrow? Will your own Past truly guide you in your own violent and unexpected Future? And if this be questionable, with what humble, with what hopeless eyes, should we not watch other men driving beside us on their unknown careers, seeing with unlike eyes, impelled by different gales, doing and suffering in another sphere ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... daringly with a unisonal descent of the voices that carries even the sopranos down to A natural. In the duet between Christ and Mary, seeking where they have laid her Son, the librettist has given Christ a versified paraphrase which is questionable both as to taste and grammar. The final chorus, however, has a stir of spring fire that makes the work ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... face. Of the labour, the weariness, the self-distrust, the utter despondency of the great writer, we know nothing. Then, for the attainment of mere happiness or contentment, any high faculty of imagination is a questionable help. Of course imagination lights the torch of joy, it deepens the carmine on the sleek cheek of the girl, it makes wine sparkle, makes music speak, gives rays to the rising sun. But in all its supreme sweetnesses there is a perilous admixture of deceit, which is suspected even at the moment ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... first time that day. "Well, I am a questionable gift," she said quietly. "I thought you meant the gift of content—which he has, and I ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... being apparently to testify afresh to the anxious supervision of little Aggie she had momentarily suffered herself to be diverted from. This young lady, established in the pleasant shade on a sofa of light construction designed for the open air, offered the image of a patience of which it was a questionable kindness to break the spell. It was that beautiful hour when, toward the close of the happiest days of summer, such places as the great terrace at Mertle present to the fancy a recall of the banquet-hall deserted—deserted by the company lately gathered at tea and now dispersed, according to ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... that, as soon as the factor landed on the island, all the inhabitants had an attack which from the account appears to have partaken of the nature both of influenza and bronchitis. This touched the superstitious vein in Johnson, who praised him for his "magnanimity" in venturing to chronicle so questionable a phenomenon; the more so because,—said the Doctor,—"Macaulay set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker." To a reader of our day the History of St. Kilda appears to be innocent of any trace of such pretension; unless it be that the author speaks ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... have been the reasons which induced your dissent, I am persuaded they were such as you deemed sufficient. Permit me to submit to your consideration whether on occasions where the propriety of nominations appear questionable to you it would not be expedient to communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure lay before you. Probably my reasons ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... her last new ballet and flesh-colored stockinnet pantaloons, out of a pure love of abstract poetry and beauty; or from a strong notion that we shall be excited, in different ways, by the actor and the dancer? And so, as we go to have a meal of fictitious terror at the tragedy, of something more questionable in the ballet, we go for a glut of blood to the execution. The lust is in every man's nature, more or less. Did you ever witness a wrestling or boxing match? The first clatter of the kick on the shins, or the first drawing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... present is all my motive: nor will there ever, I hope, be a stronger, notwithstanding your questionable throbs—even were the merits of Mr. Lovelace much greater ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... priority uncertain chronology obscures. The date that orthodoxy has assigned to Moses is about 1500 B.C. Plutarch said that Zarathrustra lived five thousand years before the fall of Troy. Both dates are perhaps questionable. But a possible hypothesis philology provides. The term Jehovah is a seventeenth-century expansion of the Hebrew Jhvh, now usually written Jahveh and commonly translated: He who causes to be. The original rendering of Ormuzd is Ahura-mazda. Ahura means living ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... even at this early hour in the evening, was alive with people. Many of the men and women were of very questionable character, but Ralph did not know this. He walked along, staring ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... a failure he gradually shuts himself off from any emotional expression—protects himself from the married state by sublimating his natural domestic ties, usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable ways—by hobbies, speed manias, and excesses of various kinds. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile, quite apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used means of repression or wish sublimation. I have been struck by ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... desks and a fine old oak inlaid desk, a capital inlaid bureau, manufactured by a Russian in Teheran, and some Sultanabad carpets not more than fifty years old. On the shelves and wherever else a place could be found stood glass decorations of questionable artistic taste, and many a vase with stiff bunches of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... calorimeter, much difficulty is experienced in burning the carbon completely; hence a low result is obtained. From a large number of experiments I have found that when a coal does not yield more than 86 per cent, of coke, it gives its full comparative heating power, but it is very questionable if equal results will be worked out if the coke exceeds