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More "Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my ceremonies," she said to des Lupeaulx,—ambiguous words, by which she expressed the annoyance she felt with the secretary for presuming to interfere with her private parties, to which she admitted only a select few. She left the room without bowing to Rabourdin, who remained alone with des Lupeaulx; the latter ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is the title of an English novel, reprinted by A. Hart, Philadelphia, illustrative of German life and character, and in all respects of more interest than would be predicted from its ambiguous designation. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... little way, the greatest width of that island scarce exceeding a furlong, and they walked gently. Herrick was like one in a dream. He had come there with a mind divided; come prepared to study that ambiguous and sneering mask, drag out the essential man from underneath, and act accordingly; decision being till then postponed. Iron cruelty, an iron insensibility to the suffering of others, the uncompromising pursuit of his own interests, cold culture, manners without humanity; these he had looked for, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... riding down the trail at a lope. She couldn't have gone far, he reasoned, and if she had been out all night in the rain, with no better shelter than Rock City afforded, she would need help,—"and lots of it, and pretty darn quick," he added to John Doe, which was the ambiguous name of his horse. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... singular, atavistic reversion, the last descendant resembled the old grandsire, from whom he had inherited the pointed, remarkably fair beard and an ambiguous expression, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of these words rejected by Protestants? Is it because the text is in itself obscure and ambiguous? By no means; but simply because they do not comprehend how God could perform so stupendous a miracle as to give His body and blood for ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... in a crisis. Mr. Balfour expressed his unbounded confidence in Kruger's sweet reasonableness and in the justice of the British cause; he could not believe there would be war. Mr. Chamberlain entered into ambiguous negotiations, beginning in a way that made everyone, especially Kruger, imagine that the Government would accept less than the Bloemfontein minimum. Of preparing to coerce the Boers there was no sign. The Boers began to get their forces in order. In England ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... she dead? Ah, yes, now I remember you wrote to me that she was dead——Look at this dress, sisters—a present from my dear husband; is it not handsome? and then quite modern. Yes, yes, dear Gabriele, you need not make such an ambiguous face; it is very handsome, and quite in the fashion, that I can assure you. But, a propos, how is the Court-preacher? Exists still in a new form, does it? Now that is good! I'll put it on this afternoon on purpose to horrify Jacobi, and tell him that for the future ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... This ambiguous answer giving me some uneasiness, I replied: "I know but two ways of overturning the throne of Napoleon: the first is, to assassinate him!" As I pronounced these words, I turned my eyes a little aside, that I might not embarrass M. Werner, and might observe him at my ease. "Assassinate him!" exclaimed ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Chancellor Oxenstiern, while he lived, and after his decease, by his son and successor in his office. The Queen of Sweden was equally favourable to Grotius; but she unadvisedly took an adventurer into her confidence, and sent him, in an ambiguous character, to Paris. This disgusted Grotius: and age and infirmities now thickened upon him. He applied to the Queen for his recall. She granted it in the most flattering terms, and desired him to repair immediately to Stockholm, to receive, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... This sentence is ambiguous, because it might mean the opposite: Temo que no llegue demasiado temprano sino demasiado tarde. The tone of the voice must be relied upon or a different construction must ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... so help a little in the grouping of the letters into words, clauses, and sentences, which the mind had hitherto been compelled to do unaided. It was used at the end of a sentence, at the end of a clause, to indicate abbreviations, to separate crowded words, especially where the sense was ambiguous (ANICEMAN might be either AN ICE MAN or A NICE MAN), or even as an aesthetic ornament between the letters of an inscription. In early manuscripts the period is usually placed high ([Symbol: High Dot]) ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... these proceedings with much interest, for the girl amused and pleased him. She had far more colour than any one there, for whatever brightness was to be found in Miss Birdseye's rather faded and dingy human collection had gathered itself into this attractive but ambiguous young person. There was nothing ambiguous, by the way, about her confederate; Ransom simply loathed him, from the moment he opened his mouth; he was intensely familiar—that is, his type was; he was simply the detested carpet-bagger. He was false, cunning, vulgar, ignoble; the cheapest ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... ruse seems to have been a favorite device, for it was tried later in another conspicuous instance, the negotiation of the Concordat. According to the authentic articles, France was to have Belgium, with the "limits of France" as decreed by the laws of the republic, a purposely ambiguous expression. In this preliminary outline the Rhine boundary was not mentioned. The territory of the Empire was also guaranteed. These flat contradictions indicate something like panic on both sides, and duplicity at least ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... are apparent in all the phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: ALL MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE AND BEFORE THE LAW; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE: does that mean that they are equal in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... of sound representation heretofore given serves to compare the materials of the main body of the Dak with Fick's I E bases. The results are, however, in many cases ambiguous. Besides the number of accidental resemblances of the Dakotan to the I E languages seems, to be much greater than the whole number of similarities between Dakotan and Algonkin languages. Dak anapta is identical with ...
— The Dakotan Languages, and Their Relations to Other Languages • Andrew Woods Williamson
... only the limitation which is set to all power by the laws of God; others from thinking that it excluded generally the influence of the secular power on what were properly spiritual matters. When the clause was laid before them, at the morning sitting of Feb. 11, it was received with an ambiguous silence; but on closer consideration, it was so evidently their only possible resource, that in the afternoon, first the Upper House of Convocation, and then the Lower, gave their consent. Then the King accepted the money-bill, and granted them ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... verse. Tennyson was too sincere by nature, and too strongly averse to experimenting in new fields of poetry, to attempt the affected or unique. He purposely avoided all subjects which he feared he could not treat with simplicity and clearness. So, in his shorter poems, there are few obscure or ambiguous passages, little that is not easy of comprehension. His subjects themselves tend to prevent ambiguity or obscurity. For he wrote of men and women as he saw them about him, of their joys and sorrows, their trials, their ideals,—and ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... stop being so ambiguous," Whitlow protested in a small voice. "Just what is this project? How does it work? Will it ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... policy of wealth taxation. These exceptions still leave the law in its general principles as to the taxation of intangible property illogical and unjust. A solution can be found only by abandoning the ambiguous legal concept of property, and making use of economic concepts. A consistent tax law might take either wealth or capital as the basis of assessment, but not sometimes the one and sometimes the other. Wealth is an impersonal basis of taxation; each piece of wealth might be taxed once as a unit ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the whole he thought so—upon the whole, he didn't know that there was much ground for complaint; the architect, perhaps, might have—but his double, Mr. Slope, who had sidled over to the bishop's chair, would not allow his lordship to finish his ambiguous speech. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Why the deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had no intention of explaining. She simply waited for ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... hundred toumans (150l.); and as I seemed in no hurry to give them, he sent for his shield back again. Some time afterwards, he came to see me, and asked why I had returned it. 'You sent for it by your nazir,' I said. 'My nazir,' he replied, (although the man was present and looking on with an ambiguous smile,) 'is a rogue and a storyteller; give me a hundred toumans and I will let you have the shield, which indeed is yours. I begged you to accept it as well as every thing else I may possess.' And so ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... blend of Russian, Chinese, Turkish, and Western systems of law that combines aspects of a parliamentary and presidential system; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... vision; splendidly arrayed and pitifully tattered; the diamond ear- drops still glittering in her ears; and with the movement of her coming, one small breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces. At that ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubt was; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in mine?" Does Teufelsdrockh, here glance at that "SOCIETY FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PROPERTY (Eigenthums-conservirende Gesellschaft)," of which so many ambiguous notices glide spectra-like through these inexpressible Paper-bags? "An Institution," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants of the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already can the Society number, among its office-bearers or corresponding members, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... justice, that I have never had anything in my heart but complete submission, and that in my most terrible moments I have not soiled my soul with evil wishes." Further on, he tells her that nothing in him is changed; and suddenly seized with a terrible doubt from the ambiguous tone of her letter, he cries, in allusion to a picture of Wierzchownia which always hung in his study: "Oh! I am perhaps very unjust, but this injustice comes from the passion of my heart. I should have liked ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... precedents travel." And the people of the United States, as we have seen, appealed to the last argument, rather than acquiesce in their authority. Could it have been the purpose of Washington and his illustrious associates, by the use of ambiguous, equivocal, and expansive words, such as "rules," "regulations," "territory," to re-establish in the Constitution of their country that fort which had been prostrated amid the toils and with the sufferings and sacrifices of seven years of war? Are these words to be understood ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... wretch who brought him there could not correctly describe his person,—I now forget which. In short, the persecution would never have relented for a moment, if the judges, superseding (though with an ambiguous example) the strict rule of their artificial duty by the higher obligation of their conscience, did not constantly throw every difficulty in the way of such informers. But so ineffectual is the power of legal evasion against legal iniquity, that it was but the other day that a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to a further consideration. Science and Philosophy are alike created by the simple determination to be thorough in our thinking about the problems which all things and events present to us, to use no terms whose meaning is ambiguous, to assert no propositions as true until we are satisfied that they are either directly apprehended as true, or strictly deducible from other propositions which are thus apprehended. But now that the area of facts open to our exploration has become far too vast ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... her sentence grammatically ambiguous, but practically lucid enough to convey a decided impression that a rod for Mr Benden was lying in ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... called Sowing the Wind, which has recently been published, the authoress (for we assume, in spite of the ambiguous assertion on the title-page, that the pen which wrote it was not really a man's) goes to very great lengths. The hero, St. John Aylott, is always snubbing and lecturing Isola, whom he married when she was half a child, and whom he treats as a child long after she has become a great and glorious ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Thanks to these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector's visits ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... was scarcely five feet from the ground, and although he was fully cognisant of the necessity, under the above-mentioned circumstances, of throwing the Signora out of the window, he yet felt troubled by a sense of painful uneasiness, and the more so since she had imparted to him in no ambiguous terms an interesting secret as to her condition. He hardly dared to make inquiries; and he was not a little surprised about eight months afterwards at receiving a tender letter from his beloved wife, in which she made not the slightest allusion to what had taken place ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... closer together the members of a phrase was borrowed from Beethoven, but not the manner in which it is carried out. In the earlier master it often stands out as a special feature; here we have, besides, counter rhythm, and ambiguous modulation. When the principal theme returns, it is clothed first with subdominant, then with tonic minor harmony. The movement concludes with a vigorous coda evolved from the opening theme. Five bars from the end, the first two bars ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... I dreamed I know not what, It seemed that certain apparitions were, Which sang uncanny words, significant And yet ambiguous—half-understood— Portending evil; and an awful spook, Even as I stood with my accomplices, Counted me out, as children do in play. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... "The savage here the settler slew," is ambiguous. Savage may be the subject, following the regular order of subject; or settler may be the subject, the order being inverted. In Latin, distinct forms would be used, and it would not ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... was thus expressed: "It would be sending a bishop to Connecticut, which they [the bishops of England] have no right to do without the consent of the State, and such a bishop would not be received in Connecticut." The phrase "consent of the State" is ambiguous. It may refer to the Continental Congress or to the authorities of the particular State concerned. If, however, there were any who gave to the phrase the first of these interpretations, they appear to have speedily abandoned it and to have adopted the ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... certain inequalities in the distribution of wealth; but they fiercely resented the idea that such inequalities should give a group of men any special advantages which were inaccessible to their fellow-countrymen. The full meaning of their complaint against the Bank was left vague and ambiguous, because the Bank itself possessed special legal privileges; and the inference was that when these privileges were withdrawn, the "Money Power" would disappear with them. The Western Democrat devoutly believed that an approximately equal division of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... most distant thoughts of marriage; the finger-circling ring, the purity-figuring glove, the envy-pining bride-maids, the wishing parson, and the simpering clerk. Farewell, the ambiguous blush-raising joke, the titter-provoking pun, the morning-stirring drum.—No son of mine shall exist, to bear my ill-fated name. No nurse come chuckling, to tell me it is a boy. No midwife, leering at me from under the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by the whole of his character, but at the time they are harsh and unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's necessity of giving strong blows to the audience, that I have never seen a player in this character, who did not exaggerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous features,—these temporary deformities in the character. They make him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly degrades his gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; they make him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's father,—contempt in its ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... la Haye's ambiguous position brought most of the upper town to the signing of the marriage contract. The comparative poverty of the young couple and the absence of a corbeille quickened the interest that people love to exhibit; for it is with ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... of Lewis, to efface the shame of the late ignominious war, to restore England to the same place in Europe which she had occupied under Cromwell, became more and more urgent in his representations. Arlington's replies were for some time couched in cold and ambiguous terms. But the events which followed the meeting of Parliament, in the autumn of 1667, appear to have produced an entire change in his views. The discontent of the nation was deep and general. The administration was attacked in all its parts. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some miserable days then. It was useless to upbraid her mother. She always posed as the injured one, and could not see that in robbing her child of a real home she was strewing her path with dangers as well, by placing her in an ambiguous, comfortless position, from which any relief ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Bohemian, while the music was going on, he learned the language himself sufficiently to rebuke them in their own tongue. His next position was at Dresden in 1816, and here he remained nine years until his death. His position at first was somewhat ambiguous. There were two troupes of singers in the opera—an Italian and the German. The grand operas were given in Italian by the Italian company, and the light operas in German by the German company. It was Weber's task to change this, by producing new works of a distinctly higher character ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... With ambiguous amiability, Paliser smiled also. Already Margaret's beauty had stirred him. Already it had occurred to him that Lennox was very ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... been very much better for geology if so loose and ambiguous a word as "contemporaneous" had been excluded from her terminology, and if, in its stead, some term expressing similarity of serial relation, and excluding the notion of time altogether, had been employed to denote correspondence ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the tips of his fingers were aware ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... celebrations of his class; he seemed to regard both sets of exercises with a tolerant amusement, his own "crowd" "not going in much for either of those sorts of things," as he explained to Lucy. What his crowd had gone in for remained ambiguous; some negligent testimony indicating that, except for an astonishing reliability which they all seemed to have attained in matters relating to musical comedy, they had not gone in for anything. Certainly the question one ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... The ambiguous "it" appears to annoy him, for he flushes painfully, replying, "Sometimes longer. It is, a—um—uncertain," in a confused and shame-faced manner, and is luckily relieved ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... to a point where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior is. Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period, compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest questions of form into the very substance of its ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... frequently visited her," he writes, "and after passing regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant formal bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I ventured, in my careless way, to talk of friendship in rather ambiguous terms; and after her return to ——, I wrote her in the same terms. Miss, construing my remarks farther than even I intended, flew off in a tangent of female dignity and reserve, like a mounting lark in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fall into the regular channel of inheritance. I was therefore considered as heir apparent, and courted with officiousness and caresses, by the gentlemen who had hitherto coldly allowed me that rank which they could not refuse, depressed me with studied neglect, and irritated me with ambiguous insults. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... up these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love. Finally, invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth time what events they could be that led so tender a heart as Roger's to find his pleasure in clandestine and illicit ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... subject chiefly on behalf of the Close and the admirers of the Close, had made no allusion to the fact that Mrs. Peacocke was a very pretty woman. One or two other local papers had been more scurrilous, and had, with ambiguous and timid words, alluded to the Doctor's personal admiration for the lady. These, or the rumours created by them, had reached one of the funniest and lightest-handed of the contributors to 'Everybody's Business,' and he had concocted an amusing article,—which he had not intended to be at all libellous, ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... who has borne himself honorably through a whole life makes an action honorable which might appear ambiguous in others. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... provision drop than risk a defeat in the House of Lords similar to that in the House of Commons. The awkward alternative remained that Prince Albert's position, so far as it had to do with the Lord Chamberlain and the Heralds' Office, was left undecided and ambiguous. It was only by the issue of letters patent on the Queen's part, at a later date, that any certainty on this point could be attained ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... principles on which I conceive all right judgment of art must be founded. These introductory chapters I should wish to be read carefully, because all criticism must be useless when the terms or grounds of it are in any degree ambiguous; and the ordinary language of connoisseurs and critics, granting that they understand it themselves, is usually mere jargon to others, from their custom of using technical terms, by which everything is meant, and nothing ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... brighter for its dark, ambiguous background—those many questions which Prince Victor persisted in leaving unanswered. Sofia knew bad times of perplexity and depression, when the price of translation from drudge to princess seemed a sore price ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the affront in such sort as 'twas never before given to any man reviling him as a disloyal and perjured traitor. The gallant, who by his two previous lessons had been taught how to value the friar's censures, listened attentively, and sought to draw him out by ambiguous answers. "Wherefore this wrath, Sir?" he began. "Have I crucified Christ?" "Ay, mark the fellow's effrontery!" retorted the friar: "list to what he says! He talks, forsooth, as if 'twere a year or so since, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Snorer should couch below, while the Hearer should circle above,—plainly a wise provision, that the good things of Providence might not be wasted. Both Damon and Pythias agreed, that, for once at least, the oracle was not ambiguous. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... is such an ambiguous phrase!" she said. "Every man is a good fellow who eats a lot and laughs a lot and flirts a lot. Is he that sort of good fellow? Oh! I hate milksops. I needn't tell you that; but there are plenty of good fellows whom I should be sorry to see Daisy ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Seventh Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the principal and interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859, we reply that said last clause of said section is certainly indefinite, general, and ambiguous in its description of the bonds to be issued by you; giving no time at which the bonds are to be made payable, no place at which either principal or interest are to be paid, and no rate of interest which the bonds are to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... pointed out,[28] is distinctly ambiguous, and unless this ambiguity is cleared up, the effect of the Home Rule Bill, and the nature of our new constitution, will never ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his point of view not by looking outside of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... very censurable practice it is to warp doubtful and ambiguous expressions to a perverted sense, which makes the charge not the crime of others, but the construction of your own malice; nor is it allowed to draw conclusions from allowed premises, which those who lay down the premises utterly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... way." Then, still with her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride of it in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move—she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scattered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscure and ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whom it was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look. "But I've walked so much out of my way with you only just to show you that—that"—with this she paused; ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Lib. iii. ode 22. The word jus is likewise of twofold meaning, importing law and sauce, or broth; tepidumque ligurierit jus. Lib. i. sat. 3. The objection to Cicero is, that playing on both the words, and taking advantage of their ambiguous meaning, he says it could not be matter of wonder that the Verrian jus was such bad HOG-SOUP. The wit (if it deserves that name) is mean enough; but, in justice to Cicero, it should be remembered, that ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... quiet, inoffensive creature, without any principle or opinion whatsoever at variance with those of her husband, rose upon hearing this announcement; but so ambiguous were her motions, that we question whether the most sagacious prophet of all antiquity could anticipate from them the slightest possible clue to her opinion. The husband, in fact, had not yet spoken, and until he had, the poor woman did not know her own mind. Under any circumstances, it was difficult ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... government of Trajan are half-hearted and incredulous; "the rare happiness of a time when men may think what they will, and say what they think," is to his mind a mere interlude, a brief lightening of the darkness before it once more descends on a world where the ambiguous power of fate or chance is the only permanent ruler, and where the gods intervene, not to protect, but only ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... some otherwise ambiguous passages in this charming and acute essay by its title: "On the artificial comedy ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Middle Kingdom places the date about 350 A.D. But somewhere between 500 A.D. and 700 A.D. Tea had become a favorite beverage in Chinese families. Some of the written records of that ancient people push the epoch of tea-drinking back as far as 2700 B.C., appealing to ambiguous utterances of Confucius for corroboration. Tea in China had obtained sufficient importance in political economy in 783 or 793 A.D. to become an object of taxation by ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... from his account to Philip (explanatory of what he, in advance of his brother's slower judgment, thought to be a necessary step), that the Fosters had for some time received anonymous letters, warning them, with distinct meaning, though in ambiguous terms, against a certain silk-manufacturer in Spitalfields, with whom they had had straightforward business dealings for many years; but to whom they had latterly advanced money. The letters hinted at the utter insolvency of this manufacturer. They ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Babylon hundreds of years after the alphabetical system had been introduced.(7) Custom is everything in establishing our prejudices. The Japanese to-day rebel against the introduction of an alphabet, thinking it ambiguous. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... thus haughty, bold, and young, Rage gnaw'd the lip, and wonder chain'd the tongue. Silence at length the gay Antinous broke, Constrain'd a smile, and thus ambiguous spoke: "What god to your untutor'd youth affords This headlong torrent of amazing words? May Jove delay thy reign, and cumber late So bright a genius with the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... unaltered. Let any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents—how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat below the "gangway." There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... judges, the prototypes of the most fearful tribunal of modern times. Theodosius, to whom the carrying into effect of these measures was due, found it, however, more expedient for himself to institute living emblems of his personal faith than to rely on any ambiguous creed. He therefore sentenced all those to be deprived of civil rights, and to be driven into exile, who did not accord with the belief of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria. Those who presumed to celebrate Easter on ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... termed the New York controversy, while others have treated the subject in a manner which shows them to be doubtful in what light to place the transaction; and, for that reason apparently, they have slid over the matter in those general and ambiguous terms so often and reprehensibly indulged in by writers at a loss about facts, to conceal their own ignorance, or to avoid the responsibility of deciding the point at issue. But a careful examination of the subject has led us to the conclusion, that the affair ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... lyvelye then in any morall teachynge," although he knew that his "histories" were the sheerest, if not the purest, of fiction, with any moral purpose that might exist chiefly of his own creating. A century and more later Eliza Haywood, the ambiguous author of many ambiguous novels of the eighteenth century, prefaces her "Life's Progress Through the Passions" (an ambiguous title) with like hypocrisy: "I am enemy to all romances, novels, and whatever ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... David, or of Moses, as for instance that "God will circumcise the heart," enables us to judge of their spirit. If all their other expressions were ambiguous, and left us in doubt whether they were philosophers or Christians, one saying of this kind would in fact determine all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus decides the meaning of all the rest to be the opposite. So far ambiguity exists, but ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests were sometimes ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... clarion, sonorous, resonant, canorous, audible, piercing; pure, unmixed, unadulterated, unalloyed; in full, net; passable, unimpeded, unobstructed, open; acquitted; unburdened, exempt; clarified. Antonyms: opaque, obscure, indecipherable, ambiguous, equivocal, vague, cryptic, abstruse, inexplicable, roily, turbid, enigmatical, inexplicit, inaudible, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... made at Rome by the Pontifices who had the regulation of the Kalendar. The rule was to intercalate a day in every fourth year (quarto quoque anno). Now such expressions are ambiguous in Latin, as is shown by numerous examples. (Savigny, System des heut. Roem. Rechts, iv. 329.) The expression might mean that both the year one and the year four were to be included in the interpretation of this rule; and the Pontifices ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... their feelings as the nature of things would admit of; and that having tried this measure, the mediators will next proceed to another, in which their sentiments in favor of the United States will be less ambiguous. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... in arms" and the "frankness of a soldier." The questions of the President followed each other rapidly: they were clear; but it is impossible to conceive anything more confused or worse delivered than the ambiguous and perplexed replies of Bonaparte. He talked without end of "volcanoes; secret agitations, victories, a violated constitution!" He blamed the proceedings of the 18th Fructidor, of which he was the first promoter and the most powerful supporter. He pretended to be ignorant of everything ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... were surprised to see that matter quite as heterodox might be found in many high-class reviews which lay about on drawing room tables, the only difference being that the articles in the reviews were written in somewhat ambiguous language by fashionable agnostics, and that "Bible Miracles" was a plain, blunt, sixpenny tract, avowedly written for the people by ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... once a floating island, till Jupiter fastened it by adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea. Apollo and Diana were born there, and the island was sacred to Apollo. Here Aeneas consulted the oracle of Apollo, and received an answer, ambiguous as usual,—"Seek your ancient mother; there the race of Aeneas shall dwell, and reduce all other nations to their sway." The Trojans heard with joy and immediately began to ask one another, "Where is the spot intended by the oracle?" Anchises remembered that there was a tradition ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a man's words or actions disadvantageously by affected misconstruction. All words are ambiguous, and capable of different senses, some fair, some more foul; all actions have two handles, one that candour and charity will, another that disingenuity and spite may lay hold on; and in such cases ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... still quicker; and Joyce was giving the reins to both. Her mistress's gloomy and ambiguous words were crowding on her brain. Three o'clock and she had not been in bed, and was not to be found in the house? A nameless horror struggled to Joyce's face, her eyes were dilating with it; she ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and US systems that combine "continental" or "civil" code and case-precedent; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... have interpreted the very ambiguous words {houo d' hypo pythmenes esan} according to Athenaeus as quoted by Clarke, and his interpretation of them is confirmed by the Scholium in the Venetian edition of the Iliad, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of this remarkable document was perhaps open to critical objection, but that was clearly enough the meaning of it. The orthography conformed to no recognized system, but being mainly phonetic it was not ambiguous. As the probate judge remarked, it would take five aces to beat it. Mr. Brentshaw smiled good-humoredly, and after performing the last sad rites with amusing ostentation, had himself duly sworn as executor and conditional legatee under the provisions ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... of Darwin's treatment there is neither space nor need to enter. There are some ambiguous passages; but it may be said that for him, as for his followers to-day, instinctive behaviour is wholly the result of racial preparation transmitted through organic heredity. For the performance of the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece of fantasy; but I have at least ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... concerned. As the attack appeared imminent, the ships anchored or moored close to the fort hastened away, and they all passed close to the point where I was posted. At that moment the admiral signalled to me, "Ship in sight looks suspicious; stop her" Ambiguous as our signalling code is, this order seemed evidently to point to seizing one or several of the vessels just leaving the port. Of these there were four, to wit, a Belgian ship, chartered by the admiral to take off the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... certain period, separate from his family. He must undergo the perils and discomforts of the ocean; he must divest himself of all domestic pleasures; he must deprive his wife of her companion, and his children of a father and instructor, and all for what? For the ambiguous advantages which overgrown wealth and flagitious tyranny have to bestow? For a precarious possession in a land of turbulence and war? Advantages, which will not certainly be gained, and of which the acquisition, if it were sure, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... ambiguous words the Stadtholder moved forward, leaving the deputies covered with shame and swelling with indignation, while his countenance had speedily brightened. With more friendly gestures he now accepted the written petitions, and even ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... studied and understood were the characters of jurors,—with their whims and fancies and prejudices,—that he won verdict after verdict in the face of the ablest opponents and placed himself by general consent at the head of the jury lawyers of the Suffolk Bar." Adjectives less ambiguous and more uncomplimentary than "shrewd" were also applied to him, and his manner of dominating his juries did not always call forth praise from his contemporaries. In one of the newspaper obituaries at the time of his death it is admitted that he had been "charged with ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... best are poor instruments of thought; the more we use them the more ambiguous do they become; no man knows exactly what another means from what he says; every word is qualified by its context, but the context of every word is eternity. How long shall we listen to find out what a speaker meant by his opening sentence?—an hour, a day, a week, a month?—these periods ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... conveys the information that begging for money on the main street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes; number three, that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four, however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat, and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven bothers ...
