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More "Dubious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its sap and cells. The trees had drawn their bark close around them, wearing an inviolate tapestry across those portals through which so many a stranger to them had passed in and passed out; and henceforth the dubious oracle of the forest—its one reply to all man's questionings—became the Voice ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... and cat-calls greeted his success. Sydney and Katrina and Mrs. Carroll clapped their hands, and the Doctor, folding in his handkerchief the somewhat dubious treasure, rode over to the apple-tree and presented it to ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... chiefs. The situation of Burnes in relation to the Dost was presently complicated by the arrival at Cabul of a Russian officer claiming to be an envoy from the Czar, whose credentials, however, were regarded as dubious, and who, if that circumstance has the least weight, was on his return to Russia utterly repudiated by Count Nesselrode. The Dost took small account of this emissary, continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... blow given him by Dick at the dinner, and burned to avenge the affront. He tingled with impatience to get another look at the dubious check which promised such unexceptional possibilities of retaliation if, as he suspected and hoped, it was a forgery. Dick Swinton, publicly denounced as a felon, could not possibly hold up his head again; and as a rival in love he would be remorselessly wiped out. The young upstart ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... to respond to their charm. What Shakespeare knew, and Scott loved, and Bossetti echoes, can hardly be beneath the admiration of high school and university students. Rugged language, broken metres, absurd plots, dubious morals, are impotent to destroy the vital beauty that underlies all these. There is a philosophical propriety, too, in beginning poetic study with ballad lore, for the ballad is the germ of all ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... Cloud wondered just what she would better do about the afternoon hour with this uncongenial guest on hand, but Leslie and Allison, after a hasty whispered consultation in the dining-room with numerous dubious glances toward the guest, ending in wry faces, came and settled down with their Bibles as usual. There was a loyalty in the quiet act that almost brought the tears to Julia Cloud's eyes, and she rewarded them with a ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... crowns for propaganda purposes), yet had a way of borrowing a coat or cap from Serbian soldiers and, arrayed in these, holding up pedestrians after nightfall. Roth had therefore been granted the right to rule, but—save for the dubious guard—his power was only that which the Serbian or French authorities would give him. He issued many orders to the mayor, some of which were very questionable, as for instance when he sent provisions out of the Banat to Hungary. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... BELLOC LOWNDES'S young ladies enjoy singularly poor luck, as is shown notably by their habit when in foreign parts of picking up the worst people and generally surrounding themselves with a society that it would be flattery to call dubious. The latest victim to this tendency is Lily, heroine of The Lonely House (HUTCHINSON). It was situate, as you might not expect from its name, at Monte Carlo, and Lily had come there as the paying guest of a courtesy uncle and aunt of foreign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... description of various other dubious businesses that had attracted Eliphalet Congdon when Archie, nervously twisting a folded newspaper, brought him back to the girl who had played so mischievous a ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... recover some of his shattered nerve in view of the detective's airy optimism. Still, he was shaken and dubious. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... come out alive. There's be an accident, and the nomads would be given the dubious credit for having killed you." He came to his feet again. "I've got to think about this. I'll drop in ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... remember the unedifying descriptions of her itinerant priests that Lucian and Apuleius[1] have left. Led by an old eunuch of dubious habits, a crowd of painted young men marched along the highways with an ass that bore an elaborately adorned image of the goddess. Whenever they passed through a village or by some rich villa, they went through their sacred exercises. To the shrill accompaniment of their Syrian ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... calumny so shameless as the attempt of the Hon. Prop., he might say the calculated and cynical attempt of the Hon. Prop., to seduce from their faith the tenacious acolytes of Sport by the now threadbare recital of the dubious and, on his own showing, the anaemic enticements of Science. The War had proved that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... rid of the intruder by postponing their meeting to a later hour, and taking care that, when Prynne reappeared, he should be turned back. The House that day passed an order that none should sit in it but genuine Rumpers, appointing a committee to ascertain who these were and to report on dubious cases; and the order was affixed to the doors outside. For a day or two Prynne and others still haunted the lobbies; but at length they desisted, Prynne taking his revenge by at once printing The Republicans' and Others' spurious Old Cause briefly ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of service to his foe. Nothing could be more nobly planned than the first meeting, and indeed the whole relations, of these magnanimous and worthy opponents, Luria and Tiburzio. There is a certain intellectual fascination for Browning in the analysis of mean natures and dubious motives, but of no contemporary can it be more justly said that he rises always and easily to the height and at the touch of an heroic action or ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... ranged them in order of battle. The signal was given, and he attacked them with extraordinary vigour; nor was the opposition inferior. Much blood was shed on both sides, and the victory long remained dubious; but at length it seemed to incline to the sultan of Harran's enemies, who, being more numerous, were upon the point of surrounding him, when a great body of cavalry appeared on the plain, and approached the two armies. The sight of this fresh ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... her self-accusing grief. And now, as the brother and sister sat at breakfast one autumn morning, came the surprise of which we speak. It came in the form of a letter, which, before opening it, "Cobbler" Horn regarded, for some moments, with a dubious air. The arrival of a letter at his house was a rare event; and but for the fact that the missive bore his name and address, he would have thought there was a mistake, and, even now, the addition of the sign, "Esq." to his name left the matter in ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... anything other than a bird could make the ascent. It looked a sheer wall from where the girls stood, the projections and jutting crags appearing perfectly flat to them. Even Harriet Burrell and Miss Elting were a little dubious. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... general, a blunt military chieftain, was at his side. A black bushy beard, some inches in advance of his honest good-humoured face, was placed in strong contrast with the wary, pale, and somewhat dubious aspect of the priest. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... his salary than gave the other and more outspoken professor whose chair he occupies. And when a political party dangles a full dinner-pail in the eyes of the toiling masses, it is offering more for a vote than the dubious dollar of the opposing party. Even a money-lender is not above taking a slightly lower rate of interest and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away, which was called Iceland the Great. Then, again, we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again outraging the laws, he was sent into temporary banishment—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... said the doctor with a carelessness which was somewhat dubious in its character. "It is very well for those who find the subject pleasant. I confess I have never studied ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the maid. But women ain't throwed off their guard easily. If they are in a dark place, they can feel their way out, if they can't see it. So says she, dubious like: ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... consider that the doctrines upon which it (Purgatory) is pretended reasonable, are all dubious, and disputable at the very best. Such are ... that the taking away the guilt of sins does not suppose the taking away the obligation to punishment; that is, that when a man's sin is pardoned, he may be punished without the guilt of that sin ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... penetrating study, 'Mark Twain a Century Hence', published at the time of Mr. Clemens' death, Professor H. T. Peck makes this observation: "We must judge Mark Twain as a humorist by the very best of all he wrote rather than by the more dubious productions, in which we fail to see at every moment the winning qualities and the characteristic form of this very interesting American. As one would not judge of Tennyson by his dramas, nor Thackeray by his journalistic chit-chat, nor ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... and so doubtless do our readers, in passing from the dark tragic story of Swift, and his dubious and unhappy character, to contemplate the useful career of a much smaller, but a much better man, Isaac Watts. This admirable person was born at Southampton on the 17th of July 1674. His father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, and was a man of intelligence and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the applicant could be admitted to noviciate even, his horoscope must be cast, and—well, the poor astrologer also needed bread and—no! not butter—five shillings for all his calculations, circles, and significations—well, that again was only reasonable. H'm, ye-e-s, but it was dubious; and, mad as we were, I don't think we ever got outside that dubiety, but made up our minds, like other converts, to gulp the primary postulate, and pay the twenty-six shillings. From the first, however, Narcissus had never actually entrusted all his spiritual venture in this particular craft: ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Pateley, and as he reflected on the scene he had just left, Stamfordham surrounded by a bevy of attractive ladies beseeching him to give them an autograph, to buy a buttonhole, to drink their tea, to put into their raffles, and to have his fortune told, he felt still more dubious as to the mission he was engaged upon. Fortunately Rachel realised none of ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... be, there is no disposition to accept their ascendancy.