the above amount although I have met with coals giving 87 per cent. of coke which were perfectly manageable, though in other cases the coal did not burn completely. It will be noted that the non-volatile ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... the first stage of philosophic reflection, crude realism. The physicist appears to me, both from the first essays in Greek "nature-philosophy," as also from the not infrequent confusion even to-day between a perfectly safe "scientific materialism" and a highly questionable philosophic materialism, to share in this tendency to take separate consideration for separate existence. Each new stage of abstraction in physical science gives birth to a new attempt to find an independent reality, a thing-in-itself, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the least ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... found himself alone, he gazed furtively about the room, to assure himself that the rebuking spirit of his wife had not taken a shape less questionable than air, and then, he mused for at least an hour, very painfully, on all the principal occurrences of the night. It is said that occupation is a certain solace for grief, and so it proved to be in the present ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a very choice spot for midnight expeditions, being in truth one of more than questionable character, and of an appearance by no means inviting. From the main street he had entered, itself little better than an alley, a low-browed doorway led into a blind court, or yard, profoundly dark, unpaved, and reeking with stagnant odours. Into this ill-favoured pit, the locksmith's ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... last of such appointees was graduated in 1856, and the sometime hinted contaminating influence of the "oldsters" upon the "youngsters" was a thing to be known no more forever, albeit the hint of contamination always seemed, to the writer, questionable, as, in his experience, the habit and propensity of the youngsters for mischief appeared to require neither promotion nor encouragement. Indeed, their methods and ingenuity in evading rules and regulations and defying discipline ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... happened that within the circuit of a few miles there lived four young men, to whom the virtues of the rood had become greatly questionable. If it could work miracles, it must be capable, so they thought, of protecting its own substance; and they agreed to apply a practical test which would determine the extent of its abilities. Accordingly (about ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... real and essentially spiritual. A living faith in this infinite spiritual reality is the fountain-head not only of religion, but of noble life. All wavering here is a symptom of psychic paralysis. When the infinite reality becomes questionable, then all things become material and vile. The world becomes a world of sight and sound, of taste and touch. The soul is poured through the senses and dissipated; the current of life stagnates, and grows ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... will prevent him from seeing those half-pay, questionable people. I'll talk to her," said Mademoiselle Cormon, "for he might lose his place in the mayor's office; and then what would he and his mother have to live ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... business of another factor and general merchant. His wife had died some twenty years before the period of this story—died in giving birth to a boy, who was sometimes mistaken for the Co., but who at present occupied no better position than that of a superior clerk, with the questionable advantage of living with his father in the dull old house, where he had to go through the warehouse amidst innumerable bales and crates and packages to reach the staircase that conducted him to the gloomy rooms, the old-fashioned furniture of which suited his father, but was ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... is a very wonderful thing, but it is questionable whether it is more wonderful than some of the instinctive modes of behavior of lower forms of life. If mind is viewed as an adjustment to external conditions for the purpose of securing control, the human mind is no more wonderful in its way than the homing and migratory ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... de Commarin was not one of those who possess the rather questionable and at times unenviable accomplishment of pleasing every one. He was wise enough to distrust those astonishing personages who are always praising everybody. In looking about us, we often see men of success and reputation, who are simply dolts, without ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... people are seeking naught else than to gain renown at my expense. They cling to me like mud to a wheel. They would rather have questionable honor shamefully acquired than remain quiet, and the evil spirit uses the designs of such people only to hinder me from doing more useful things. But I welcome the opportunity to give the laity[6] some explanation of the nature of the Church,[7] and to contradict the words of these seductive ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... exertion to raise their prostrate character; and every tie of gratitude and interest should lead them to cement their connexion with that great republic. The proclamation of neutrality, though admitted to have originated in the best motives on the part of the President, was declared to be not only questionable in a constitutional point of view, but eventually to have proved impolitic. Being falsely construed by Great Britain into a manifestation of a pusillanimous disposition, it served to explain the aggressions of that nation. Experience now urged the abandonment of a line of conduct, which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... silence in the shabby sitting-room for some time—and there was not often silence