— The Road • Jack London
... which seemed like surplusage, and which involved his clients in litigation, and often great losses! How many wills are contested from the carelessness of lawyers in the omission or shading of words, or ambiguous use of language! ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... clear low tones, and his queer ambiguous smile was there still; and, hat in hand, with his cane in his fingers, he made another glance and a nod over his shoulder, at the threshold, and then glided forth into the little garden, and so to the mill-road, down which, at a swift pace, he ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this intolerable anguish, Levy reappeared. His crowning hour was ripe. He intimated his knowledge of the humiliations Nora had undergone, expressed his deep compassion, offered to intercede with Egerton "to do her justice." He used ambiguous phrases, that shocked her ear and tortured her heart, and thus provoked her on to demand him to explain; and then, throwing her into a wild state of indefinite alarm, in which he obtained her solemn promise not to divulge to Audley what he was about to communicate, he said, with villanous hypocrisy ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... where they first made each other's acquaintance. Then two bridesmen led them to the nuptial chamber where they watched over them until after the first conjugal union. This last usage was not universal, and after some experience of its ambiguous character it was abolished. The purpose was that there might be witnesses to the consummation of the marriage, not merely to the wedding ceremony. The whole proceeding was a domestic and family affair, in which no priest or other outsider had any part, except as witness, and there was no religious ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... which he discusses the first of the two questions, he constantly speaks of Berkeley's theory as representing that "our visual sensations, or what we ultimately term visible objects, are originally mere internal feelings." The expression mere internal feelings, however, is ambiguous; for, as we have said, it might still imply that Mr Bailey viewed the theory as representing that there was an extension, or reciprocal outness of objects within the retina. But this doubt is entirely removed by a passage in the section alluded to, which proves that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... only too well Claire's strange, ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but divine before ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... he had almost discovered to him before he found out his own mistake. And at this the reader will be the less inclined to wonder, if he pleases to recollect the doubtful phrase in which Jones first communicated his resolution to Mr Partridge; and, indeed, had the words been less ambiguous, Partridge might very well have construed them as he did; being persuaded as he was that the whole nation were of the same inclination in their hearts; nor did it stagger him that Jones had travelled in the company of soldiers; for ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of each book and arrangement of its contents under heads; so that we may have at hand the various texts which treat of a given subject. Lastly, a note of all the passages which are ambiguous or obscure, or which seem ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... perfectly satisfied as to the propriety, nay, the necessity, of communicating with Fitzgerald. The difficulty is in what tone I should address him. I cannot say that the man directly affronted me—I cannot recollect any one expression which I could lay hold upon as offensive—but his language was ambiguous, and admitted frequently of the most insulting construction, and his manner throughout was insupportably domineering. I know it impressed me with the idea that he presumed upon his reputation as a DEAD SHOT, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... theological question of Hugh's time was certainly the Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine grew, as the power of the Church grew; as the one took a bolder tone so did the other. The word Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the disputants who do not define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... I; "he was a clergyman of Cerrig y Drudion about the middle of the last century, and amongst other things wrote a beautiful song called Cathl y Gair Mwys, or the melody of the ambiguous word." ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Somerset river for that portion of the Nile between the Victoria and the Albert Lakes; this must be understood as Speke's VICTORIA NILE source; bearing the name of Somerset, no confusion will arise in speaking of the Nile, which would otherwise be ambiguous, as the same name would apply to two distinct rivers—the one emanating from the Victoria and flowing into the Albert; the other the entire river Nile as it leaves the Albert lake. The White Nile, fed as described by the great reservoirs supplied ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... and self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. But the commune was not simply an "autonomous" part of the State—such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that time—it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of federation and alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed with no others. The supreme political power could be vested entirely ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... the New Paper, and the monster towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. Whatever had or had not happened ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... and she smiled; and afterward, when he was speaking near her, he noticed that she disregarded what her companion of the moment was saying to her, and listened only to him. Was not all this encouragement? Nevertheless, whenever, presuming upon this, he hazarded less ambiguous demonstrations, she seemed to shrink back and appear strange and troubled. This behavior perplexed him; he doubted the evidence that had given him hope; feared that he was a fool; that she divined his love, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... naturalization laws also need revision. Those sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the Navy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... of thought are the conditions of correct thinking. The term 'law,' however, is so ambiguous that it will be well to determine more precisely in what sense ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... believing that when Christ Said of the pure in heart, 'They shall see God,' He meant it; spoke no fragment of a truth; Deferred no saying, qualifying that; Set no word-trap for unsuspecting souls; Spoke no oracular, ambiguous phrase, Intending merely the vicarious pure; Reserved no strange or mystical condition To breed fine points of doctrine, or confound The simple-minded and the slow of faith. Heart-purity and singleness and love, Fertile ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Avenel, engaged in a variety of feuds, and a party to almost every dark and mysterious transaction which was on foot in that wild and military frontier, required all these precautions for his security. His own ambiguous and doubtful course of policy had increased these dangers; for as he made professions to both parties in the state, and occasionally united more actively with either the one or the other, as chanced best to serve his immediate purpose, he could not be said to have either firm allies ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... passed on with my comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me .. all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... so? then this ambiguous doubt No man can better than myself decide; That compound powder was of poppy made and mandrakes, Of purpose to cast one into a sleep, To ease the deadly pain of him whose leg Should be saw'd off; That powder gave ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... directly responsible to Commons and Senate for the management of their departments to the expenditure of a farthing. A Cabinet member who may be quizzed to-day, to-morrow, every day in the week except Sunday, on the management of affairs under him can never take refuge in ambiguous silence or behind the skirts of his chief, as secretaries delinquent have frequently taken refuge behind the spotless reputation of a too-confiding President. But the Canadian explained none of these things. He knew that these things were only ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... the right of the former fixation-point. In order to be projected, a retinal image has to be localized with reference to some point, generally the fixation-point of the eyes; and it is therefore clear that when two such fixation-points are involved, the localization will be ambiguous if for any reason the central apparatus does not clearly determine which shall be the point of reference. With regard to the oppositely moving streak Mach says:[9] "The streak is, of course, an after-image, which comes to consciousness only on, or shortly before, the completion of the eye-movement, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... speech. He talked of his "brothers in arms" and the "frankness of a soldier." The questions of the President followed each other rapidly: they were clear; but it is impossible to conceive anything more confused or worse delivered than the ambiguous and perplexed replies of Bonaparte. He talked without end of "volcanoes; secret agitations, victories, a violated constitution! "He blamed the proceedings of the 18th Fructidor, of which he was the first promoter ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... discuss the position of affairs. On December 23, 1614, the corporation in formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare imploring him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the dramatist 'a note of inconveniences [to the corporation that] would happen by the enclosure.' But although an ambiguous entry of a later date (September 1615) in the few extant pages of Greene's ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part at Combe's conduct, {271} it is plain that, in the spirit of his agreement with Combe's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the king makes the long-expected demand and the minister Bhurivasu returns the following ambiguous answer:— ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... Poland, that he could only have acquired so accurate a knowledge of its events by having visited the country itself. She mentioned her suspicion to Mr. Loftus: he denied the fact; and she had thought no more on the subject until the present ambiguous hints of her cousin conjured up these doubts anew, and led her to suppose that if Pembroke had not disobeyed his father so far as to go to Warsaw, he must have met with the Count Sobieski in some other realm. The possibility that this young hero, of whom ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... in return for my ten francs expended on this ambiguous news, but now that I found myself actually in Lausanne I felt that it behoved me to scour the city for traces of my quarry. She might not have come here at all, yet there was an even chance the other way, and I should ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... not even ambiguous; Pole was desired to wait till an answer could be received from England; and the emperor wrote to Renard (August 3), desiring him to lay the circumstances before the queen and his son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself meant well, but he had not ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... hands crossed over her knees, Jacqueline seemed no longer a creature of indefinite or ambiguous purpose. On the contrary, her profile was rimmed in light, and very matter-of-fact ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... recognised his purpose, and insisted that he should come to my rooms. Over a glass of wine I warmly thanked him and his brave comrades for saving me. He replied simply that he was more than glad, and that Herr Delbrueck had at the first taken steps to make all the searching party pleased; at which ambiguous utterance the maitre d'hotel smiled, while the officer pleaded duty ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... of the gentlemen referred to uses the phrase "eternal death," as many do. I wonder what they mean? It is an ambiguous phrase. It might mean endless torment after death; or it might mean annihilation at death; or it might mean annihilation at some future time. It is surely misleading to use a phrase that may have so many meanings. If some definite ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Contrary to all appearances they have not resolved anything today. The answer proposed by the Admiralty was so obscure and ambiguous, that Amsterdam has given notice, that she will protest again that it was only necessary to communicate to France the resolution of the 26th instant, by which the republic repealed that of the 18th of November, which ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... at Shanghai.) Quoting from the "South Polar Times": "'The Ubdug Burrow' is festooned with kodaks, candles and curtains; they (the Ubdugs) are united by an intense love of the science of autobiography, their somewhat ambiguous motto is 'the pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue licks them both!'" Griffith Taylor and Debenham were both Australians: the former was probably the wittiest man in the Expedition, and, in my opinion, the cleverest contributor to the "South Polar ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... is rather an ambiguous term, when applied to authors. It may simply mean that one man lived and wrote while another was yet alive, however deeply the former may have been indebted to the latter as his model. There have been instances in the literary world that might remind a botanist of a singular sort of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... of Russian, Chinese, Turkish, and Western systems of law that combines aspects of a parliamentary system with some aspects of a presidential system; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has not ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... worse of the world's cleverness and kindness than I do," was Lilburne's rather ambiguous answer to the compliment. "But why does my sister ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which pride and lust prepare." He is said to have visited a temple at Heraclea, where he had her spirit called up and implored her