[2303] If one of them is admitted into the Assembly it is not for the purpose of giving advice, but to furnish information, reply to interrogatories, and make protestations of his zeal in humble terms and in a dubious position.[2304] By virtue of being a royal agent he is under suspicion like the King himself, and he is sequestered in his bureau as the King is sequestered in his palace.—Such is the spirit of the Constitution: by force of the theory, and the better to secure a separation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was, she said, Mrs. Quiverful of Puddingdale, the wife of the Rev. Mr. Quiverful. She wished to see Mrs. Proudie. It was indeed quite indispensable that she should see Mrs. Proudie. James Fitzplush looked worse than dubious, did not know whether his lady were out, or engaged, or in her bedroom; thought it most probable she was subject to one of these or to some other cause that would make her invisible; but Mrs. Quiverful could sit down ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... painfully conscious of the greatness of the chance that we have scarcely even approached the truth. Neither diary nor letters guide us; naught save reports of occasional pithy, pointed, pregnant remarks, evidence the most dubious, liable to be colored by the medium of the predilections of the hearer, and to be reshaped and misshaped by time, and by attrition in passing through many mouths. The President was often in a chatting mood, and then seemed not remote from his companion. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... sufficiently complex to task the united powers of the historian, philologist, and anthropologist, merely to trace out the multitudinous lines of its evolution, and to determine the sources of its various elements: primeval polytheisms and fetishisms, traditions of dubious origin, philosophical concepts from China, Korea, and elsewhere—all mingled with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The so-called 'Revival of Pure Shinto'—an effort, aided by Government, to restore the cult to its archaic simplicity, by ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... as a feat beyond my prowess to convict this woman in her own eyes of a dubious and considering veracity. So I merely wondered, in tones that would easily reach her, how the gentlemen might relish her diplomacy when they discovered it on the morrow. I preceded the word diplomacy with a slight and ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... annoyance at Mrs. Roby's unwonted assumption of prominence was beginning to displace gratitude for the aid she had rendered, could not consent to her being allowed, by such dubious means, to monopolise the attention of their guest. If Osric Dane had not enough self-respect to resent Mrs. Roby's flippancy, at least the Lunch Club would do so in the person of ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... inherited the ancestral 'vices.' 'What he appeared generally to be was seldome what he really was.' His portrait, {149a} in Highland dress, displays a handsome, fair, athletic young chief, with a haughty expression. Behind him stands a dark, dubious-looking ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... serious one. The natives consider strangers as their lawful prey, and they lately managed to give a strong punitive expedition a good deal of trouble. In fact, as they're in a rather restless mood, the authorities were very dubious about letting me go inland, and in spite of the care I took, they got two of my colored carriers. Shot them with ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... of King Alfred, had not imaginations bold enough to lay a plan of burglary. How could they have spent the money in their own village without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to "run away"—a course as dark and dubious ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... to that none too rare class of prominent citizens who once every so often respond to the call of the wild within them by going to a nearby city where they are not known and giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad—Carroll reflected. The disgrace lay in ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... sat down. And Mr. Westgate rose: He wanted—he said—to know more, much more, about this proposition, which to his mind was of a very dubious wisdom.... 'Ah!' thought the secretary, 'I told the old boy he must tell them more'.... To whom, for instance, had the proposal first been made? To him!—the chairman said. Good! But why were Pillins selling, if freights were to go up, as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the girl; and Bran, after looking on at the transfer with a somewhat dubious face, seemed to satisfy herself that all was right, and put her head contentedly under the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... three years afterwards. As to the residence of Bartholomew in London, it was not until after Columbus had made his propositions of discovery to Portugal, if not to the courts of other powers. Granting, therefore, that he had subsequently heard the dubious stories of Vinland, and of the fisherman's adventures, as related by Zeno, or at least by Marcolini, they evidently could not have influenced him in his great enterprise. His route had no reference to them, but ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... than could have been expected. But Scotland!—the Highlands!"—Mr Sudberry's look at this point induced his wife to come to a full stop. The look was not a stern look,—much less a savage look, as connubial looks sometimes are. It was an aggrieved look; not that he was aggrieved at the dubious reception given by his spouse to the arrangement he had made;—no, the sore point in his mind was that he himself entertained strong doubts, as to the propriety of what he had done; and to find these doubts reflected in ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... were inclined to be fussy; You turned at inferior rye; You moped at a dubious vintage And shrieked if the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Essay on Puffing" (a topic which we should hardly have thought to have found under discussion at a period so much nearer the golden age than the present) remarks,—"Dubious and uncertain is the Source or Spring of Puffing in this Infant Country, it not being agreed upon whether Puffs were imported by the primitive Settlers of the Wilderness, (for the Puff is not enumerated in the aboriginal Catalogue,) or whether their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... irregular lover, yet he was a priest, and not a musician. Can we then blame harmony and melody for the humming-bird "amours" of the Abbe Liszt,—for the many women he made material love to from his early youth,—for the very dubious honesty of his bearing toward the Comtesse d'Agoult and the Princess Wittgenstein, with whom he debated the formalities of marriage without hesitating ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... crafty look in the old man's eyes as he spoke, and ages of dubious reasoning and purpose showed in their ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him. "The affair happened in a very dubious sort of place. I don't think I shall hear anything more about it unless ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a toe by ainhum. Eyles reports a case in a negro in whom the second finger was affected. Mirault, at Angiers, speaks of a case in which two fingers were lost in fifteen days, a fact which makes his diagnosis dubious. Beranger-Ferraud has seen all the toes amputated, and there is a wax model by Baretta, Paris, in the Army Medical Museum at Washington, in which all the toes of the right foot have been amputated, and ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a remove of time, the poet's wounded pride finds expression in this singular theory—or, rather, in this more than dubious piece ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... House government is the division of the flock by the establishing of an age line. The control of the youngsters is almost always vigorously enforced, and though the logical principles involved are sometimes rather dubious they are adequate from the fact that they are never open to argument. Occasionally, however, under the leadership of some president either too indolent or incapable of leadership, this strict surveillance over the habits and ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... hidden appetites, are ours, And they must have their food. Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements. I guess not what this tells of Being past, 510 Nor what it augurs of the life to come; [Q] But so it is, and, in that dubious hour, That twilight when we first begin to see This dawning earth, to recognise, expect, And in the long probation that ensues, 515 The time of trial, ere we learn to live In reconcilement with our stinted powers; To endure this state ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... look dubious, the uncle was threatening to pitch them out upon the road, when someone ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... 3rd edition of Madagascar, 1743, it farther appears that he continued "for some years before his death" to resort to the above-named house; "at which place several inquisitive gentlemen received from his own mouth the confirmation of those particulars which seemed dubious, or carried with them the air of romance." The period was certainly unpropitious for any but a writer of fiction, and Drury seems to have anticipated no higher rank for his Treatise, in point of authenticity, than that occupied by the several members of the Robinson Crusoe school. He, however, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... by, looking on. She had made no comment. Her expression was not cheerful. Turning suddenly about, Elizabeth saw the dubious look. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... loss of the greater part of his fortune with resignation, and was even satisfied by the thought that he had at least effected the possession of the property for Mrs. Peyton. But when he found that those of his tenants who had bought under him had acquired only a dubious possession of their lands and no title, he had unhesitatingly reimbursed them for their improvements with the last of his capital. Only the lawless Gilroy had good-humoredly declined. The quiet acceptance of the others did not, unfortunately, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... schnaps to wine, as bilberries to grapes, as butter and cheese to roast and dessert, as mountains and levels, as leagues and miles. In the south or wine land prevails a lighter, sprightlier, tone of intercourse; in the land of beer and schnaps with its moist air, all seems more dubious and measured; and thus the moment of enjoyment passes over. The sex is livelier in the south and more complaisant, without on that account being more wanton. In the south there is everywhere more nature, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... noted, in passing, that young students and speakers always select the most tremendous subjects for their discourses. One advances in modesty as one advances in knowledge, and after eighteen years of platform work, I am far more dubious than I was at their beginning as to my power of dealing in any sense adequately with the problems of life.) The Dialectical Society had for some years held their meetings in a room in Adam Street, rented from the Social Science Association. When the members gathered as usual on February ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... house drawing-room and abounds in the little feminine touches that are so often best applied by the hand of man. There is nothing in the room inimical to the ladies, unless it be the cut flowers which are from the garden and possibly in collusion with it. The fireplace may also be a little dubious. It has been hacked out of a thick wall which may have been there when the other walls were not, and is presumably the cavern where Lob, when alone, sits chatting to himself among the blue smoke. He is ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... witness a sport which one would have thought too bloody and dangerous to afford their sex much pleasure. The lower and interior space was soon filled by substantial yeomen and burghers, and such of the lesser gentry as, from modesty, poverty, or dubious title, durst not assume any higher place. It was of course amongst these that the most frequent disputes for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a countenance of dubious import. He was neither merry nor sad, neither talkative nor taciturn. At one moment his face seemed to radiate hope; the next, he appeared to fall under a shadow of solicitude. When his hostess talked of her son, he plainly gave no heed; his replies ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... absolutely necessary in its administration. There is here a great distinction between money and other property, or money's worth. A menial servant, of whose honesty there is no proof, and even when it may be dubious, is habitually trusted with the care of property to a considerable amount, and the account rendered is seldom very rigorous; but, in the case of trusting with money, every precaution is first taken, as to being trust-worthy. Security ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... taverns have wholly disappeared. One of these, the Elephant, was wont to claim a somewhat dubious association with Hogarth. The artist is credited with once lodging under the Elephant's roof and with embellishing the walls of the tap-room with pictures in payment for a long overdue bill. The subjects were said to have included the first ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... near, a man, whom the careless glance of Helen's cousin took for a casual tourist about to view the ruins. Helen herself, and in the same moment, Irene, recognised Piers Otway. It seemed as though Mrs. Borisoff would not rise to welcome him; her smile was dubious, half surprised. She cast a glance at Irene, whose face was set in the austerest self-control, and thereupon not only stood up, but ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... his promise. The milk was brought in a dubious vessel, but the girl vowed she never tasted a more delicious beverage. They resumed their march, Irene's head dropped cozily to the region of Dick's heart, and that wayward organ thumped again ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... agents,'' including ambassadors. With the evolution of the diplomatic hierarchy, however, the term gradually sank until it was technically applied only to the lowest class of "diplomatic agents,'' without a representative character and of a status and character so dubious that, by the regulation of the congress of Vienna, they were wholly excluded from the immunities of the diplomatic service. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were now open to us: back to Baku, thence to Tiflis, and over the mountains to Talriz,—very dubious on account of the snow; the second, from Baku to Astrabad, and thence via Mount Demavend,—still more dubious on account of bad landing as well as blocked passes; there remained to us Astara, and along the sea-beach (no road) to Enzelli, with swollen rivers ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Davos; I have discoursed about it already, rather sillily I think, in the Pall Mall, and I mean to say no more, but the ways of the Muse are dubious and obscure, and who knows? I may be wiled again. As a place of residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage—the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds—I dare say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aspiring, and no wish beyond The bounded confines of her present state: Had counsell'd her, that even mines of wealth, Could purchase nothing to content the wise, Esteem or friendship, tenderness or love: That power at best was but a heavy weight; If well employ'd, a dubious, unpaid toil, If ill, a curse, to tempt men to ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... go to the foundation of things, are, as casuists tell us, really words of very dubious signification, perpetually varying with custom and fashion, and to be adjusted ultimately by no other standards but opinion and force. Obtain power, then, by all means: power is the law of man; make it yours. But to return from a frivolous disquisition ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... "a sneaking piece of imbecility," and that "if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, properly so called, and have an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters of borderers, buccaneers, highland robbers, and all others of a Robin-Hood description."[33] In another letter he says, "My rogue always, in despite of me, turns out my hero."[34] And it seems very likely that in most of the situations Scott describes so well, his own course ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... well, Till, closing, from the tower they fell, And, grasping each the other's throat, Lay for an instant in the moat. They rose, and each in fiercer mood The sanguinary strife renewed. Well matched in size and strength and skill They fought the dubious battle still. While sweat and blood their limbs bedewed They met, retreated, and pursued: Each stratagem and art they tried, Stood front to front and swerved aside. His hand a while the giant stayed And called ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... talk to him naturally and candidly, thereby displaying more or less of her disposition and temperament. With every word she spoke he found her more and more fascinating—she had a quaint directness of speech which was extremely refreshing after the half-veiled subtleties conveyed in the often dubious conversation of the women he was accustomed to meet in society—while there was no doubt she was endowed with extraordinary intellectual grasp and capacity. Her knowledge of things artistic and literary might, perhaps, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... themselves; and though I fumed and stormed in their presence when they were disposed to lie down and give up, never was a man further from doing them injury. I was too proud of them; but under the circumstances it was dangerous—nay, suicidal—to appear doubtful or dubious of the road. The mere fact that I still held on my way according to the Doctor's little pearly monitor (the compass) had a grand moral effect on them, and though they demurred in plaintive terms and with pinched faces, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... sign of life. They watched long and sharply, but nothing stirred. The advance was taken up and the manoeuvre repeated at fifty yards. Still no sign nor sound. Tyee shook his head, and even Aab-Waak was dubious. But the order was given to go on, and go on they did, till bale touched bale and a solid rampart of skin and hide bowed out from the cliff about the pit and back to ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... everybody else," put in Tom Loudon, "but if something don't turn up damn quick—" He broke off, shaking a dubious head. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... understood the true relation of colonial autonomy to British supremacy. Not even his most foolish eulogist will attribute anything romantic to his character. There was nothing of Disraeli's "glitter of dubious gems" about the honest phrases in which he bade Russell think imperially. Unlike Mazzini, it was his business to destroy false nationalism, not to exalt that which was true, and {227} for that cool business the ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... had left inert and collapsed—lying, indeed, like the body of a man just dead—had arisen, had arisen by virtue of some strength and will beyond his own. It stood with staring eyes, stretching its limbs in dubious fashion. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... about us? You believe that some great, nameless crime has banished us to this island outside the world? that we drive some dubious trade, of which one can not speak? or that we are the homeless heirs of some dishonored name, who must hide from the sight of the authorities? ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... brought into the firm's office to keep the books through Grimes's influence, of course. By and by it seemed to Chesterton that his old comrade was running pretty close to the wind. The bookkeeper feared that he might be involved in some dubious enterprise. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... version of his conversation with his uncle to that which I knew to be the true one; and said smilingly to me, 'Redmond, I have spoken to the Minister regarding thy services,[Footnote: The service about which Mr. Barry here speaks has, and we suspect purposely, been described by him in very dubious terms. It is most probable that he was employed to wait at the table of strangers in Berlin, and to bring to the Police Minister any news concerning them which might at all interest the Government. The great Frederick never received a guest without taking these hospitable ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mischief in the Rouergue some five or six centuries ago. Such ham and eggs in her case could only be explained by the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless, she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom. After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English Government to ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... grawacke slates, with beds of conglomerates.) This system is largely developed in the west and north of England, and it has been well examined, partly because some of the slate beds are extensively quarried for domestic purposes. If we overlook the dubious statements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we have in this "system" the first appearances of life upon our planet. The animal remains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoophyta, polyparia, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... Tad in this contest; but, as the lad glanced up at the ring only an inch in diameter, he grew rather dubious. He never had seen any tilting, and did not even know how the sport ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... night, a day, and still another night following before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,—So, wherever you go, Ishmael, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... judgment and spirit. Their aim is to educate the youth, to educate the lower people; they see that this is to be done by promoting thought fearlessly, yet urge temperance in action, while the time is yet so difficult, and many of its signs dubious. They aim at breaking down those barriers between the different states of Italy, relics of a barbarous state of polity, artificially kept up by the craft of her foes. While anxious not to break down what is really native ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... question made itself felt in a way personally interesting to Mr. Adams, by the influence it was exerting upon men's feelings concerning the still pending and dubious treaty with Spain. The South became anxious to lay hands upon the Floridas and upon as far-reaching an area as possible in the direction of Mexico, in order to carve it up into more slave States; the North, on the other hand, no longer ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... have had little or no selling experience. You are conscious that you entirely lack sales art. Therefore, though in other ways you feel qualified to succeed in life, you may be dubious about your future. Perhaps you realize that skill in selling true ideas of your best capabilities is all you need to make your success certain. But you question, "Can I be sure of becoming a skillful salesman of myself?" You have ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... It could never be said of the disciples of a Plato that their quest was sure to end in finding what they sought. Many a man then, and many a man since, and many a man to-day, has 'followed knowledge, like a sinking star,' and has only caught a glimmer of a far-off and dubious light. There is only one search which is certain always to find what it seeks, and that is the search which knows where the object of it is, and seeks not as for something the locality of which is unknown, but as for that which the place of which is certain. The manifold voices of human ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious; but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It was, perhaps, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... discs. Here Olivia and Antoinette, in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea in a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels that resembled individual trophies of the course. And here St. George and Amory praised the admirable English muffins which some one had taught the dubious cook to make; and Mr. Augustus Frothingham tip-fingered his way about his plate among alien fruits and queer-shaped cakes. "Are they cookies or are they manna?" Amory wondered, "for they remind me of coriander seeds." And here Mrs. Hastings, who always awoke a thought impatient and became ultra-complacent ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... guineas; and a Carlo Maratti, which too I am persuaded was a Giuseppe Chiari, lord Egremont bought at the rate of two hundred and sixty pounds. Mr. Spencer(866) gave no less than two thousand two hundred pounds for the Andrea Sacchi and the Guido from the same collection. The latter is of very dubious originality: my father, I think, preferred the Andrea Sacchi to his own Guido, and once offered seven hundred pounds for it, but Furnese said, "Damn him, it is for him; he shall pay a thousand." There is a pewterer, one Cleeve, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... only problems which we can really solve are those of space and number; that even astronomy involves assumptions to which there are 'unanswerable objections'; that what is loosely called science, Darwinism, for example, is 'dubious in the extreme'; that theology and politics are so conjectural as to be practically worthless; and judicial and historical evidence little more than a makeshift. In short, his doctrine is 'scepticism directed ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... much simpler and more honest. In vain he tried the half-baked philosophy of youth. It gave no comfort; and watching the clear desert stars of two mysterious continents, he fell prey to the unbounded and unintelligible complexity of man's world. His own career seemed no more dubious than trivial. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... take the hint, but sat fast, with an embarrassed countenance however, like one who had something to say that he knew not exactly how to make effectual. At length he said, with a dubious smile, "You are fortunate, my lord, in having so soon dispatched your business at Court. Your talking landlady informs me you have been but a fortnight in this city. It is usually months and years ere the Court and a suitor ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... proceeds of which not only enabled us to discharge the deposit loan, but left us a material surplus. Under these circumstances a two-handed banquet was proposed and unanimously carried, the commencement of which I distinctly remember, but am rather dubious as to the end. So many stories have lately been circulated to the prejudice of railway directors that I think it my duty to state that this entertainment was scrupulously defrayed by ourselves and not carried to account, either of the preliminary survey, or the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... sound, shows a tendency to croup and to the development of tuberculosis, and finally degenerates in whooping-cough, so that epidemic measles and whooping-cough often go hand in hand. After Apis, the cough speedily begins to become looser and milder, to loose its dubious character, and to gradually disappear without leaving a trace behind. If these results should be confirmed by further experience, we would have attained additional means of preventing the supervention of whooping-cough in measles; a triumph of art and ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... With this dubious encouragement and palpitating with uneasiness, Martin was forced to tiptoe out of the room in the wake of his white-robed conductor. As he walked down the long, quiet hall, he said to himself that every step was bringing him nearer to the crisis ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Berwick was between 8000 and 9000. "It included," says Dr. MacEwen, "some curious elements." Not the least curious and dubious of these was that of the lower class of the old Freemen of the Borough. These men had an inherited right to the use of lands belonging to the Corporation, which they let; and to a vote at a Parliamentary election, which they sold. When an election ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... fool enough to think that he had permanently pulled the wool over the eyes of the islanders. Sooner or later they would come to know that he had tricked them, and then—well, he could only shake his head in dubious contemplation of the hundred things that might happen. He smiled as he smoked, however, for he looked down upon a world that thought only of the night ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... had paused at a crossing, and young Draper, with a dubious air, stood striking his agate-headed stick against the curb-stone. "I believe in a purpose, don't you?" he asked, lifting his blue eyes ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... known to be incorrect in many particulars. Enough details for most readers will be found in the Duc de Broglie's "Secret of the King," vol. ii., chaps. vi. and g., and at p. 89, vol. ii. of that work, where the Duke refers to the letter of most dubious authenticity spoken of by Madame Campan. The following details will be sufficient for these memoirs: The Chevalier Charles d'Eon de Beaumont (who was born in 1728) was an ex-captain of dragoons, employed in both the open and secret diplomacy ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... has risen to the height of a man, and hourly increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns may be depressed and brought to bear on the turrets of any Monitors which might possibly come down ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... asserted, and generally believed, that the canals had done all they could for the prosperity of the city, and that unless something new turned up for its benefit, Cleveland would remain at a stand-still, or increase only by very slow degrees. Business was extremely dull, the prospect looked dubious, many business men moved to other cities and more were preparing to follow. Just then two things occurred. The war broke out, and the Atlantic and Great Western railway was extended to Cleveland. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... her feet again, he assured himself that he had behaved rather well in the affair. Then he sighed. That dubious fame of his that had spread so quickly across the Caribbean would by now have reached the ears of Arabella Bishop. That she would despise him, he could not doubt, deeming him no better than all the other scoundrels who drove this villainous buccaneering trade. Therefore ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Tim looked dubious. With the exception of Job, and Daniel in the lions' den, and extracts from one or two thrilling tales like that, he considered the Bible rather tame. His foster-father read a chapter to them every night before they went to bed, ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... life and with base opinions. In this novel I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim morality that masquerades as the morality of our own time, while the good man is made to justify his one dubious act by the full and sincere and just morality that too often wears now the garb of vice—the morality of the books of Moses. This novel relies, I trust, on the sheer humanities alone, but among its less aggressive purposes is that of ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... so expressionless, his mouth so tightly closed, and his air of concentration on the business in hand so intense, that he seemed the perfect type of the silent butler. But as soon as lunch was over, and while Cicely still stood in the hall listening with a dubious eye to Malcolm's suggestion of a game of billiards, Mr. James Bisset revealed the other side of his personality. He came up to the young couple with just sufficient deference, but no more, and in an accent which experts would have recognised as the hall mark of ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... ears for nothing else. Worldly affairs were his element, and he was shipwrecked upon the charming solitude which he affected to admire. He was most anxious to return to the world again, but he had difficult cards to play. His master was even more dubious than usual about everything. Granvelle was ready to remain in Burgundy as long as Philip chose that he should remain there. He was also ready to go to "India, Peru, or into the fire," whenever his King should require ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have to pay for each. I dined well, having respect to the journey of two days and a night I was about to begin, and knowing, too, that an Italian diligence halts only at long intervals. The reckoning, I thought, could be no dubious or difficult matter. I knew the dishes I had eaten, and I saw the prices affixed, and I concluded that a simple arithmetical process would infallibly conduct me to the aggregate cost. But when my bill was handed me (a formality dispensed with in ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... public-house he reached he entered and drank a glass of whisky. The barman had forgotten the piece of lemon, and was rewarded with an oath considerably stronger than the occasion seemed to warrant. Arrived at certain cross-ways, Mr. Woodstock paused. His eyes were turned downwards; he did not seem dubious of his way, so much as in hesitation as to a choice of directions. He took a few steps hither, then back; began to wend thither, and again turned. When he at length decided, his road brought him to Milton Street, and up to the door on which stood ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... ill of a violent cold, which attacked him suddenly one afternoon on his return from his office. It was Christmas weather then, and the cold and the frost of the season were unusually keen, so that the physician, whom Stephen called in to see his father, looked very grave and dubious; and before many days of his patient's illness were past, he asked the young man whether there were any brothers or sisters of his, whom the merchant might wish to see. Stephen's heart beat fast when he heard the ominous question, for he understood what tidings the grave tone and the strange ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's- eye, or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the deck, it was momentarily quenched; and what was still worse, sometimes a coil of rope would ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... remarkable resilience of the economy. Moderate recovery took place in 2002, with the GDP growth rate rising to 2.45%. A major short-term problem in first half 2002 was a sharp decline in the stock market, fueled in part by the exposure of dubious accounting practices in some major corporations. The war in March/April 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq shifted resources to military industries and introduced uncertainties about investment ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... gave a breathing spell to the Cumberland settlements. Robertson at once wrote to the French in the Illinois country, and also to some Delawares, who had recently come to the neighborhood, and were preserving a dubious neutrality. He explained the necessity of their expedition, and remarked that if any innocent people, whether Frenchmen or Indians, had suffered in the attack, they had to blame themselves; they were in evil company, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly dubious air. She was never quite sure in her own mind as to the way in which "old Gold-Dust," as she privately called him, regarded her. An aged man, burdened with an excess of wealth, was privileged to have what are called "humours," and certainly he sometimes had them. It was necessary—or ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... colours suffer in grey weather, and that strong sunlight is necessary to all the hues of heaven and earth. Here again there are two words to be said; and it is essential to distinguish. It is true that sun is needed to burnish and bring into bloom the tertiary and dubious colours; the colour of peat, pea-soup, Impressionist sketches, brown velvet coats, olives, grey and blue slates, the complexions of vegetarians, the tints of volcanic rock, chocolate, cocoa, mud, soot, slime, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... did not know him at first; but the moment he spoke, recognized him. Cosmo had been dubious what his reception might be—after the way in which their intimacy had closed; but Mr. Burns held out his hand as if they had parted only the day before, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... deliciously comfortable, and every day at nine o'clock I was at the door eager to enter. I spent most of my day at a desk in the big central reading room, but at night I haunted the Young Men's Union, thus adding myself to a dubious collection of half-demented, ill-clothed derelicts, who suffered the contempt of the attendants by reason of their filling all the chairs and monopolizing all the newspaper racks. We never conversed ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and into the beginning of their real troubles. The refugee steamboat had departed down river from the Asphodel camp; Chill II had disappeared, the superintendent knew not how, along with the body of Peter Tonsburg; and the superintendent was dubious of their remaining. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... ill-plastered, we can easily distinguish our laughter-loving, night-rejoicing neighbours when they are eating, drinking, singing, etc. My worthy landlady tosses sleepless and unquiet, "looking for rest and finding none," the whole night. Just now she told me—though by-the-by she is sometimes dubious that I am, in her own phrase, "but a rough an' roun' Christian,"—that "we should not be uneasy or envious because the wicked enjoy the good things of this life, for the jades would one day lie in ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their situation was one of doubt and anxiety. They dared not give even as much as a glance over the smooth, snow white sand. They could only crouch behind it, in anxious expectation, knowing not when that dubious condition of things could be ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... parallel passages about twelve feet in height, were formed by a triple row of shops. The centre row, giving back and front upon the Galleries, was filled with the fetid atmosphere of the place, and derived a dubious daylight through the invariably dirty windows of the roof; but so thronged were these hives, that rents were excessively high, and as much as a thousand crowns was paid for a space scarce six feet by eight. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... a prospector and a company promoter all the working years of his rather shabby life. He had organized some dubious concerns; but his new offices on Broadway were fitted so unostentatiously that anyone could see the Northern Exploitation Company was not trying to glitter for the benefit of the ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... for them. But it was not easy to make the rule absolute, since the Church and pulpit had long been used as a means of publicity in many ways, judicial, educational, and others, and since even sermons were sometimes delivered by humanists and other laymen. There existed, too, in Italy, a dubious class of persons who were neither monks nor priests, and who yet had renounced the world—that is to say, the numerous class of hermits who appeared from time to time in the pulpit on their own authority, and often carried the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... disorderly person, a vagabond, or incorrigible rogue, the reader may perhaps incline to think that many of the offences specified in this Act, and in subsequent statutes, on the same subject, are of a very dubious nature, and that it must require nice legal acumen, to distinguish whether a person incurs any, and what, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... things as drunkers, but they probably like to have saloons around for themselves. A nice thing would be, to have ladies, like your mother and me, for pleecemen. Then we'd scrub things up, and pour things out, till you couldn't smell or taste a thing. But men are meaner than women"—Bobby looked dubious—"some men aren't though"—he looked relieved. "The reason we are so nice and 'spectable, is because my father is a minister, and doesn't dare do disgraceful things, and your mother doesn't get time. ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... distributions of land, all the restrictions on labor—are either carried out directly by the military or by the police with the army at their back. Anyone who serves his time in the army shares the responsibility of all these things, about which he is, in some cases, dubious, while very often they are directly opposed to his conscience. People are unwilling to be turned out of the land they have cultivated for generations, or they are unwilling to disperse when the government authority orders them, or they are unwilling to pay the taxes required of them, or ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Delights of Dougherty, The Desultory Hints and Maxims for Anglers Distinguished Visitor, A Dorgs, On Dogs Tale, A Down the Bay Drainage under Difficulties Dreadful State of Things out West, The Dubious English Dwarf Dejected, The ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... Lou's weeping soon had good cause. Ferd rushed away, rushed into another marriage, with an heiress and a beauty, as it happened, and Mary Lou had only the dubious ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... beatific speak; Yet have they ears, and eyes as well; And if not with a paler cheek, They feel the shivers in them dwell, That something of a dubious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with no sign of her return, I began to feel somewhat anxious. I was now practically as well in health as I had ever been in my life, and I began to pine for a return to active service. I was also desirous of seeing Lotta safely removed from her present dubious and somewhat dangerous surroundings into that position which was hers by right. To achieve these two results it was necessary that I should get away from where I was, either by the fulfilment of ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... maintained that the intelligent people ought to change everything, and was at last even brought to the point of forgetting his position as a kammer-yunker, and his career as an official, and calling Lavretsky an antiquated conservative, even hinting—very remotely it is true—at his dubious position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper. He did not raise his voice (he recollected that Mihalevitch too had called him antiquated but an antiquated Voltairean), and calmly proceeded to refute Panshin at all points. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... gravity of the evil which the recent Indian Press law has at last, though very tardily, done something to repress that many Englishmen are still apparently disposed to regard that measure as an oppressive, or at least dubious, concession to bureaucratic impatience of criticism none the less healthy for being sometimes excessive.[1] The following quotations, taken from vernacular papers before the new Press law was enacted, will serve to show what Lord Morley meant when he said, "You may put picric acid ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... not be drawn to go these lengths. Nobody could be more of a logician than Mr. Gladstone when he liked, no logician could wield a more trenchant blade; but nobody ever knew better in complex circumstance the perils of the logical short cut. Hence, according to his general manner in all dubious cases, he moved slowly, and laboured to remove practical grounds for objection. Ashley describes him (October 16) at a dinner at Bunsen's rejoicing in the bishopric, and proposing the health of the new prelate, and this gave Ashley pleasure, for 'Gladstone is a good ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... of committing to paper Hamilton's sayings in the freedom of after-dinner conversation—a time when open-hearted men are apt to forget that there may be a Judas at table—and of saving them up to be used against him in the future? Jefferson explains away these and other dubious passages in his life with great ingenuity. He had to make such explanations too often. An apology implies a mistake, wilful or accidental. Too many indicate, to say the least, a lack of discretion. What a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... of poetry is related to the infancy of civilization, and the analogical possibilities of the one to the other sustain his argument at every point. If his historicism is dubious, his discourse is neatly illustrative of a neoclassic critical method and of the kind of psychological assumptions upon which such arguments could proceed. From the rather copious use of allegory and metaphor, as civilizing instruments, Ogilvie traces the rise of the religious fable as part ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... soothed, "there!" She carried her charge out of the room without wasting words. She had observed that when the child came to her the man had seemed on the point of surrender, too. With an effort he had kept himself inert, with a wan face. He had the dubious, sounding expression of one who stands at a door with his back to the light and looks ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... was rather dubious at first, but eventually returned with a miscellaneous collection of bathing togs from which the boys finally evolved three pairs of trunks and two suits. Meanwhile Mr. Robey had ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... dignified English household, an English gentleman, even a deposed heir presumptive, was working out a subtle plot against her such as might adorn a melodrama? She held her head in her hands as her mind depicted to her Lord Walderhurst's countenance, Lady Maria's dubious, amused smile. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers. The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen out of their landlords' mansions, and arrived in Dublin hopeful of enlistment. Light-hearted undergraduates of Trinity, drapers' assistants of dubious character, and the crowd of nondescripts whose time is spent in preparing for examinations which they fail to pass, leaped at the opportunity of winning glory and perhaps wealth in South Africa. Those who were fortunate enough to be selected were sent to the Curragh to be broken in to their new ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... inconceivable prestige. Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of its tale of heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and pretty woman becomes more interesting for the dubious renown of a happy love or a scandalous desertion, and the more she is to be pitied, the more she excites our sympathies. We are only pitiless to the commonplace. If, moreover, we attract all eyes, we are to all ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... man, suppose, and an excellent doctor," said Mrs. Salina Simmons, with a dubious ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... his infancy, and the four-months-old baby had been started on the same path. I explained to the mother the mechanism of elimination, told her to give up cathartics, and to set a regular time for herself and the baby, but was a little dubious about the mentally deficient four-year-old. However she soon reported that they had all three promptly acquired the new habit. Four years later she told me that they had never had ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... those simple, sincere beings, a life so calm and undisturbed that I have never had cause, then or now, to regret the civilized society from which I had voluntarily withdrawn myself, persuaded that if my character and habits incapacitated me for the dubious and not always straightforward transactions of the commercial world, the same moral qualities which impeded me from becoming a business man might find good ground for bringing forth fruit in the pure ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... was more scientist than priest all his life; for two years he held the post of Professor of Mathematics at Ferrara, and up to the time of his death, in 1687, he spent by far the greater part of his time in scientific research, He had the dubious advantage of living in an age when one man could cover the whole range of science, and this he seems to have done very thoroughly. There survives an immense work of his entitled, Magisterium Naturae et Artis, which embraces the whole field of scientific knowledge ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... Exhorting the poor Souls to confess their Crimes, in order to be sav'd, or the like; no, faith, but quite contrary, for he was rather hardning them, and infusing a strong Portion of his own obstinacy, to fortifie 'em for their dubious Journey; and in few minutes after, possess'd with a stronger Spirit of Priesthood than e'er, for some past Ages there has been Example for, pronounc'd the Absolution, the extremest and most mysterious Grace the Church can possibly ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... seven and seven, the casting vote of the President must be given on one side or other: no matter, for my argument, on which; one or the other must be taken: as when I am to move, there is no matter which leg I move first. And then, Sir, it was otherwise determined here. No, Sir, a more dubious determination of any ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... during that bright brief period of the attempted apotheosis of the dirty-minded little Decadent whose stock in trade was a few Aubrey Beardsley drawings, a widow's-cruse-like bottle of Green Chartreuse, an Oscar Wilde book, some dubious blue china, some floppy ties, an assortment of second-hand epigrams, scent and scented tobacco, a nil admirari attitude ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... had no doubt domestic matters to attend to. I knew, of course, that she had gone to meet Jasper at a certain cleared spot on the banks of the only stream on Nelson's little island. The commander of the Neptun gave me a dubious black look, and began to make himself at home, flinging his thick, cylindrical carcass into a rocking-chair, and unbuttoning his coat. Old Nelson sat down opposite him in a most unassuming manner, staring anxiously with ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his patriotism to such a degree that he cancelled