there. Three rampant, strong-lunged boys, and as many talkative school-girls, made the house of David North, Esq., rather a questionable paradise. But to-day, being half-holiday, the boys were out on the beach digging miraculous sand-caves, and getting up miraculous piratical battles and excursions with the bare-legged urchins so numerous in the fishermen's huts; and Joanna ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... It is questionable if any of the things imparted had been so effective upon Mahommed as this one. Not only did his last doubt of the man talking disappear; it excited a boundless admiration for him, and the freshest novitiate in human nature knows how almost impossible it is to refuse ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... girl who has left home to make her way is one of the most fruitful causes of the questionable relations which well-born girls form more often than society realizes. The girl seizes eagerly every chance for companionship or pleasure. Her keen need of it makes her overappreciative and undercritical. Moreover, she has the confidence ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... feeling unmixedly at my ease. For the first time it was beginning to steal upon me that I had not prepared a really good story in support of my questionable behaviour in ringing fire bells at such an hour, and I have known Aunt Dahlia to express herself with a hearty freedom ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... will soon burn out; and when people come to reflect on these transactions, and their consequences, they will be found to be some of the most questionable in modern English history. He has the merit of presenting a bold front to Europe and of avoiding war; but the cost will be great and the ulterior consequences formidable. I suppose they are going to give ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Perhaps the following information may serve to answer the question. The Hotel de Homburg was one of those flash hostelries frequented by adventurers of distinction, who are attracted to Paris by the millions that are annually squandered there. Spurious counts and questionable Russian princesses were sure to find a cordial welcome there with princely luxury, moderate prices, and—but very little confidence. Each person was called by the title which it pleased him to give on his arrival—Excellency or Prince, according to his fancy. He could also find numerous ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... be, and willing as we are to make allowance for the necessities of his task, we cannot quite free ourselves from an unpleasant suspicion as to the simplicity of his characters. 'Clarissa' is comparatively free from this fault, though Clarissa takes a questionable pleasure in uttering the finest sentiments and posing herself as a model of virtue. But in 'Sir Charles Grandison' the fulsome interchange of flattery becomes offensive even in fiction. The virtuous ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other artists besides Rubens himself—George Romney for example. The advantages of a "classical education" at our English public schools and universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk of the pupils they are questionable. But Rubens shows that the case is exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for scholars acquainting themselves with classical literature. A superficial study of the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather a hindrance. But ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... Saint-Vincent [Footnote: Essai sur les Iles fortunees. Humboldt has only five.] 148. Webb and Berthelot give 909. Of these 200 are nouns, including 22 names of plants; 467 are placenames, and 242 are proper names. Many are questionable. For instance, sabor (council-place) is derived from cabocer, 'expression par laquelle les negres de la Senegambie denotent la reunion de leurs chefs.' [Footnote: Vol. i. part i. p. 223.] As all know, it is the corrupted Portuguese ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to translate dry theology into questionable English, encumbered with technical expressions, is not writing a sermon; but the man who takes up the theological principles, simmers them in his own thought, wraps them in the transparency of clear language, ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... captious Mogul ruler, "mountain rats." As Hindus there was a sharp cleavage of character; the Brahmins, fanatical, high up in the caste scale, and all the rest of the breed inferior, vicious, blood-thirsty, a horde of pirates. Even the man who first made them a power, Sivaji, had been of questionable lineage, a plebeian; and so the body corporate was of inflammable material—little restraint ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... to sit in council with the British Resident. But the confidence of his countrymen in him remained unshaken by the appearance among them of British envoys in military state, bearing despatches to the friend of the national foe, and the questionable attitude of Lehna became to the Resident daily more and more ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... Judgment; and meantime the Church and the State are to maintain His jurisdiction over this outlying province as well as they can. The actual presence of God in the world would seem to drag Him down into questionable limitations, not to be assumed without express warrant, as exception, miracle, and in things consecrated and set apart. Hence the patchwork composition of the early painters; we see in it an extreme diversity of value ascribed to the things about them. It is a world partly divine and partly rubbish; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the Greek who lives on Turkish soil, has not possessed these qualities. He has accepted and bent to the Turk, and in his role of a willing slave, he has played a very questionable part toward the other Christian peoples. However, there is a political reason ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... questionable whether the mines of pure iron existing in Europe would long bear a drain so great and still increasing; but happily the question no longer presses for an answer, because the problem of obtaining first-class steel from inferior ores has been solved by the genius ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... reason a navy sufficient for self-defense is warranted. Such a navy we now have. Why should it be enlarged? Naval enthusiasts would have us prepare, not for the probable but for the possible. Seize every questionable act of our neighbors, they say, magnify it a thousand times, publish it in letters of flame throughout the land, and make every American citizen believe that the great powers are prepared to destroy us at any moment. Having educated ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... (Corda ratres), founded at Turin in 1898, with its branches in all civilized countries, may be of great use. A censorship of the press to exclude all jingoistic and inflammatory utterances may at times be necessary. It is even questionable whether uniforms and martial music ought not to be banished for a while, until the habit ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that the object of such caressing tenderness, so public and avowed, must be regarded in the light of a baby—not to mention that the very foundation of all this distinction, a beautiful face, is as a male distinction regarded in a very questionable light by multitudes, and often by those most who are the possessors of that distinction. Certainly that was the fact in my brother's case. Not one of us could feel so pointedly as himself the ridicule of his situation; nor did he cease, when increasing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... questionable policy. If followed up it will result in a saturnalia of crime in this community. Already several of our young men are reading dime novels and taking lessons in banditry; but the sheriff has stated that this parole will not be considered a precedent. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... with Alexander Tytler and Lord Macdonald, induced him to lighten his published attacks on Mrs. Piozzi and helped make him aware of the merit of her edition of Johnson's correspondence, and advised him to cancel some questionable passages in the Life on William Gerard Hamilton. From time to time he also cautioned Boswell not to expect political preferment when he did not deserve it. It appears, too, that he took part in the prolonged deliberations over Johnson's monument in Westminster Abbey. Concerned that Boswell's ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... elm?—Why, size, in the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground; and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... London, the trip could be more easily and quickly made by going to the westward some twenty-one thousand miles, rather than going directly eastward less than four thousand miles. For going eastward we should have to travel a thousand miles an hour in order to keep up with the Earth. It is questionable whether we could make that speed tacking ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... qualities sacrificed, though almost intangible, are essential to the force of her charm. The cement is taken away and the fabric coheres imperfectly; and whilst the beauties of her manner are blurred, its blemishes appear increased; the lengthiness, over-emphasis of expression, questionable taste of certain passages, become more marked. Although nevertheless many of her tales remain pleasant reading, they suffer as much as translated poetry, and only a very inadequate impression of her art as a novelist can be arrived at from any rendering of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... is given as the correct reading in the 'Errata' (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately' in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but it is questionable if ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... since its inception. In the front room of the attic of 3259 were doors of rough hewn wood with old iron bolts leading into rooms of the two adjoining houses. The story is that in the War of 1812 this row of houses used to be watched. A soldier would be stationed on the corner, but the "questionable person" never emerged, he could escape through the attic rooms and come out at ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... triumph into my study; and, in truth, the little room seemed to be perfectly transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice, lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure, got up in a style that would have done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the most questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate devices; they wore on their hair flowers, gems, streamers, tinklers, humming-birds, butterflies, South American beetles, beads, bugles, and all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... to religion.—The people of Christ's day were very religious. The world likes a flavor of religion. It makes a good background and screen, it serves to hide much that is unbecoming and questionable; it is respectable, and satisfies an instinctive longing of the soul. But the world manages its religion in such a way as not to interfere with its self-aggrandizement; but, in fact, to promote it. Christ, on the other hand, taught ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the sowing of wild oats as an institution which, if it does not merit the full approval of society's moral code, is, at least, tolerated. No serious consequences befall the offender. On the contrary, the libertine is the type of hero who receives the commendatory quips of erotic dames and the questionable interest ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... behind the man who looked like a ward heeler or a walking delegate, and who had been both, and many other and more questionable things, by turns, Jasper Grierson swung his huge chair ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... perplexing; since he is the only young man in the world, from whom a woman has no dishonour to fear.