pardon. She duly appeared, and told him that "he would soon be delivered from all his troubles after his return to Sparta"—an ambiguous way of prophesying his death, which occurred soon afterwards. She was certainly avenged in the manner ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... for much of the ineffectiveness in business letters. Few men will take the time to decipher a proposition that is obscured by ambiguous words and involved phrases. Unless it is obviously to a man's advantage to read such a letter it is dropped into the waste basket, taking with it the message that might have found an interested prospect if it had been ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... of heresy; but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, "The Franciscans," a long satire, compared to which the "Somnium" was ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... allies of Athens' was ambiguous. It might be taken (as it was taken by Philip and his envoys) to include only the remaining members of the League (see p. 9), who were represented by the Synod then sitting, and whose policy Athens could control. But it was evidently possible to put a wider interpretation upon it, ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... the morrow. Be it so: but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and most severely ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... disclosed not only a thousand misdeeds (as you have thought them) which could not possibly have come to my knowledge by any other means, but have laboured to ascribe even your commendable actions to evil or ambiguous motives. Motives are impenetrable, and a thousand cases have occurred in which every rational observer would have supposed you to be influenced by the best motives, but where, if credit be due to your own representations, your motives ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... rivalries, managerial oppressions, intrigues, burlesque dignity, and solemn plausibilities, of that mimic world. Living thus in an atmosphere electrical, as it were, with excitement, it is no wonder that, by degrees, he became less and less sensitive with regard to that ambiguous difficulty which had hitherto impeded the gratification nearest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... of Vishnu, like the worship of Siva, has owed much to the influence of live yogis idealised as divine saints; though it must be admitted that the yogis of the Vaishnava orders have usually been more agreeable and less ambiguous than those of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... the dawn's ambiguous light, Quiet pause 'tween day and night, When afar the mellow horn Chides the tardy gaited morn, And asleep is yet the gale On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. But the morn, though sweet and fair; Sweeter is when thou art there; Hymning stars successive fade, Fairies hurtle through the shade, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride of it in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move—she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scattered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscure and ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whom it was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look. "But I've walked so much out of my way with you only just to show you that—that"—with this she paused; ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... Ambiguous looks, that scorn and yet relent, Denials mild, and firm unalter'd truth; Reluctant pride, and amorous faint consent, And meeting ardours, and exulting ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... was ambiguous, yet even out of its ambiguity we may read something. Achilles, the man of courage, was regarded as the hero of the Greeks, but this opinion must be contested, and wisdom must also have its place in the management of the war, before the hostile city can be taken. These two principles ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... She still kept to ambiguous speech. "Wouldn't it be better to give up and take your—misfortune, and begin again? Professor Ward and I will do all we ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... find Lucien Bruslart. He had no intention of being open with him. He had concocted an ambiguous message from his master, so framed as to astonish Bruslart, whether he knew where Richard Barrington was or not, and Seth hoped to read something of the ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... required some members of both houses to wait upon her respecting this matter; when the lord-keeper explained their sentiments in a long speech, to which her majesty was pleased to reply after her darkest and most ambiguous manner. "As to her marriage," she said, "a silent thought might serve. She thought it had been so desired that none other trees blossom should have been minded or ever any hope of fruit had been denied them. But that if any doubted ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... somebody in the house who was congenial. It wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the rest of them—they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... being coloured by the recollection that she had lost a suitable husband owing to her adventure. Mr. Peter Magnus would have deposed to Mr. Pickwick's extraordinary interest in the matter of the proposal, and have added his suspicions on recalling Mr. Pickwick's ambiguous declaration that he had come down to expose a certain person—even one of his own sympathetic friends, who had witnessed the scene with Mrs. Bardell, and recalled the Boarding House incident, might murmur, "How odd that ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... Hans, Clever Hans. He is still alive. He is old: he must be sixteen or seventeen; but his old age, alas, is not exempt from the baneful troubles from which men themselves suffer in their decline! Hans has turned out badly, it appears, and is never mentioned save in ambiguous terms. An imprudent or vindictive groom, I forget which, having introduced a mare into the yard, Hans the Pure, who till then had led an austere and monkish existence, vowed to celibacy, science and the chaste delights of figures, Hans the Irreproachable incontinently ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... dear to her, might have no further cause for alarm? It distressed her to hear his name mentioned by Gilberte; she could not endure the thought of enlisting in his favor an influence that was of so ambiguous a character. Her inbred scruples of a pure, honest woman made themselves felt, now it seemed to her that the rumors of a liaison with the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... himself up, according to his necessary usual precautions, he caught up Mrs. Channing's bonnet and shawl, and sheltering his eyes from the glare of the sun by pulling the bonnet well down over his nose, and folding the comfortable female-wrap (it was a genuine woman's-shawl, and not an ambiguous plaid of either or no sex) well over his breast, he walked round and round his garden, in full view of the high-road, discoursing with the peculiar gentle solemnity and deliberate eloquence habitual to him, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... very few really ambiguous cases, or those in which, for the sake of emphasis, a pronoun is wanted, certain consecrated expressions are introduced for the purpose. For eventually the more complex social relations of increasing civilization compelled some sort of distant recognition. Accordingly, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... German oracle; and I consult you with so much faith, that you need not, like the oracles of old, return ambiguous answers; especially as you have this advantage over them, too, that I only consult you about past end present, but not about what is ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... separate from his family. He must undergo the perils and discomforts of the ocean; he must divest himself of all domestic pleasures; he must deprive his wife of her companion, and his children of a father and instructor, and all for what? For the ambiguous advantages which overgrown wealth and flagitious tyranny have to bestow? For a precarious possession in a land of turbulence and war? Advantages, which will not certainly be gained, and of which the acquisition, if it were sure, is ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... sustained conflict. Who would have the courage to begin with such a one as Miss Petrie, and endeavour to prove to her that she is wrong from the beginning? A little word of half-dissent, a smile, a shrug, and an ambiguous compliment which is misunderstood, are all the forms of argument which can be used against her. Wallachia Petrie, in her heart of hearts, conceived that she had fairly discussed her great projects from year to year with indomitable eloquence ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... already pointed out,[28] is distinctly ambiguous, and unless this ambiguity is cleared up, the effect of the Home Rule Bill, and the nature of our new constitution, will ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... an ambiguous phrase, and may mean either a forest well cloathed with wood, or well ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of very homespun extraction, who hovered in Boston on the ambiguous verge between the social and the scholastic worlds; the sort of young man whom one asked to tea rather than to dinner. He was an earnest student, and was attached to the university by an official, though unimportant, tie. A physicist, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... "Lucid, but ambiguous; pathetic, but amusing; poetical, but comprehensive; prosaical, but full of emphasis. That's my nature. Plain-dealing, too, is my nature, and I adore the same quality in others; most especially in those ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... answered Fred, with quiet dignity, "my name is Frederick ——, and I desire to be addressed as such in our communications, and not by the ambiguous title of 'young man.' In the next place, as I told you before, we are not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... left her sentence grammatically ambiguous, but practically lucid enough to convey a decided impression that a rod for Mr Benden was ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... purposes, inventing a kind of technique of his own, doing one or two things which have never, or never so deftly, been done before. But he is something besides all that; he can think, he can write, and he can suggest real men and women. The play opens in the dark, and remains for some time brilliantly ambiguous. People, late eighteenth-century people, talk with bewildering abruptness, not less bewildering point; they, their motives, their characters, swim slowly into daylight. Some of the dialogue is, as the writer says of politics, "a game for clever children, women, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... for the Modder River fight was—if not quite ancient history—as remote from our thoughts as the "famous victory" at Blenheim in ages past. Despatch riders had been coming and going, we knew all about the River battle, and after an interval of fifteen days an ambiguous "slip" was slipped upon a too confiding clientele! It was sharp practice; and its employment at a moment when suspense had thrown us off our guard was superb. We bristled with indignation, but the coup (as such) was splendid. We, the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty much as she found him—unawakened to the deeps of his own nature—if she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... with a favorable eye. I have reason to think he knows of my attachment to his daughter, and approves of it. Even now, his congratulations had a marked meaning, which could hardly be ambiguous." ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... that the Duke Barnim gave an ambiguous answer to Otto upon the subject; but the knight, after his visit to Wolgast, was so certain of seeing his daughter in a short time Duchess of Pomerania, that he already looked upon the Jena dues as his own, and proceeded to act ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... she had been offended fifty times than have had such practices with my poor little girl!" said Major Delavie. "No wonder the proposals struck me as strange and ambiguous. Whose ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... great capacity, concealed by the nature of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, and which, had it been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the "greatness" would have been less ambiguous. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... objected. "Say rather that the forces are drawn up in the proportion of one and a half to one and a half. I stand in the ambiguous position of the peacemaker, inclining now this way, now that, and receiving in turn the whacks of each contestant. I have been compelled to accept on faith the reward that Scripture promises to such as myself, for it has not yet materialized to any ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... pay—nothing could avail to prevent it. The church was then, contrary to every one's wish, placed in the fort. The honor and ownership of that work must be judged of from the inscription, which is in our opinion ambiguous, thus reading: "1642. Willem Kieft, Director General, has caused the congregation to build this church."(1) But whatever be intended by the inscription, the people nevertheless paid ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... would help him to dethrone Ali, for whom they cherished the deepest hatred, and he was determined that they should learn the sentence of deprivation and excommunication fulminated against the rebel pacha. He introduced into the Greek translation which he was commissioned to make, ambiguous phrases which were read by the Christians as a call to take up arms in the cause of liberty. In an instant, all Hellas was up in arms. The Mohammedans were alarmed, but the Greeks gave out that it was in order to protect themselves and their property against the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver calabash; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... news for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... case, but the principle is the same in all cases. Acts fitted to convey to a reasonable man the proposal of an agreement, or the acceptance of a proposal he has made, are as good in law as equivalent express words. The term "implied contract" is current in this connexion, but it is unfortunately ambiguous. It sometimes means a contract concluded by acts, not words, of one or both parties, but still a real agreement; sometimes an obligation imposed by law where there is not any agreement in fact, for which the name "quasi-contract" is more appropriate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... DENNIS attained to the ambiguous honour of being distinguished as "The Critic," and he may yet instruct us how the moral influences the literary character, and how a certain talent that can never mature itself into genius, like the pale fruit that hangs in the shade, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of his love, and not proofs of his honour. Duty and honour! Those are ambiguous words with many meanings. 