Martin's account and forbade him ever to attempt to pay it. The talk in the neighborhood reflected the same feeling, and indignation against Martin ran high. No one would have anything to do with a socialist traitor. Poor Maria was dubious and frightened, but she remained loyal. The children of the neighborhood recovered from the awe of the grand carriage which once had visited Martin, and from safe distances they called him "hobo" and "bum." The Silva tribe, however, stanchly defended him, fighting more than one pitched battle for ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... compact and promised to find the means of evading it. He relies upon him to do so. This calm frankness in the god, with its effect of personal clearness from all sense of guilt, suggests the measure of Wotan's distinguishing simplicity. Referring later to the dubious act which so effectually laid the foundation of sorrows, he says, "Unknowingly deceitful, I practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... which denominate a man, a disorderly person, a vagabond, or incorrigible rogue, the reader may perhaps incline to think that many of the offences specified in this Act, and in subsequent statutes, on the same subject, are of a very dubious nature, and that it must require nice legal acumen, to distinguish whether a person incurs any, and what, penalty, under the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... on examining his somewhat laborious effort to make Paul the villain of Christian theology, and Jesus no more than an innocent bystander. But this sentimental yielding never went far enough to distract his attention for long from his main idea, which was this: that Christian ethics were quite as dubious, at bottom, as Christian theology—that they were founded, just as surely as such childish fables as the story of Jonah and the whale, upon the peculiar prejudices and credulities, the special desires and appetites, of inferior men—that they warred upon the best ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... some reservation, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away, which was called Iceland the Great. Then, again, we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again outraging the laws, he was sent into temporary banishment—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... wild company. The chaumiere knew him, and the balls of Parisian actresses, the coulisses of the opera at home and abroad. Those pretty heads of ladies whom nobody knows, used to nod their shining ringlets at Kew, from private boxes at theatres, or dubious Park broughams. He had run the career of young men of pleasure, and laughed and feasted with jolly prodigals and their company. He was tired of it: perhaps he remembered an earlier and purer life, and was sighing ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... driveway, then, he walked, a little startled at the fact that he cast no shadow—feeling as a ghost might feel. The pavement was hot to his thinly filmed feet. A little dubious as to the effect of heat on the vital shell that hid him, he stepped off into the cool grass beside the drive; and came soon to ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... would cut short my hopes of fame, and the grand progress which I sometimes fondly imagined I should make. Every way it would be fatal! I trembled at its possibility. Success, which had so lately appeared certain, seemed to become more and more dubious. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... at Mrs. Willett's that night, but Mr. Truefitt was back first thing next morning to take possession of his own house. He found Captain Sellers, propped up with pillows, eating his breakfast, and more than dubious as to any ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... blow in the face, and the fight between these unequally-matched combatants—a boy not fifteen against a much stronger boy of seventeen—began. The result could not be dubious. Walter fought with indomitable pluck; it was splendid to see the sturdiness with which he bore up under the blows of Harpour's strong fist, which he could only return at intervals. He was tremendously punished, while Harpour was barely ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... instant he had a glimpse of Mrs. Sartin's full face, dubious, questioning, even hostile, but to him it was merely the result of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... from distance emerged from it and scattered across the flat and up into the clustered buildings. A few stragglers went over to explore and investigate Denver's space sled in the unlikely possibility that he and the girl had trusted to its meager and dubious protection. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... Daniel looked dubious. "I guess not, Labe," he said. "Zuba—well, the fact is, Zuba doesn't like people to smoke ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... interested only in the pursuit of women, where he was said to have considerable success. But toward the end of 1811, when new rumours of war began to circulate, the Paris police were informed that while appearing to be solely interested in pleasure, the Russian colonel was mixed up in some dubious political schemes, and he was put under close surveillance, when it was discovered that he had frequent meetings with M. X..., an employee of the ministry for war who had special responsibility for ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... poor ass, who had just turned in, with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage-leaves, and stood dubious with his two fore-feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he would go in or no. Now, 'tis an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike. There is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so unaffectedly ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... inanimate beings. The sentiments of his disciple Aristo are not less erroneous. He thought it impossible to conceive the form of the Deity, and asserts that the Gods are destitute of sense; and he is entirely dubious whether the Deity is an ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... until you supplied this information I was feeling profoundly dubious about poor old Gussie's chances of inducing any spinster of any parish to join him in the saunter down the aisle. You will agree with me that he is not ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... she had never understood; in total ignorance of the complex elements of his soul, and little realizing that between her and her beloved son there was now a gulf fixed which would never be bridged, saw only the happy fruition of a life ambition. Fortunately she had been kept in ignorance of the dubious incident of the Testament translation and its results upon the boy; and when the long anticipated day dawned her eyes swam in tears of hallowed joy. The Archbishop and his grim secretary each congratulated the other heartily, and the latter, breaking into one of his rare smiles, murmured ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... competitors and his associates consider legitimate; at the same time, social changes can only be inaugurated by those who feel the unrighteousness of contemporary conditions, and the expression of their scruples may be the one opportunity for pushing forward moral tests into that dubious area ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of commercial greed, leading to political grab in every part of the world; her infidelity in late years towards small peoples, like the Boers and the Persians; her neglect of treaty obligations and silence about them when they do not suit her; her most dubious alliance with a military despotism like Russia: all render it impossible for her to accuse Germany. The extraordinary thing is that in the face of such prevarications as these, which are patent to the whole ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... or more the man wrote and wrote—good stuff, sound stuff, extremely original stuff, often superbly fine stuff—and yet no one in the whole of this vast and incomparable Republic arose to his merit—no one, that is, save a few encapsulated enthusiasts, chiefly somewhat dubious. It would be difficult to imagine a first-rate artist cloaked in greater obscurity, even in the remotest lands of Ghengis Khan. The newspapers, reviewing him, dismissed him with a sort of inspired ill-nature; the ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the Fair to-day, that Congress did not appropriate $100,000 to secure a full and commanding exhibition of American products at this Fair. I do not see how any tangible and adequate benefit to the Nation would have resulted from such a dubious disposition of National funds. In the first place, our great Agricultural staples—at least, all such as find markets abroad—are already accessible and well known here. Bales of Cotton, casks of Hams or other Meats, barrels ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and said, "Come to lunch with me at the bank any day, and we'll talk of Phil Demorest," and left Barker as happy as if the appointment were to confer the favor he had that morning refused. But Mrs. Barker, who had overheard, was more dubious. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... air. Such a proceeding would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doctrine of assumptions. But upon second thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... impossible one. Barbier (Dictionnaire des Anonymes), in a helpless doubting manner, gives still others.] highly unmemorable otherwise. Whereupon you proceed to said other person's acknowledged WORKS (as they are called); and find there a style bearing no resemblance whatever; and are left in a dubious state, if it were of any moment. In the absence of proof, I am unwilling to charge his Highness de Ligne with such an action; and indeed am little careful to be acquainted with the individual who did it, who could and would do it. A Prince of Coxcombs I can discern him to have been; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... art magazine in the interior, it was my duty occasionally to visit his galleries. After such visits the remnant of my New England conscience usually forced me to diminish or actually to spoil many a sale of the dubious or merely fashionable antiquities in which he dealt. But in the main my power to harm him was slight. He held in a knowing grip the strings of his patrons' vanity and taste. So he regarded me with something between scorn and uneasiness—as a pachyderm ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... fighter—purely as a fighter—of the Alvord stripe. He was so occupied with plans for the next day's battle that the dubious features of the contest were already clearing up in his mind with the forming of plans for attacking the situation. A few hours of sleep, and he was up and at them. His telephone called up the editors of the town with the morning star. Long before the enemy could ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Bett has prepared a solemn demonstration of fealty for the supposed Czar, whom he still mistakes for the real one, while the real Czar has found means to go on board of his ship with the Marquis and Lefort.