—Ah, Lucy!—It would be vanity in me, would it not? to suppose that he had more to fear from Harriet, than she has from him; as the virtue of either, I hope, is not questionable? But the event of his Italian visit will explain and reconcile ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... pursuit of her. The French were now without any means of communicating with the Mandans, from whom, however, before the disappearance of the interpreter, they had already received a variety of questionable information, chiefly touching white men cased in iron who were said to live on the river below at the distance of a whole summer's journey. As they were impervious to arrows,—so the story ran,—it was necessary to shoot their horses, after ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... chaos. At the expiration of a year the old gentleman hurried back into the harness to save the remnant of his fortune, only to find it inextricably tied up in lands of dubious value and questionable promotional schemes. The untangling of the real estate he immediately took into his own hands. The schemes he left to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that the plan is, or is not, practicable. Plainly, such hindrances as enormous expense, inadequate facilities for building and repairing battleships, and the increased demand for officers and sailors render questionable the expediency of such a measure. This issue, however, is not found in connection with all propositions; it does not concern propositions that merely approve or condemn existing conditions or assert the occurrence of an event. For example, practicability ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... wife of Justinian, is certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... confusion between the terms packs and equipment led us to take off equipment, and we then formed up as a Battalion in Brigade. We saluted again, this time we had no bayonets, and then marched past by Companies and back in close column several times. Then, by a questionable, though not questioned, manoeuvre, we came back again and advanced in review order. The Brigade Band was in attendance and played the Brigade March in place of the Regimental March, because it did ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... Smoit: "I will explain. Just sixty-three years ago to-night I murdered my ninth wife in circumstances of peculiar brutality, as you with rather questionable taste have mentioned." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... I may be permitted to ask whether any reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" can throw light on the following questionable statement made by a correspondent of the Morning Herald, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... neither quite a virtuous woman (for in that case she would not have resorted to so much concealment) nor a frank professor of "All for Love." Antonio, her so-called husband, is an unromantic and even questionable figure. Many of the minor characters, as already hinted, would be much better away. Of the two brothers the Cardinal is a cold-blooded and uninteresting debauchee and murderer, who sacrifices sisters and mistresses without any reasonable excuse. Ferdinand, the other, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... presumption repels civility; for they who are accustomed to the privileges of station, think far less of their immunities, than they, who by being excluded from the fancied advantages, are apt to exaggerate a superiority that a short experience would show becomes of very questionable value in the possession. Without this equitable provision of Providence, the laws of civilized society would become truly intolerable, for, if peace of mind, pleasure, and what is usually termed happiness, were the exclusive enjoyment of those who are rich and honoured, there ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... believe that the factory has come to stay. To be sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at home; but such a man is far from typical in modern manufacture. Besides, it is very questionable whether the lamentations over the home industries of the past do not ignore evil concomitants such as still linger in the home industries of the present—those of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... sowing good, newly-saved seed in succession from February until May in prepared beds out of doors, the common crown anemone may in many sunny, sheltered gardens be had in bloom all the year round. This is saying a great deal, but it is true; indeed, it is questionable if we have any other popular garden flower which is at once so showy, so hardy, and so continuous in its blossoming. A friend beside me says: "Ah! but what of violas?" To which I reply: "Grow both in quantity, since both are as variable as they are beautiful." ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... disregarding it, was ever fully impressed upon the generals of either army, although at last there came, it is true, a time when, as at Cold Harbor, the men had an opinion of their own, and chose to act upon it. It is also very questionable whether earthworks manned by so much as a line of skirmishers, prepared and determined to defend them, have ever been successfully assaulted save as the result of a surprise. Sedgwick's captures of the Rappanhannock redoubts and of Marye's Heights ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... it; for you will observe that all the demonstrations that can possibly be thought of are themselves unfounded and open to dispute; most of them struggle to establish their certainty by appealing to facts as questionable as themselves; and the rest produce certain truisms with which they compare, quite illegitimately, the