30 You should interpret them for him: his love Should be the sole ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I no longer entertained any doubt of her innocence, I told her that I thought the behaviour of her friend very ambiguous. I said that, notwithstanding the pleasure I felt in seeing her, the trick played upon me by her friend was a very bad one, that it could not do otherwise than displease me greatly, because it was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... following Maimonides' death, was absorbed in the conflict between philosophy and tradition. Controversial pamphlets without number have come down to us from those days. Enthusiasts eulogized, zealots decried. Maimonides' ambiguous expressions about bodily resurrection, seeming to indicate that he did not subscribe to the article of the creed on that subject, caused particularly acrimonious polemics. Meir ben Todros ha-Levi, a Talmudist and poet of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... what the defendant's attorney told me. He has taken up the case with zeal and interest. Aside from some ambiguous lines which this young man wrote to a young woman before departing for Europe, they have found no proof to sustain the accusation. In these few lines, the officers saw a plan ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... so terrible in its nature, and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous quality, and describing such a connexion under the terms of 'the usual relations of peace and amity.' By this means the proposed fraternity is hustled in the crowd of those treaties, which imply no change in the public law of Europe, and which ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... at Cambridge. In literary matters I notice that he does not think the poetry of Byron of a 'high order'; that he reads some essays of Shelley, which are unanimously voted 'unsatisfactory'; that he denies that Tennyson's 'Princess' shows higher powers than the early poems (a rather ambiguous phrase); that he considers Adam, not Satan, to be the hero of 'Paradise Lost'; and, more characteristically, that he regards the novels of the present day as 'degenerate,' and, on his last appearance, maintains the superiority of Miss Austen's ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of interest, and feels hopeful aspirations of young manhood. Many clear-cut, positive views are expressed in courteous, deferential manner, but in no uncertain or ambiguous phrase. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... the authorities at home were so ambiguous, and the incentives to corsairing so alluring, it was natural that this game of baiting the Spaniards should suffer little interruption. English freebooters who had formerly made Hispaniola and Tortuga their headquarters now resorted to Jamaica, where they found a cordial welcome and a better ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... coppered and copper-fastened ships," for the United States, Canada, New South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended Samaritans hire a parcel of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Maitland in a room, and yet she asked the American to take her portrait.... Is she guileless?... Is she a hypocrite? Or is she tormented by doubt-divining, not divining-believing, not believing in-her mother? Is she underhand in any case, with her eyes the color of the sea? Has she the ambiguous mind at once of a Russian and an Italian?... This would be a solution of the problem, that she was a girl of extraordinary inward energy, who, both aware of her mother's intrigues and detesting them with an equal hatred, had planned ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and it streamed in fight When tempest mingled with the fray, And over the spear-point of the shaft I saw the ambiguous lightning play. Valor with Valor strove, and died: Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride; And the lorn Mother speechless stood, Pale at the fury ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... once drag in The Odyssey and The Psalms, and run hastily on to Sir Thomas Browne and Charles Lamb, we are instinctively conscious that when it reaches, with its arbitrary divining rod, our own unlucky age, it will skip quite lightly over Thackeray; wave an ambiguous hand in the direction of Meredith, and sit solemnly down to make elaborate mention of all the published works of Walter Pater, Thomas ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... 'You have always been ambiguous, it is true; but I thought I saw encouragement in your eyes; encouragement certainly was in your eyes, and who would not have been deluded by them and have believed them sincere? Yet what tenderness can there be in a heart that can cause me pain ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... there be defects in the registry laws, who are to blame for their continuance? The "great grievance" connected with them of which Mr O'Connell complained, was, "that from the ambiguous wording of the act, some assistant barristers adopted the solvent tenant test," instead of "the beneficial interest test,"[5] which he and those who acted with him thought to be its legitimate construction. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... are not to be confounded with names which have more than one connotation, that is to say, ambiguous words. A word may have several meanings, but all of them fixed and recognized ones; as the word post, for example, or the word box, the various senses of which it would be endless to enumerate. And the paucity of existing names, in comparison with the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... common. The institution of property thus represents the fall of man from his primitive innocence, through greed and avarice, which refused to recognise the common ownership of things, and also the method by which the blind greed of human nature might be controlled and regulated. It is this ambiguous origin of the institution which explains how the Fathers could hold that private property was not natural, that it grew out of men's vicious and sinful desires, and at the same time that ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... Deliver'd as that an Ordinary Reader, if he be but Acquainted with the usuall Chymical Termes, may easily enough Understand Them; and even a wary One may safely rely on Them. These Things I add, because a Person any Thing vers'd in the Writings of Chymists cannot but Discern by their obscure, Ambiguous, and almost AEnigmatical Way of expressing what they pretend to Teach, that they have no Mind, to be understood at all, but by the Sons of Art (as they call them) nor to be Understood even by these without Difficulty And Hazardous Tryalls. ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... the Catholic interpretation of these words rejected by Protestants? Is it because the text is in itself obscure and ambiguous? By no means; but simply because they do not comprehend how God could perform so stupendous a miracle as to give His body and blood for our ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... August night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through the gay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... unjustifiable economies. Among others, there is that absurd eagerness to save the striking of a second match, which occasions so many burned fingers, and such picturesque language. And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light. We all tend to be stylists ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... who, left alone, recovered himself at last. Then he recalled the strategic smiles, the ambiguous phrases, the dreamy silences of the Abbe Gevresin, he understood the kindness of his counsels, the patience of his plans; and a little put out at having been, without knowing it, led so wisely, he exclaimed in spite of himself, "This, then, was the design ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... speech could hardly be said to exist there. To him, as much as to any man, was due the breaking of the chain that fettered free speech. On all important subjects he spoke his mind eloquently and in words that were not ambiguous. In August, 1852, he made a speech—the more accurate phrase would be, he delivered an oration—under the title, "Freedom National, Slavery Sectional." It may easily be guessed that this highly incensed the slave power and the fire-eaters never outgrew ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... little Trouble, how Things are carried in the great World. I look upon the printed News to be the Histories of the Times, in which the candid and ingenious Authors, out of a strict Regard to Truth, deliver Facts in such ambiguous Terms, that when you read of a Battle betwixt Count Mercy, and the Marquis De Lede, you may give the Victory to that Side, which your private Inclination most favours. I have seen in one Paragraph the precise number of the ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... aristocracy or monarchy necessarily oppressive, it might seem, he admits, as it actually seemed to Hobbes and to the French economists, that the fewer the oppressors the better, and that therefore an absolute monarchy is the best. Experience, he thinks, is 'on the surface' ambiguous. Eastern despots and Roman emperors have been the worst scourges to mankind; yet the Danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are as 'well governed as any people in Europe.' In Greece, democracy, in spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results.[86] Hence, he ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... discusses the first of the two questions, he constantly speaks of Berkeley's theory as representing that "our visual sensations, or what we ultimately term visible objects, are originally mere internal feelings." The expression mere internal feelings, however, is ambiguous; for, as we have said, it might still imply that Mr Bailey viewed the theory as representing that there was an extension, or reciprocal outness of objects within the retina. But this doubt is entirely removed by a passage in the section alluded to, which proves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... And [Decebalus sending an envoy to Trajan, asked that he might get back the territory as far as the Ister and receive indemnity for all the money he had spent on the war,] in recompense for restoring Longinus to him. An ambiguous answer was returned, of a kind that would not make Decebalus think that the emperor regarded Longinus as of either great value or small, the object being to prevent his being destroyed on the one hand, or being preserved on excessive terms, on the other. So Decebalus delayed, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... romance of the castle against the sky, the place on the hill-side where the gray church begins to peep (a peaceful little grassy path leads up to it over a stile)—all this brings about a terrible displacement of the very objects that make pilgrimage a passion, and hurries forward that ambiguous advantage which I don't envy our grandchildren, that of knowing all about everything in advance, having trotted round the globe annually in the magazines and lost the bloom of personal experience. It is a part of the general abolition of mystery with which we are all so complacently ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... to the examination of the celebrated prophecy of the seventy weeks. This prophecy has always run [fn69] the crux Criticorum. It is unquestionably a very ambiguous one, since Mr. Everett himself informs us in a note, p. 167 of his work, that "Calovius whose day has passed a century ago, in a dissertation upon the mysteries of the seventy weeks, numbers twenty-five different Christian hypotheses," to which may be ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... why iron should not move to iron, which is more like, but move to the loadstone, which is less like? Why in all diversities of things there should be certain participles in nature which are almost ambiguous to which kind they should be referred? But there is a mere and deep silence touching the nature and operation of those common adjuncts of things, as in nature; and only a resuming and repeating of the force and use ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... of the Witch's hut is given in advance of the actual descent of the personally conducted gentleman for the somewhat ambiguous reason that he was to find it ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... message of the New Paper, and the monster towered over me, threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going to stand any nonsense ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... too and cast me a startled look which I met with a smile possibly as ambiguous as the ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet's ambiguous laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon's simple heart and narrow head could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: "What do you want, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... at the time but afterward widely commented upon. "Our title to the country of the Oregon," said he, "is clear and unquestionable." The text of the Baltimore platform read, "Our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable." Did President Polk mean to be ambiguous at this point? Had he any reason to swerve from the strict letter ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Here the wideness of their range and the universality of their influence, will generally serve to distinguish them from those partial efforts of diligence and self-denial, to which mankind are prompted by subordinate motives. All proofs other than this deduced from conduct, are in some degree ambiguous. This, this only, whether we argue from Reason or from Scripture, is a sure infallible criterion. From the daily incidents of conjugal and domestic life, we learn that a heat of affection occasionally vehement, but superficial and transitory, may consist too well with ...
