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Questionable   Listen
adjective
Questionable  adj.  
1.
Admitting of being questioned; inviting, or seeming to invite, inquiry. (R.) "Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee."
2.
Liable to question; subject to be doubted or called in question; problematical; doubtful; suspicious. "It is questionable whether Galen ever saw the dissection of a human body.T."
Synonyms: Disputable; debatable; uncertain; doubtful; problematical; suspicious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books



... sublime proof of affection; and the want of this power over the feelings, and of that lofty, dignified affection, which makes a person prefer the future good of the beloved object to a present gratification, is the reason why so many fond mothers spoil their children, and has made it questionable, whether negligence or indulgence is most hurtful: but I am inclined to think, that the latter ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... the way, Vannozza was still able to reckon on the protection of certain powerful friends, especially the Farnese, the Cesarini, and several cardinals. She feared her property would be confiscated, for the title to much of it was questionable. Early in 1504 Ludovico Mattei charged her with having stolen, in March, 1503, through her paid servants, eleven hundred and sixty sheep while Caesar was carrying on his war against the Orsini. These sheep had been sent by Maria d'Aragona, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... light before a large audience waiting to see her dance or hear her sing. Chinese actresses were quite unknown until very recently, and the few that may be now found on the Chinese stage were nearly all of questionable character before they entered the theater. In the northern part of China some good Chinese women may be found in circuses, but these belong to the working class and take up the circus life with their husbands and brothers ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... He does not indeed consider his theory of beauty as applicable to colour, which he well understood, but insists upon and literally enforces it as to form and ideal conceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, and where his authority is more questionable. I will not in this place undertake to show that his theory of a middle form (as the standard of taste and beauty) is not true of the outline of the human face and figure or other organic bodies, though I think that even there it is only one principle or condition ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... herself like the Maid, trusting in this recantation to effect her release. But we consider such an hypothesis extremely far-fetched, nor does it accord with the events which immediately followed. It seems hardly questionable that it was the real Jeanne who publicly recanted on the 24th of May. This was only six days before the execution. Four days after, on Monday the 28th, it was reported that Jeanne had relapsed, that she had, in defiance of the Church's prohibition, clothed herself in male ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... nature, which they could properly assimilate. No great patience was ever exhibited by him toward those of his countrymen—the most repulsive characters in his stories are such—who would make of themselves mere apes and mimes, decorating themselves with a veneer of questionable alien characteristics, but with no personality or stability of their own, presenting at best a spectacle to make devils laugh and angels weep, lacking even the hothouse product's virtue of being good to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the nose, and suspending nose-jewels therefrom, has fallen into disrepute, the Indian, perhaps, having been brought to view these as contributing, in a questionable way, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... Spaniards who have emigrated to Cuba has always been of a questionable character. The description of them by Cervantes in his time will apply in our own day with equal force. He says: "The island is the refuge of the profligates of Spain, a sanctuary for homicides, a skulking-place for gamblers and ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... vanities of princely life had no influence in leading her heart from God. She passed several hours, every day, in devotional reading and prayer. She kept a very careful register of her thoughts and actions, scrutinizing and condemning with unsparing severity every questionable emotion. Every sick bed of the poor peasants around, she visited with sympathy and as a tender nurse. She groped her way into the glooms of prison dungeons to convey solace to the prisoner. She wrought ornaments for the Church, and toiled, even to weariness and exhaustion, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... long 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 ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... occurs. The obverse has the head of Apollo; the reverse, the crescent moon and seven stars, or rather triones—the constellation of the Ursa Major. The sun and moon refer to the family name, while the triones are an allusion to the surname. Pope Urban VIII., with execrable taste and questionable wit, upon repairing certain roads, struck a medal with the legend: Beati qui custodiunt meas vias, 'Blessed are they who keep my ways.' The 'speaking types' of the ancient Grecian coins are very curious. The coinage of Rhodes has a rose for a type, which flower bears ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... conveys an obvious suggestion. It goes without saying that no honorable partner would avail himself of such information. Being the unwilling recipient of it, however, places him in an awkward position, as he must cross-examine himself as to whether any questionable bid or double he contemplates is in any way encouraged by it. If he have even a scintilla ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... next day, a distance of nearly two hundred miles by the river, they left Eagle at an early hour after taking on board a supply of fuel of a rather questionable character, for which they had to pay a heavy price. The trading companies said that this was the second launch that had visited Eagle and the demand for high-grade ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... is perhaps to Cowley's credit that he has avoided the obvious parallelism. Meanwhile Clariana has met the mad Aphron without recognizing him, and taking pity on his state brings him home to cure him, an attempt in which she is successful. He rewards her by transferring to her his somewhat questionable attentions. Also Alupis, working on Truga, has tricked her into seeking the marriage of Hylace and Palaemon; a plan, however, which is upset by Hylace and Melarnus. Florellus in the meantime becomes impatient at finding a rival in Bellula's love, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... questionable morality of Gen. Washington's motto might suggest that it was not originally adopted by him. The sentiment, that "the end justifies the means," has been charged, as a reproach, upon the Jesuits. It was the motto of the Northamptonshire family from which Gen. ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... first—eminent domain, an American doctrine which, in its simplest form, subjects the land of any one to the need of the state or, in cases authorized by the Federal Constitution, of the nation. It is questionable whether it applies to personal property. It is an American doctrine, for in England where the king remained in theory the feudal over-lord, it was not necessary for him or the sovereign Parliament, wishing to take or control land, and having no constitution ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... Vertuous Sports; others to Seth and his Sons, he having left it on brazen Pillars engraven with indelible Characters not to be obliterated by the ensuing Flood. Job makes mention of Fishing, who Lived as may be supposed before Moses; nor is it questionable, whether the illustrious Patriarchs used not this Recreation. Certain it is, there were many Fishermen before Christs Coming, whose sole Dependance was on this Innocent Art. Innocent indeed and harmless, when the Lamb of God himself recommended it (as I may ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... and wishes that those who had spoken slightingly of his eloquence would take to heart his example. Stephen had in 1811 been rewarded for his support of the Orders in Council by a Mastership in Chancery. Romilly observes that the appointment was questionable, because Stephen, though he was fully qualified by his abilities, was not sufficiently versed in the law. His friends said that it was no more than a fair compensation for the diminution of the prize business which resulted from the new regulations. He held the office till 1831, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down negative recommendations—to instruct the beginner how not to do it. But most of these "don'ts" are rather obvious; and those which are not obvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that if you want your play to be acted, anywhere else than in China, you must not plan it in sixteen acts of an hour apiece; but where is the tyro who needs a text-book to tell him that? On the other hand, most theorists of to-day would make it an ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... to him. Such opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he accept ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... the good faith or the generous intentions of these governments of gentlemen is questioned or is in any degree questionable; what is here spoken of is only the practical effect of the policies which they pursue, doubtless with benevolent intentions and well-placed complacency. In effect, things being as they are today in the civilised world's ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... dad. He's getting tired of cooling his heels in the corridor. He isn't used to it. Better trot along, sonny. Somebody might mistake him for a questionable character and ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... affairs of life, regulated by the caprice and supported by the authority of a few leading practitioners, which has been frequently the occasion of dismissing from practice valuable medicines and of substituting others less certain in their effects and more questionable in their nature. As years and fashion revolve, so have these neglected remedies, each in its turn, risen again into favor and notice, whilst old receipts, like old almanacs, are abandoned until the period may arrive that will once more adjust them to the spirit and ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... Purbeck "was entrusted in the hands of physicians for the cure of a melancholy distemper, occasioned by the cruelty and disorders of his wife." But this claimed absence of two years, or anything approaching two years, is very questionable, if not very improbable; and although there is not much doubt as to the real parentage of Robert Wright, Purbeck may have lived with his wife sufficiently near the birth of the boy to imagine himself his father. ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... recommendation, in June, 1791, young Adams entered the lists against Paine and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on the National Assembly of France, and a commentary on the rights of man, inferring questionable deductions from unquestionable principles. In a series of essays, signed Publicola, published in the Columbian Centinel, he states and controverts successively the fundamental doctrines of Paine's work; denies that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do it has ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... course, is the difficulty which mars his plan, for it is questionable whether Austria will consent to a postponement of her military operations. Negotiations concerning Sir Edward Grey's proposal are at present occupying the cabinets, and it is to be hoped that a means will be found to make it acceptable ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... group of peasants was gathered about the inn table. There were some young girls seated among the blouses; one of them, for the hour that we had sat waiting for Fend l'Air to be captured and harnessed, had been singing songs of questionable taste in a voice of such contralto sweetness as to have touched the heart of a bishop. "Some young girls from the factories at Avranches, mesdames, who come here Sundays to get a bit of fresh air; Dieu soit si elles en ont besoin, pauvres enfants!" was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... 