most speculative theories, and then say they have demonstrated the latter: our eyes tell us there are altars to the Gods; therefore there must be Gods; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... amuses itself mainly with questionable jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's- Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of life; on ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... chill and foggy. The heart of the town, with its noises, was left behind. Reflected from the high vapours, its distant lights were manifest in quivering, cone-shaped streamers, in questionable blushes of unnamed colours, in unstable, ghostly waves of far, electric flashes. Now that the darkness was become more friendly, the wall against which the street splintered developed a stone coping topped with an armature ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not. Indeed, I do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but altogether objectionable. Questionable action is often consecrated by holy motive, and there, even mistake is not fatal; but in this thing is no noble principle to ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Winchester. This was the beginning of the fortune of that amiable prelate, of whom it must be said that if he owed his early advancement to a questionable influence, no man has filled the episcopal office with more unaffected piety, dignity, and goodness. The difference between George IV. and Lord Liverpool on this occasion was a very serious one. The Duke of Wellington referred to it in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... vital recognition of law, and great loyalty to any utterance of either parent, she had yet been brought up in an atmosphere of such liberty, that except a thing were expressly so conditioned, or in itself appeared questionable, she never dreamed of asking permission to do it; and, accustomed as she had been to go with the laird everywhere, and to be out with him early and late, her conscience never suggested the possibility of any objection ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the fruit of one of the palms, than which it is questionable if there is any other species of tree marking, in itself, so abundantly the goodness of Providence, in making provision for the wants of man. It grows wild in the Indian seas, and in the eastern parts of Asia; and thence it has been introduced ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons traversing it, unexamined and uncontrolled, was greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice as well as of prudence it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... been converted by Jesus Christ, we should have none but questionable witnesses. And if they had been entirely destroyed, we should have ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means that is another matter. It is impossible to find anything out through explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... his life, when captain-general of the Italian league, he drew in war 165,000 ducats of annual stipend, 45,000 being his own share; in peace, 65,000 in all.' As a Condottiere, Federigo was famous in this age of broken faith for his plain dealing and sincerity. Only one piece of questionable practice—the capture of Verucchio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come from Sigismondo Malatesta—stained his character for honesty. To his soldiers in the field he was considerate and generous; to his enemies compassionate and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... building, or stand, as unostentatiously as a fire engine, not too near the entrance of his club. Clayton, going in, had seen it there once or twice, and had smiled rather grimly. He considered its presence there in questionable taste, but he felt no uneasiness. Determined as he was to give Natalie such happiness as was still in him to give, he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... receive confirmation from every recent decision of the supreme court of the United States, in which certain laws of individual states have been sustained, in cases where, to say the least, it was very questionable whether they did not infringe the provisions of the constitution, and where a disposition to construe those previsions broadly and extensively, would have found very plausible grounds to indulge itself in annulling the state laws referred ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... not however be concealed, that the present journal has a very questionable appearance in regard to its entire authenticity, as it has obviously borrowed liberally from that of Cesar Frederick, already inserted in this work, Vol. VII. p. 142-244. It seems therefore highly probable, that the journal or narrative of Fitch may have fallen into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... been attempted. Large sums of money were successively voted and expended, in endeavouring to penetrate through the Arctic sea; and such is the persevering enterprise of our mariners, that in all likelihood this gigantic task eventually will be accomplished: but, even if it should, it is questionable whether a navigable opening in that direction would prove beneficial to commerce. The floating ice with which those high latitudes are encumbered; the intricacy of the navigation; the cold and tempestuous weather generally prevailing there, and the difficulty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... pitied, as men doomed to be cast away: we had since learned to pity others, and to be envied in our safe vessels. The "great experiment," as it was called, had succeeded, in spite of the forebodings of the ignorant and the half-measured doubts of questionable friends; but its crowning triumph was yet to come: the single steamer was, alone, unaided, to penetrate the pack and seek her missing mate. Find her, if she could; if not, winter, and seek with foot parties, both this autumn and ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... of Sir William Wyndham, which happened in 1740, Lord Noel Somerset was considered as the rising head of the Tory interest. "He was," says Tindal, "a man of sense, spirit, and activity, unblameable in his morals, but questionable in his political ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... that the first and third stanzas are the finest, and some may respect the judgment that cut down the Poem by the removal of its second verse: but others will say, if it was right that such a verse should be removed, why were many others of questionable merit allowed to remain? Why was such a poem as 'The Glowworm', of the edition of 1807, never republished; while 'The Waterfall and the Eglantine', and 'To the Spade of a Friend', were retained? To give one other illustration, where a score are possible. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... population has kept pace with wire and rail. Johannesburg has a population of 120,800 souls, and Buluwayo, a savage desert not long ago, has now an European society of over 5000 persons. It is therefore somewhat questionable if Mr. Froude is justified in his opinion that diamonds and gold are not the stuff of which nations are made. Nations, if they are to expand, must be fed, and while diamond and gold mines give up of their wealth, we are assured ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the original, Schiller has an allusion of very questionable taste, and one which is very obscure to the general reader, to a conjurer of the name of Philadelphia who exhibited before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the police-court, yesterday, he frankly avowed the part he had taken in the procession, and offered to acknowledge the speech which he delivered on that occasion. If, however, the policy which dictated the prosecution be questionable, there can be no doubt at all as to the objectionable manner in which some of the persons engaged in it have acted—assuming the statement to be true that Mr. Sullivan, proprietor and editor of the Nation newspaper, and Sir John Gray, proprietor ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... Surius has miracles, but that is all the difference; each follows the form of the supernatural which belonged to the genius of his age. Plutarch writes a life of Lycurgus with details of his childhood, and of the trials and vicissitudes of his age; and the existence of Lycurgus is now quite as questionable as that of St. Patrick or ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and rides. He would sometimes go quietly through the queerest, gayest, most extraordinary town in Europe, and let it alone, provided it did not meddle with him by its beggars, beauties, innkeepers, police, coachmen, mongrels, bad smells, and such like obstructions. This feat of questionable utility he began performing now. Sitting on the three-inch ash rail that had been peeled and polished like glass by the rubbings of all the small-clothes in the parish, he forgot the time, the place, forgot that it was ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of pity, whether the coolie woman were singing too, and found something like relief in the questionable reflection that if she wasn't, in view of the rupee, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in danger of breaking. It does not belong to this work to examine minutely the general policy of that ruler; it was, however, held in earnest detestation by those who were, or had been prisoners. The magistrates were empowered to inflict corporal punishment to a very questionable extent, and it was customary for one settler to judge and sentence the servant of another, who in his turn performed a similar office. It is surely not necessary to prove, that the moderate exercise of such extensive powers depended rather on the equitable temper of British gentlemen ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... least significant part of society. The same is true of Tom Jones (1749), which is the author's most vigorous work, and of Amelia (1751), in which, though he portrays one good woman, he repeats many of the questionable incidents of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... need not have recourse to such a questionable vindication. They held in them far nobler elements, as is proved beyond cavil by the words of many of the earliest missionaries themselves. Bigoted and bitter haters of the native faiths, as they were, they discovered in them so much that was good, so much that approximated ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... it is a narrow basis, because the possession of money is of itself no guarantee of political ability, and the system leads to the very questionable proposition that every rich man is a competent social reformer. It is, however, a sort of competence, but a competence very precariously established and on a ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... that I can't permit, you know. My office must not be made a starting-place for one of your lawless adventures. You met Miss Fern here. Now, I protest against your going to her house, pretending that you are interested in that novel, when your real purpose is of a much more questionable kind." ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... Mr. Briggs, playing as he had been playing all year, would have been no match for Jordan of Yale. We tried every means we could think of to wake Mr. Briggs up. He had, I felt certain, the ability to play football—winning football—but we couldn't get it out of him. As a last resort I tried questionable means. I asked Mr. Briggs to call on me this morning. I told him we must win to-day, and that in order to do so he would have to play better than he'd been doing. He told me that he would do his best, but that he ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... alienation, were the result of causes as infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no less certainly than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various |