— 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
... of a chasseur in a Marseilles cafe, and dreamed dreams of the fairytale lives of the clients who came in accompanied by beautifully dressed ladies, he had social ambitions—and the social status of the mountebank is, to say the least of it, ambiguous. Ah me! What would man be ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... individuality might have been considered assured; but the formidable vicegerent of the sun once more interposed, and, in 1897, swept it out of the terrestrial range of view. Hence the recognition remains ambiguous. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... being what they are," replied Edward, "give us a right to take this single liberty. A man who has borne himself honorably through a whole life, makes an action honorable which might appear ambiguous in others. As concerns myself, after these last trials which I have taken upon myself, after the difficult and dangerous actions which I have accomplished for others, I feel entitled now to do something for myself. For you and Charlotte, that part of the business ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... have me shriek and moan? Would you have me throw myself in convulsive ecstasy upon that ambiguous insect? You are not the first, Hera, who has gravely misunderstood my character. I am not, I have never been, a victim of the impulsive passions. The only serious misunderstandings which I have ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... which parts were yours and which Edgar's,' was the ambiguous answer, as he turned to secure the Princess Fiordespina for the dance that ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and it was written by the hand of the Marquis de Sairmeuse. It is impossible for him to deny it. There is an erasure on each line. Everyone would regard it as the handiwork of a man who was seeking to convey his real meaning in ambiguous phrases." ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... It wasn't ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may really consider she doesn't. So successful have ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... That dignified and ambiguous speech was accompanied by a slight inclination of the head. Bewildered, confounded by this behavior, to him so new, which bore but little resemblance to that of Flavie, Brigitte, and Madame Minard, la Peyrade left the house, asking ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... general or particular, is a term of ambiguous construction, meaning the damage incurred for the safety of the ship and cargo; the contribution made by the owners in general, apportioned to their respective investments, to repair any particular loss or expense ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. For some writers a "mystic" is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word "religion," and simply propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... bug. See Barnabee. In Tasser's Ten Unwelcome Guests in the Dairy, he enumerates 'the Bishop that burneth' (pp. 142. 144.), in an ambiguous way, which his commentator does not render at all clear. I never heard of this calumniated insect being an unwelcome guest in the dairy; but Bishop-Barney, or Burney, and Barnabee, or Burnabee, and Bishop-that-burneth, seem, in the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... after his decease, by his son and successor in his office. The Queen of Sweden was equally favourable to Grotius; but she unadvisedly took an adventurer into her confidence, and sent him, in an ambiguous character, to Paris. This disgusted Grotius: and age and infirmities now thickened upon him. He applied to the Queen for his recall. She granted it in the most flattering terms, and desired him to repair immediately to Stockholm, to receive, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... the doctrines which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... yourselves alive! Back to the Ball-room speed your spectred host, Fool's Paradise is dull to that you lost. [vi] No treacherous powder bids Conjecture quake; No stiff-starched stays make meddling fingers ache; [vii] 140 (Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, [15] women in their shape;) No damsel faints when rather closely pressed, But more caressing seems when most caressed; Superfluous Hartshorn, and reviving Salts, Both banished ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... his account to Philip (explanatory of what he, in advance of his brother's slower judgment, thought to be a necessary step), that the Fosters had for some time received anonymous letters, warning them, with distinct meaning, though in ambiguous terms, against a certain silk-manufacturer in Spitalfields, with whom they had had straightforward business dealings for many years; but to whom they had latterly advanced money. The letters hinted at the utter insolvency of this manufacturer. They had urged their correspondent to give ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... added another, which goes far actually to fix the date. The principal signal which Nelson's second method of attack required was 'to engage to leeward.' Now this signal as it stood in the Signal Book of 1799 was to some extent ambiguous. It was No. 37, and the signification was 'to engage the enemy on their larboard side, or to leeward if by the wind,' while No. 36 was 'to engage the enemy on their starboard side if going before the wind, or to windward if by the wind.' Accordingly we find Nelson issuing a general order, ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... impression that it would compel the Treasury officers to receive all bank notes possessing all the characteristics described in the first and second sections, and that the Secretary of the Treasury would have no power to forbid their receipt. It must be confessed that the language is sufficiently ambiguous to give some plausibility to such a construction, and that it seems to derive some support from the refusal of the House of Representatives to consider an amendment reported by the Committee of Ways ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... Delia More that night from no faintest wish to know what might happen to her. For I have a weak desire for peace of mind, and I would rather have forgotten her story. I followed because the quiet highroad was so profoundly lonely, and the country silence is ambiguous, and I cannot bear to think of a woman abroad alone in the dark. I cannot bear to think of myself abroad alone in the dark, though I go quite without fear; but certain other women have fear, and this one was crying. I kept well behind her, and as soon as she reached the village, I meant to ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... As has been truly said of the numerous representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air of one curious, restless, to enter into conversation with the first comer. She had certainly the power of stimulating a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about herself. And Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression, that even after seeing her many times he could never precisely recall her features in absence. The lad of six years, looking older, who stood beside her, impatiently plucking a rose to pieces ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... only issue between itself and the Minister of the Interior is. Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a Police Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole period, compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest questions of form into the very substance of its activity. It dares not accept the collision ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... her language was ambiguous, in her sharp, leering eyes—full of significance—an expression of mysterious intelligence, which, mingled with a slight, sinister smile upon her lips, for a moment, brought a renewal of all my tortures and suspicions. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... nay, the necessity, of communicating with Fitzgerald. The difficulty is in what tone I should address him. I cannot say that the man directly affronted me—I cannot recollect any one expression which I could lay hold upon as offensive—but his language was ambiguous, and admitted frequently of the most insulting construction, and his manner throughout was insupportably domineering. I know it impressed me with the idea that he presumed upon his reputation as a DEAD SHOT, and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... goodness is that it is adaptation to environment. This is a far more important conception than the preceding; but again, while not untrue, is still, in my judgment, partial and ambiguous. When its meaning is made clear and exact, it seems to coincide with my own; for it points out that nothing can be separately good, but becomes so through fulfillment of relations. Each thing or person is surrounded by many others. To them it must ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... document was perhaps open to critical objection, but that was clearly enough the meaning of it. The orthography conformed to no recognized system, but being mainly phonetic it was not ambiguous. As the probate judge remarked, it would take five aces to beat it. Mr. Brentshaw smiled good-humoredly, and after performing the last sad rites with amusing ostentation, had himself duly sworn as executor and conditional legatee under the provisions of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... are rapidly formed against the imperial Corsican. The borders of France are broken in. There is a narrowing rim of fire bursting into battle flame here and there; and then the catastrophe of the capture of Paris. There is an ambiguous abdication and an equivocal exile of a few months' duration to Elba. It was much like the establishment of a live ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... said this, both his accent and look had an expression which guided his master to the true meaning of his words, which might otherwise have been ambiguous. He did not mean that the fact of the lancers having been on the ground would prevent the Indians from occupying it, but exactly the reverse. It was, not "lancers no Indians," but "Indians no ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... an old formula of the schools: Nihil appetimus nisi sub ratione boni; Nihil aversamur nisi sub ratione mali, and it is used often correctly, but often also in a manner injurious to philosophy, because the expressions boni and mali are ambiguous, owing to the poverty of language, in consequence of which they admit a double sense, and, therefore, inevitably bring the practical laws into ambiguity; and philosophy, which in employing them becomes aware of the different meanings in the same ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... "Mr. Harton, I am going to ask you some questions, and I hope you will answer them. I feel that I am entitled to some knowledge, because I and my family are just now in a most ambiguous position." ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... noble Venetian names that every now and then turn up in the Levant, and borne in the present case by a descendant of a family who for centuries had enjoyed a monopoly of some of the smaller consular offices of the Syrian coast. Signor Pasqualigo had installed his son as deputy in the ambiguous agency at Jaffa, which he described as a vice-consulate, and himself principally resided at Jerusalem, of which he was the prime gossip, or second only to his rival, Barizy of the Tower. He had only taken a preliminary puff of his chibouque, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... mutineers now proposed measures which would please the populace. Chief among them was a plan for instituting a consultative National Assembly. This would serve as a check on the Dual Control and on the young Khedive, whom it had placed in his present ambiguous position. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... prince, but his scrutiny did not serve to dispel a certain suspicion of the royal sincerity that ever and anon came across the favourite's most sanguine dreams. With all Philip's gaiety, there was something restrained and latent in his ambiguous smile, and his calm, deep, brilliant eye. Calderon, immeasurably above his lord in genius, was scarcely, perhaps, the equal of that beardless boy in hypocrisy and craft, in selfish coldness, in ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, be supposed that in popular use the connotation of any word is invariable. Logicians have attempted to classify terms into Univocal (having only one meaning) and AEquivocal (or ambiguous); and no doubt some words (like 'civil,' 'natural,' 'proud,' 'liberal,' 'humorous') are more manifestly liable to ambiguous use than some others. But in truth all general terms are popularly and classically used in somewhat ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Murray, it was agreed that a proclamation should be issued at the different settlements, requiring the attendance of the people at the respective posts on the same day; which proclamation would be so ambiguous in its nature, that the object for which they were to assemble could not be discerned, and so peremptory in its terms, as to insure implicit obedience. This instrument having been drafted and approved, was distributed according to the original plan. That which was addressed ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the colonel said carefully, "the tapes are supposed to show that certain ... ah ... 'highly-placed persons' in the Imperial hierarchy are influencing members of the Government illegally. You figure out what that might mean, Sire; it's a little too ambiguous to ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... "After considering what you mention in this matter, it is reduced to the following points. The first and more essential is that which you mention (although in ambiguous terms) regarding the trading of the auditors and government employees there, for which reason they prevented the sending of the cloves. The testimony that you send of it does not concern this matter, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... furnish. These letters are addressed to Voltaire, and continue the discussion. There is one letter of Voltaire, being the fourth, dated Feb. 27, 1777, and signed "le vieux malade de Ferney, V. puer centum annorum."[367] Then begin Bailly's letters, from January 16 to May 12, 1778. From some ambiguous expressions in the Preface, it would seem that these are fictitious letters, supposed to be addressed to Voltaire at their dates. Voltaire went to Paris February 10, 1778, and died there May 30. Nearly all this interval was his closing scene, and it is very unlikely that Bailly would have ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sovereign, for the play at the Hall table, although not so high as was going on in the Library with those who patronized cards, was for considerable stakes. Carew, who enjoyed, above all things, this embarrassing pleasantry, would return an ambiguous reply, so that the problem remained without a solution. But when the disgusted chaplain at last threw up his cue, in a most unusual fit of dudgeon, the Squire put the question to the company, as a case of church preferment of which he was unwilling to take ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... laws also need revision. Those sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the Navy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... office, but could come to the assembly, and act as jurors; which at first seemed nothing, but afterward was found an enormous privilege, as almost every matter of dispute came before them in this latter capacity. Besides, it is said that he was obscure and ambiguous in the wording of his laws, on purpose to increase the honor of his courts; for since their differences could not be adjusted by the letter, they would have to bring all their causes to the judges, who thus were in a manner masters of the laws. Of this equalization he himself makes mention ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... felt rather unaccountably towards the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... flags of Sforzas, Borgias, Baglionis, and Vitellis, by the side of the bravos of Naples and Umbria; they saw their princes wed the daughters of evil-famed Italian sovereigns, and their princes' children, their own Valois and Guises, develope into puny, ambiguous, and ominous Medicis and Gonzagas, surrounded by Italian minions and poison distillers, and buffoons and money-lenders. The French of the sixteenth century, during their long Neapolitan and Lombard wars and negotiations, and time to learn all that Italy could teach; to become ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... to the girl. I respected her brave departure—I rejoiced that it was needless. Willingly I would have quieted her distress with some hopeful, ambiguous word, but that would have been trenching, as no one ever ought to trench, on the lover's sole right. So I held my tongue, watching with an amused pleasure the colour hovering to and fro over that usually impassive face. At last, at the opening of ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... firmest of believers overwhelmed with grief by a like loss, and as completely inconsolable. Hume may have thrown off Mr. Boyle's "principles of religion," but he was none the less a very honest man, perfectly open and candid, and the last person to use ambiguous phraseology, among his friends; unless, indeed, he saw no other way of putting a stop to the intrusion of unmannerly twaddle amongst the bitter-sweet memories stirred in his affectionate nature by so heavy ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... against the spiritual—the final cause of the world at large we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and, ipso facto, the reality of that freedom. But that this term "freedom" is, without further qualification, an indefinite, incalculable, ambiguous term, and that, while what it represents is the ne plus ultra of attainment, it is liable to an infinity of misunderstandings, confusions, and errors, and to become the occasion for all imaginable excesses—has never been more clearly known and felt than in modern times. Yet, for the present, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... know," said Tuppence meditatively. "But I think that, in an ambiguous, legal, without prejudishish lawyer's way, he was trying to ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... not at all indignant at so ambiguous a compliment, directed his benevolent eyes upon the face ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But noticing that her feet ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... did the field guns, but the enemy were firing with the red and dazzling setting sun, behind them, and shining directly in our fellows' eyes, who were blazing apparently at poor old Sol, and cussing him and the wily Boer in a manner by no means ambiguous. I know not whether we did them any harm or not; certainly they shifted their positions once or twice. As regards ourselves, it seems beyond belief, no damage was done. The enemy could not even boast of the bag which the Americans ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Good Sense and Honour join, Will blame the harsh, reprove the idle line; The rude, all grace neglected or forgot, Eras'd at once, will vanish at his blot; Ambitious ornaments he'll lop away; On things obscure he'll make you let in day, Loose and ambiguous terms he'll not admit, And take due note of ev'ry change that's fit, A very ARISTARCHUS he'll commence; Not coolly say—"Why give my friend offence? These are but trifles!"—No; these trifles lead To serious mischiefs, if he don't succeed; In mala derisum semel, exceptumque sinistre, Ut mala quem ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... too rich and brilliant, too sharp and smart and glib, too—well!—theatrical; like characters from the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?" ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Opimian. There is an ambiguous present, which somewhat perplexes me, in an epigram of Rhianus, 'Here is a vessel of half-wine, half-turpentine, and a singularly lean specimen of kid: the sender, Hippocrates, is worthy of all praise.'{2} Perhaps this was a doctor's present to a patient. Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Nonnus could ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... middle position in which he balanced himself for a long time against both the Conservative Junkers and the National Liberal trust magnates on the one side and the radical Socialists on the other. Neither side could claim him; neither could interpret his ambiguous utterances as support of its policies, and between the antagonisms of the two he maintained his position until at last he was overthrown by the attack of Erzberger, leader of the more liberal ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... words happen to be still dubious, we may establish their meaning from the context; with which it may be of singular use to compare a word, or a sentence, whenever they are ambiguous, equivocal, or intricate. Thus the proeme, or preamble, is often called in to help the construction of an act of parliament. Of the same nature and use is the comparison of a law with other laws, that are made by ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... but the mellow glory of the Hesperides worthy to be guarded by a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the natural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the State is a natural product, because it is evolved out of social relations which exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term to the Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which we are now concerned, the nature of anything was defined by the Peripatetics as 'the end of its becoming.' Another definition of theirs puts ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the stranger's surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a hue-and-cry after him as an accomplice in the murder, since a murder, it seemed, had ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Ambiguous.] Then haue ye one other vicious speach with which we will finish this Chapter, and is when we speake or write doubtfully and that the sence may be taken two wayes, such ambiguous termes they call Amphibologia, we call it the ambiguous, or figure of sence incertaine, as if one should say ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... some such douceur under the skins, ostensibly for the behoof of the celestial visitor, who would seem not to be above earthly wants and vanities. The replies received, though occasionally singularly clear and correct, are usually of that profoundly ambiguous purport which leaves the anxious inquirer little wiser than he was before. For all this, ventriloquism, trickery, and shrewd knavery are sufficient explanations. Nor does it materially interfere with this view, that converted Indians, on whose veracity we can implicitly rely, have repeatedly ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. The clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; it had not really struck him vividly at the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... should be glad of both of yours," which may look ambiguous now, but we quite understood it at the time. It made rather uncomfortable walking in places, but against that overwhelming majority of the dead it was comforting to feel ourselves a living unit. We stumbled on, taking only the most obvious turnings, ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles start out from the thin covering of flesh; passing ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
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