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 ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... between 1693 and 1700, for instance, they varied from 40s. to 240s. a cwt., so that they may yet see them at a remunerative figure. 'Upon the whole', says an eighteenth-century writer, 'though many have acquired large estates by hops, their real advantage is perhaps questionable. By engrossing the attention of the farmer they withdraw him from slower and more certain sources of wealth, and encourage him to rely too much upon chance for his rent, rather than the honest labour of the plough. To the landlord the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... levels, now descending to lower, as it became necessary to view a habitation from one side or the other. But search as they might, nothing stood out in any place that was of a suspicious nature. There were no questionable wire clothes-lines, for here every one seemed to use cotton lines. No flagpoles rose aloft, up which antennas wires could be hoisted in the guise of halyards. No kites flew from back yards. No lightning-rods ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... morality of the Manichees was pure, and though their religion is regarded by some as a sort of Christianity, there were but few points in which it was an improvement on Zoroastrianism. Its Dualism was pronounced and decided; its Trinitarianism was questionable; its teaching with respect to Christ destroyed the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement; its "Ertang " was a poor substitute for Holy Scripture. Even its morality, being deeply penetrated with asceticism, was of a wrong type and inferior to that preached by Zoroaster. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... Here we were then once more at sea, and although on board a ship of which the stability was very questionable, we had hopes, if the wind continued favorable, of reaching the coast of Guiana in the ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... to wave adieu or a recognition with her handkerchief, or see others doing this, denotes that she will soon make a questionable pleasure trip, or she may knowingly run the gauntlet of disgrace to secure ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... answer, when requested to go armed against the assault of Terry, is worthy of preservation. And now that his assailant has been arrested in his career by death, all honest men who respect the law will breathe more freely. Judge Terry had gained a most questionable reputation, not for courage in the right direction; not for generosity which overlooked or forgave, or forgot offenses against himself or his interests. He never conceded the right to any man to hold an opinion in opposition to his prejudices, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... magnificence of at least questionable taste, very much decolletee, wearing large diamonds at her ears, and rings on all her fingers, the young baroness was insolently handsome, of a beauty sensuous even to coarseness. With hair of a bluish black, twisted over the neck in heavy ringlets, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... that, "There is scarcely an English idiom which Milton has not violated, or a foreign one which he has not borrowed." Now, in answer to this extravagant assertion, I will venture to say that the two following are the sole cases of questionable idiom throughout Milton:—1st, "Yet virgin of Proserpine from Jove;" and, in this case, the same thing might be urged in apology which Aristotle urges in another argument, namely, that anonymon to pathos, the case is unprovided with any ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... finds it — a feudal baron who holds his own with undisputed sway — and an ogre whose victims are so many more than he can eat, that he actually keeps a private graveyard for the balance." Who is honestly able to give the shrikes a better character than Dr. Coues, just quoted? A few offer them questionable defence by recording the large numbers of English sparrows they kill in a season, as if wanton carnage ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... the proof once more, Decherd," said Eddring, "and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one of noble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are together equal, in posse, as we will say, to these valuable lands. Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... any occurrence during your Majesty's absence, which might cause public inconvenience from the want of immediate access to the Royal authority, or compel any assumption of power on the part of your Majesty's servants of a questionable character. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... say next, or whether our talk had come to a deadlock then and there. I had a great deal more myself to say; but the present opportunity seemed to be questionable. And then it was gone; for Mr. Dinwiddie mounted the hill and came to take ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... that we have no further need of organized religion. In all my experience of meeting and talking, often becoming intimately acquainted, with girls and women of all sorts, I have never known one, however questionable, to whom the church was not, after all, held in respect as the one all-powerful ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... may be fortuitous. Their relative 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 and mazdao creator. The period ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... use of tobacco is of no benefit, is a continual and useless expense, and, in many instances, causes a derangement of the healthy action of the body.(112) With the bad effects of the nicotine must be included those of questionable substances added to the tobacco by the manufacturer, either for their ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... the wounded lie on the hard floor, row on row. Only the largest wounds are dressed. We convey another soldier and an old woman to the place but we cannot move everybody who lies exposed in the sun. It would be endless and it is questionable whether those whom we can drag to the dressing station can come out alive, because even here nothing really effective can be done. Later, we ascertain that the wounded lay for days in the burnt-out hallways of the hospital ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... of over twenty-seven years later, the wisdom and necessity of answering anonymous newspaper letters of this kind might be deemed questionable, but it must be remembered that, although the Pearl Street station was working successfully, and Edison's comprehensive plans were abundantly vindicated, the enterprise was absolutely new and only just stepping ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... some instances, unwisely. In connection with this subject, too, I venture the opinion that the means of collecting the revenue, especially from imports, have been so embarrassed by legislation as to make it questionable whether or not large amounts are not lost by failure to collect, to the direct loss of the Treasury and to the prejudice of the interests of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... orator, Caesar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Caesar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Singh was one of the eight sirdars appointed 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 the ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... healthy, always healthy again,—it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that nothing will now any ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... go over your wardrobe in the spring or fall, do not keep any old, useless, or even questionable, garments, for "fear you ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... conditions. Such advocacy in the judgment of the author is not wise. It is true that in some instances a stand of the various clovers is more certainly assured when they are sown without a nurse crop, but in such situations it is at least questionable if it would not be better to sow some other crop as a substitute for clover. But there may be instances, as where clover will make a good crop of hay the year that it is sown, when sowing it thus would ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... Falstaff had just the same 'naivete', but in Falstaff it was the 'naivete' of conscious humour. In Pepys it was quite different, for Pepys's 'naivete' was the inoffensive vanity of a man who loved to see himself in the glass. Falstaff had a sense, too, of inadvertent humour, but it was questionable whether Pepys could have had any sense of humour at all, and yet permitted himself to be so delightful. There was probably, however, more involuntary humour in Pepys's Diary than there was in any other book extant. When he told his readers of the landing of Charles II. at Dover, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... P'u-sa who are involved, it should be enough simply to pray. Why, then, must the women also go and pass the night in the temple? There must be some questionable artifice ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli

... of the nurses. It must not be supposed that her appointment was the result of any ill design. Such was the difficulty of obtaining attendance, that little choice was left, and the nurses being all of questionable character, it was supposed she was only a shade worse than her fellows, while she was known to be active and courageous. And this was speedily proved; for when Saint Faith's was deserted by the others, she remained at her post, and quitted ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Sometimes we may see it in a great city, when we feel puzzled, by the almost total absence of reason in the countenance, to know whether the utter indifference to nakedness and the elements, be the consequence of drunken destitution, or pure idiocy. To this questionable appearance had the individual we speak of come. The day was now nearly past, and the crowd had considerably diminished, when this man, approaching Father Matthew, knelt down, and clasping ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... great scheme of social reconstruction. It would be a poor service to Socialism to pretend that this scheme is complete. From this point onward one enters upon a series of less unanimous utterances and more questionable suggestions. Concerning much of what follows, Socialism has as yet not elaborated its teaching. It has to do so, it is doing so, but huge labours lie before its servants. Before it can achieve any full measure of realization, it has to overcome problems at present ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... palace of Hugh Johnstone, the startled Justine Delande was awake long before the dawn, thinking only of the meeting of the morning, her bosom heaving with its first questionable secret, but Major Alan Hawke smiled as he leisurely breakfasted later, reading a telegram just received. "On my way. Will come to private address. Send servants to Allahabad to join ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... teaching amongst her acquaintances. Her moral and religious principles were known by the firm stand she took against common incentives to dissipation and irreligion—such as card-playing and Sunday entertainments—against the introduction of questionable topics, unseemly language, and vacuous frivolity into conversation. Her religious influence, thus far, was almost a silent or negative one; but it had its effect on others, and laid the foundation of that direct searching and far-reaching ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... of printer's typographical errors have been corrected. In some cases, questionable spellings, tense and words (e.g.: vindicative) ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... true that the book is full of that exceedingly arbitrary and unproved assertion, of that rather fanciful terminology, of those sometimes questionable aesthetic obiter dicta, of which, from first to last, Mr Arnold was so prolific. When he talks about the mysterious "grand style," and tells us that Milton can never be affected, we murmur, "De gustibus!" ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Sunday was made up chiefly of women and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard. Mr. Byles Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it was wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When he came to pray for "our youthful sister, missing from her pious home, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with a wall in the middle. Scarcely had the words been spoken than Sir Thomas slipped away and sent off for workmen to London, who, in the night time, so speedily and silently laboured, that the next morning discovered the court double which the night had left single. It is questionable whether the Queen next day was more contented with the conformity to her fancy, or more pleased with the surprise and sudden alteration when the courtiers disported themselves with their expressions, avowing that it was no ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... treatment should not be attempted, but the immediate destruction of the animal is advised. A burn of the third degree, where there is a destruction of the vitality of large areas of tissue, even on parts not subject to much motion, is extremely tedious to treat; in fact, it is questionable whether the treatment and keep of the animal will ever be compensated for, even though recovery does take place; this, in any event, will require at least six or eight weeks. Burns caused by lightning stroke and trolley wires are liable to occur in irregular lines, and, unless death occurs ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... promenades. Even the churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when the moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the patriotic discipline in which the members of the Committee keep their fellow- citizens may gall some of them, yet ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... women an opportunity to look into a hundred homes and see how they were furnished, it added a hundred thousand copies to the circulation. There was nothing new in publishing pictures of rooms and, had it merely done this, it is questionable whether success would have followed the effort. It was the way in which it was done. The note struck entered into the feminine desire, reflected it, piqued curiosity, and ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... of the council, and by his great local influence in his own county, lent a strenuous support to the national administration. It is attributable to his sagacity and energy, that New Hampshire—then under a federal governor—was saved the disgrace of participation in the questionable, if not treasonable, projects of the Hartford Convention. He identified himself with the cause of the country, and was doubtless as thoroughly alive with patriotic zeal, at this eventful period, as in the old days of Bunker Hill, and Saratoga, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which, under the name of Abbotsford, has become indelibly associated with his history. The soil was then a barren waste, but by extensive improvements the place speedily assumed the aspect of amenity and beauty. The mansion, a curious amalgamation, in questionable taste, of every species of architecture, was partly built in 1811, and gradually extended with the increasing emoluments of the owner. By successive purchases of adjacent lands, the Abbotsford property became likewise ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... the effects of the Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth century it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth to Spain and France. But by the close of the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the Italian painters towards ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... of Massachusetts who were among the first to shed their blood. Dear friends, it is war time now: if you could only realize that, a good many things would be set straight. Not able to give up doubtful games and questionable dances? Why in '76 the women fired at their ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner

... point of view with the nature of the human mind, and with the state of its morbid conditions, on which I respectfully solicit your Lordship's elucidation. In your Lordship's judgment of 1815, on the Portsmouth petition, it is laid down that "from the moment that (meaning this questionable and disputed unsoundness) had been established, down to this moment, it appears to me however to have been at the same time established, that whatever may be the degree of weakness or imbecility of the party,—whatever may be the degree of incapacity ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... friend Languet, "to beware lest the thirst of lucre should creep into a mind which had hitherto admitted nothing but the love of truth and an anxiety to deserve well of all men." After the death of this monitor, however, he engaged in a second scheme of this very questionable nature, and was only prevented from embarking by the arrival of the queen's peremptory orders for his return to court and that of Fulke Greville ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... then we must ask the Germans to take nothing with them that does not belong to them. It is more than questionable ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... exclaimed, and stood aside. Then there was a moment's silence, broken by faint applause. Even to a crew of noisy boys and girls playing the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and buried, there is something questionable in the sudden appearance of a young married woman, the mistress of the house, in a riding-coat and jackboots; and Mrs. Oke's expression did not make the jest seem ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... signifying his willingness to have his son attend. Few fathers have attended, sometimes none at all. On one occasion there were thirty-five boys and not one father.[58] Requiring permission may be regarded as an assumption that the talk is questionable; and, furthermore, the requiring of special permission is likely to create an undesirable attitude on the part of the boy. Plans for father and son meetings which will be free from these objections will possibly be developed by other schools or social ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... another more or less moral North American deity whose evolution is rather questionable. Pere Brebeuf (1636), speaking of the Hurons, says that "they have recourse to Heaven in almost all their necessities,... and I may say that it is, in fact, God whom they blindly adore, for they imagine that there is an Oki, that is, a demon, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... mankind of that which they know they ought not to do, and neglecting to do that which they know ought to be done—may be found in the fact that so few are trained to regard, in every thing, the sacred rights of conscience. They are referred to other and more questionable standards ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... into the Bahia de Xagua.) The streets of Trinidad have all a rapid descent: there, as in most parts of Spanish America, it is complained that the Couquistadores chose very injudiciously the sites for new towns.* (* It is questionable whether the town founded by Velasquez was not situated in the plain and nearer the ports of Casilda and Guaurabo. It has been suggested that the fear of the French, Portuguese and English freebooters led to the selection, even ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... taken seats where they could find them, on a dirty bed, a wooden trunk, and two or three chairs of doubtful integrity, grunted a questionable welcome to the new-comer. As he looked about him, he was not particularly proud of the company in which he found himself. The faces he recognized were those of the laziest and most incapable workmen in the town—men whose ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... impossible, that it has appeared like a waste of time and labor to prepare for it; and the result has been, that we had come to look upon military education with much the same feeling as that with which we regard the pugilistic art, as of questionable, if not decidedly disreputable character, and such as a nation of our respectability could by no possibility have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... 11. l. 2. Pledge me to thy faith, O raja. Bopp has rendered 'pranayaswa,' uxorem duc, but this is questionable. The root 'ni,' with the preposition 'pari,' has that sense, but with 'pra' its usual acceptation is 'to love, to bear affection.' I have not met with it in the sense 'to marry.' Bopp is followed by Rosen in assigning this ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... Barres, the intriguing Sieyes, the brave Moulins, the insignificant Roger Ducos, and the honest but somewhat too ingenuous Gohier. The result was a mediocre dignity before the world at large and a very questionable tranquillity at home. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... for about a mile, which took him far enough to windward to enable him to fetch the canoe on the next tack. He then hove about without a moment's delay, for the little craft was by this time perilously close to the surf, and it was questionable whether they would reach her in time to save her from being caught and dashed to pieces in it. So close, indeed, was she that Leslie began to seriously ask himself whether he was justified in taking the ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... with man this right has been practically recognized, whether among warriors or robbers, as paramount to every other. Yet Septimius could not feel easy in availing himself of this right. He therefore resolved to keep the watch, and even the sword and fusil,—which were less questionable spoils of war,—only till he should be able to restore them to some representative of the young officer. The contents of the purse, in accordance with the request of the dying youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of those whom the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... let go his left, but was short, and received a counter in return which sounded all over the place; then they went at it hammer and tongs and kept the Referee very busy separating them, and making them fight fair. Questionable prize-ring methods were resorted to by both men, and the knowledge shown by these amateurs of the little unfair tricks of the professional prize-fighter was astonishing. The bank clerk took especial ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... some years back, to have paid a good deal of attention to this noble relic of old times. The late count began a chapel, I think in questionable taste, of which the walls now cover the venerable and vaulted cavity, where knights and barons used to worship long ago. He built, likewise, a sort of summer-house hard by,—of which the flooring, red roof, and whitewashed walls, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... memoir of Voltaire was, no doubt, far from solving the problem proposed; but it was at least distinguished by elegance, clearness, and precision of language; I shall add, by a severe style of argument; for if the author occasionally arrives at questionable results, it is only when he borrows false data from the chemistry and physics of the epoch,—sciences which had just sprung into existence. Moreover, the anti-Cartesian colour of some of the parts of the memoir of Voltaire was calculated to find little favour in a society, where Cartesianism, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... flaw. The intelligence potential was too low. The embryo would not be capable of understanding the planted memories as they came to the conscious level, nor be capable of acting on them if they were understood. Time was ebbing fast, and vitality with it. Very well, then, the most desperate, the most questionable resource of all remained. The unused, unrecognized prime center, true seat of the intellect, must be activated the way nature presumably had intended that it should be, had not something gone wrong in the dawn ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... 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 case; for luckily my father had made up that very day his private account of the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... forced humour]. Since the sum Works out a minus then in every case And never shows a plus,—why should you be So resolute your capital to place In such a questionable lottery? ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... would be. Well! his risks, as they stood, were pretty considerable. He chose the lesser—not without something of a struggle, some keen personal smart. He had done a good many mean and questionable things in his time, but never anything as gross as this. The thought of what his relation to a certain group of men—to Denny especially—would be in the future, stung sharply. But it is the part of the man ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... streets, having, in lieu of beer and ale, drunk wine all this while, and fed upon different viands. Now, the stomach is like a crucible, for it hath a chemical kind of virtue to transmute one body into another, to transsubstantiate fish and fruits into flesh within and about us; but tho it be questionable whether I wear the same flesh which is fluxible, I am sure my hair is not the same, for you may remember I went flaxen-haired out of England, but you shall find me returned with a very dark brown, which I impute not only to the heat and air of those hot countries I have eat my bread in, but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... cover of all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. Except for the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book called Tales of Space and Time, no short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume. Many of very questionable merit find a place; it is an inclusive and not an exclusive gathering. And the task of selection and revision brings home to me with something of the effect of discovery that I was once an industrious writer of short stories, and that I am no longer ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the second condition of Vesuvius. But when a now fire bursts out, a face of desolations comes on, not to be rectified in ages. Therefore, when men come before us, and rise up like an exhalation from the ground, they come in a questionable shape, and we must exorcise them, and try whether their intents be wicked or charitable, whether they bring airs from heaven or blasts from hell. This is the first time that our records of Parliament have heard, or our experience or history given us an account of any ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... in Caroline feared, as before, that he was the one of all her children whom Belforest was most damaging. Allen was expensive, but in an elegant, exquisite kind of way; but Jock was simply reckless ; and his pleasures were questionable enough to be on the borders of vices, which might change the frank, sweet, merry face that now looked up to her into a countenance stained by dissipation ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable morality of the received narrative of his career, and its unquestionable untruth. The emergence of the Swiss from slavery to freedom, as in the case of all other nations, was undoubtedly a gradual process, and there is now every reason ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... heroical acts of David. From that time forth—I speak with all diffidence, and merely as it seems to me—he is a broken man. His attitude in Absalom's rebellion is all but imbecile. No act is recorded of him to the day of his death but what is questionable, if not mean and crafty. The one sudden flash of the old nobleness which he has shewn in pardoning Shimei, he himself stultifies with his dying lips by a mean command to Solomon to entrap and slay the man whom he has too rashly forgiven. The whole matter of the sacrifice ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... that in the present worldwide convulsion we should be fighting vigorously on the same side as Russia, who has long been regarded as one of our natural enemies. Some worthy people may even feel qualms of conscience at finding themselves in such questionable company, and may be disposed to inquire how far we are politically and morally justified in thus putting aside, even for a time, our traditional convictions. It is mainly for the benefit of such conscientious doubters, who deserve sympathy, that I have undertaken my present task; and I propose ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... It is questionable whether the opening couplet quotes the deliverance of Israel from Egypt as a precedent for the future return of the northern tribes from captivity, described in the lines that follow; or whether this return is at once predicted by the couplet, with the usual prophetic ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... thrown into intense excitement. The Legislature called attention to the insurrection,[496] and declared legal some very questionable and summary acts. In 1743 the people had not recovered from the fright they received from the insurrection. On the 7th of May, 1743, an Act was passed requiring every white male inhabitant, who resorted "to any church or any other public place of divine worship, within" the Province to "carry with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... have been trained in the conventionalities of society, have been left to pick up as they may their ideas upon personal conduct, and, coming face to face with puzzling problems, are at a loss, and perhaps are led into wrong ways of thinking and questionable ways of doing because no one has foreseen their dilemma and warned them how to ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... persons not indelicate, must be 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 ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... that we have never had a breathing-spell, and we need, more than any other people on the globe, immunity from disturbing experiments on novel questions of doubtful expediency. We can not afford to risk our future prosperity and happiness in making an innovation so questionable. We want peace, and must have it. Let Massachusetts or New York, or some older State, therefore, try this nauseating dose. If it does not kill them, or if it proves healthful and beneficial, we guarantee that Kansas will not be long in swallowing it. But the stomach of our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... heartily to this end, he had almost accomplished it, when he received the suggestion for an experiment on a much larger scale. Embedded at the corner of a grassplot across the street was a whitewashed stone, the size of a small watermelon and serving no purpose whatever save the questionable one of decoration. It was easily pried up with a stick; though getting it to the caldron tested the full strength of the ardent labourer. Instructed to perform such a task, he would have sincerely maintained its ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable—we were yet liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of the north did not extend farther than New York; and ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... a long period of darkness. In his eyes, not only his master, but everything else, must yield to the power of the Queen. He had heard Antony at Tarsus inveigh against "the Egyptian serpent," protesting that he would make her pay so dearly for her questionable conduct towards himself and the cause of Caesar that the treasure-houses on the Nile should be like an empty wine-skin; yet, a few hours after, body and soul had been in her toils. So it had continued till the battle of Actium. Now there was nothing more to lose; but what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of, and the calabashes, kettles, buckets, and pans were passed along from hand to hand from the hold to the side of the vessel and back again with the greatest rapidity. We kept the water under, but that was all; and it seemed most questionable whether we should be able in this condition to get back to Sooloo. Along the whole coast there was not a place where we could venture to enter to repair damages, for although the Malays might not kill their fellow-religionists ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... taken up against Religion, of its being an austere gloomy service; and thus secure a previous favourable impression against any time, when they might have an opportunity of explaining or enforcing their sentiments. This is always a questionable, and, it is to be feared, a dangerous policy. Many mischievous consequences necessarily resulting from it might easily be enumerated. But it is a policy particularly unsuitable to our inconsiderate and dissipated times, and to the lengths ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... questionable if we would have turned this stampede before daybreak, had not the nature of the country come to our assistance. Something over two miles below the camp of the last herd was a deep creek, the banks of which were steep and the passages few and narrow. Here we succeeded ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... in India.—There are said to be ten varieties of the coffee, but only one is found indigenous to India, and it is questionable if this is not the Mocha species introduced from Arabia. The cultivation of this important crop is spreading fast throughout the east, and has been adopted in many parts of Hindostan. In the Tenasserim provinces, on the table land of Mysore, in Penang, and especially in the islands of Bourbon ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... densitate pinguescit: ut dicas esse aut carneum liquorem aut edibilem potionem.' Questionable praise, according to the ideas of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... interrupted by civil convulsions in the countries from which they are principally drawn. A part of the effect, too, is doubtless owing to an increase of operatives and improvements in machinery. But on the whole it is questionable whether the reduction in the price of lands, produce, and manufactures has been greater than the appreciation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... boiled fowls, and ducks, and tongues, flanked by cranberry and apple sauces, and mashed turnips and potatoes. On the sideboard (for be it remembered, it was "when this old cap was new," and a practice which now is considered, at least, questionable, was then held in all honor, and its neglect was never dreamed of, and would have drawn down an imputation of nigardliness and want of breeding) stood bottles of wine, and flagons containing still stronger liquors, together with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... place being thus, and it seemed to him the night had passed with unnatural quickness. But he thought more of the fact that he had been beguiled into spending his wedding-night in a graveyard in such questionable company, and of what explanation he could ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... nothing to fear from the serpent, to the great relief of those who watched; but it had begun to be questionable how long their present position would be safe, for the water was rising now with wonderful rapidity, great waves tearing down the river from time to time, bearing enormous masses of tangled tree and bush ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... imagined. Lucinda was nineteen years of age. She was pretty, and, for a girl of her class and station in life, tolerably well educated. But she was notwithstanding a light, giddy creature—and, I fear, something worse, at that time. At all events, she had a very questionable sort of reputation among the boarders in the house, and was regarded with suspicion by everyone who knew anything about her poor ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... may be shocked at certain expressions in this poem, borrowed from the Romish devotional school, may verify my language at the Romish booksellers, who find just now a rapidly increasing sale for such ware. And is it not after all a hopeful sign for the age that even the most questionable literary tastes must nowadays ally themselves with religion—that the hotbed imaginations which used to batten on Rousseau and Byron have now risen at least as high as the Vies des Saints and St. Francois de Sales' Philothea? The truth is, that in such a time as this, in the dawn of an age ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... c. 12. If any corruption was used to promote the interest of religion, an advocate of Athanasius might justify or excuse this questionable conduct, by the example of Cato and Sidney; the former of whom is said to have given, and the latter to have received, a bribe ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... possess the exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A] also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,—a right exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant." From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. The disbarred one has only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various



Words linked to "Questionable" :   supposed, suspicious, problematical, dubitable, confutative, impugnable, soi-disant, suspect, problematic, so-called, doubtful, alleged, refutable, self-styled, in question, debatable, apocryphal, unquestionable, contestable, equivocal, shady, fishy



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