—Before taking farewell, he promises a pass-port to Ivanow, who is very dubious as to what will become of {46} him. Meanwhile Van Bett approaches him with his procession to do homage, but during his long and confused speech cannon-shots are heard and an usher announces, that ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... had declared the Queen of Scots guilty of death, my poor Cicely had well-nigh swooned to think that there could be such joy for the doom of one poor sick lady. There hath been a petition to the Queen that the sentence may be carried out, and she hath answered in a dubious and uncertain manner, which leaves ground for hope; and the King of Scots hath written pressingly and sent the Master of Gray to speak in his mother's behalf; also M. de Chateauneuf hath both urged mercy on the Queen, and so written to France that King Henry is sending an Ambassador ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... locked and bolted. Then it came into Juve's mind that the maid Justine in giving testimony had become embarrassed and finally had admitted that the key having been lost, she had neglected to lock the door. This cleared up the dubious point and established in Juve's mind the complete ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... was the dubious response. "I'm farther away from a decision than ever. Just as I get it settled in my mind that the railroads have done the biggest things and conquered the most difficulties along come the steamships and I am certain they are six ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... they all think of Master Martin? Oh! I—I don't think you'll hear much said against him." At the same time Master Martin struck his big fat belly with the greatest self-satisfaction, smiling with his eyes half-closed. Then, as all remained silent, nothing being heard except a dubious clearing of the throat here and there, he continued, "Ay! ay! I see. I ought, I know very well, to thank you all handsomely that in this election the good Lord above has at last seen fit to enlighten your minds. Well, when I receive the price of my labour, when my debtor ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... you proceed to the spot, you will at least see succulent legs of mutton exposed for sale. The chef of the establishment, however, when making his morning purchases, passes by these with scorn, and betakes himself to a little booth whose table is strewn with dubious scraps of skin and bones, which have already been fingered and contemptuously thrown aside by fifty dirty Arabs (I speak as an eye-witness); he buys a few handfuls of these horrors for three or four sous, and forthwith—hey, presto!—they are transformed into a "ragout ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the dubious women uttered little screams of affright, and the Orleansville photographer bent over towards the lion-slayer, already cherishing the unequalled honour of taking ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... troubadours were inclined to blend the lady of their heart with the universal Lady of Heaven; the need of deifying the loved woman was at the root of many dubious growths, and possibly these early poets were also to some extent influenced by their dread of the Inquisition (which never gained much importance in Italy). The new poets deepened this feeling, stripped it of all externalities, and appeared ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... it became clear that the only function which the curiales were expected to perform was to emulate the Danaides by pouring gold into the bottomless cask of the Imperial Treasury,[101] they naturally rejected the dubious honours conferred on them, and fled either to be the companions of the monks in the desert or elsewhere so as to be safe from the crushing load of Imperial distinction. Mr. Hodgkin and others have ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... familiarize a sufficient number of the elect, with a grossly immoral and treasonable pamphlet, called the "Ritual of the Order," to enable them to officer the Temple, and "induct" any number of "candidates" supposed to be "in waiting in the ante-room, into the sublime," but in fact dark and dubious ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... acquaintance, to discover, and even, if needed, to invent facts and circumstances which might be turned against them, or against any other persons obnoxious to England, with the view of destroying them. So that, to England in Europe, and to Elizabeth in England, belongs the dubious honor of having invented that great agent of modern governments—the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... save the dull sound That from the mountain, previous to the storm, Rolls o'er the muttering earth, disturbs the flood, And shakes the forest leaf without a breath. Prone to the lowest vale, the aerial tribes Descend: the tempest-loving raven scarce Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze The cattle stand, and on the scowling heavens Cast a deploring eye, by man forsook, Who to the crowded cottage hies him fast, Or seeks the shelter of the downward cave. 'Tis listening fear, and dumb amazement ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... had told him she thought herself ugly. He went to Janet and asked her permission to bring a mirror to the house that he might have the privilege of being the first to reveal Kilmeny to herself exteriorly. Janet was somewhat dubious ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... word was said on the subject in all those weeks. So profound was the faith of this intelligent and skeptical and independent people in the sound judgment and unswerving integrity of the Father of the Revolution! As the weeks went by, and the issue seemed still dubious, the workingmen of Boston, shipwrights and brass-founders and other mechanics, decided to express their opinion in a way that they knew Samuel Adams would heed. They held a meeting at the Green Dragon tavern, passed resolutions in favour of the Constitution, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dowager empress held her own. General Yuean Shih-k'ai, who had played so dubious a part in 1898, was not impeccably loyal to her, and remained unreliable. He was beyond challenge the strongest man in the country, for he possessed the only modern army; but he was still ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... answer; his eye was traveling down a column of the newspaper, and he felt a curious pricking of remorse as he read. He had once been rude to Erica Raeburn; he had all his life retailed dubious stories about her father, knowing all the time that had any one believed such stories of himself upon such shaky evidence, he would have used very strong language about them. And now this fellow was dead! Curiously enough, Mr. Cuthbert, who had many ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... own race I cling unto my country, Whatever dubious reason may protesting cry; The shame alone of all her blood bought glory, Her haughty self-assurance, conscious pride, And the ancestral faith's traditions dark, With woe ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... in his hand without reading farther. "Leave me this letter, George; I will give an answer to that and to you before night." He caught up his hat as he spoke, passed into the lifeless picture-gallery, and so out into the open air. George, dubious and anxious, gained the solitude of his own room, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be," answered Bertha, in a dubious voice; "we will say nothing on that point at present. You want ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... at the office, I proceeded to my late abode. I approached, and lifted the latch with caution. There were no appearances of any one having been disturbed. I procured a light in the kitchen, and hied softly and with dubious footsteps to my chamber. There I disrobed, and resumed my check shirt, and trowsers, and fustian coat. This change being accomplished, nothing remained but that I should strike into the country with the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... be able to wriggle away from. If you are slippery, and faith you are, why I'm tough, and so you'll find it." "Get rid of your kinks before you marry," said he. "I've no use for a wife with one eye on me, and it a dubious one, and the other one squinting into a parlour two streets off. You've got to settle down and quit tricks. A wife has no one else to deceive but her husband, that's all she can want tricks for, and there's ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Monk's behalf! Lambert's own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact, Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims, but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... peer in education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never believe that the ideas, standards—even the ideals of civilisation change—have changed since your youth—are changing every hour. In your youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be anything except timid, easily abashed, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... that tottering ledge called society. The cad and the snob are only infrequently well-born. Mrs. Harrigan was as yet far from being a snob, but it required some tact upon Nora's part to prevent this dubious accomplishment. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... summer. We had a championship team then. Yes, sir, we won out, though for a spell it looked pretty dubious. But baseball's an old story. We've had ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... suppression of his convictions, is giving more for his salary than gave the other and more outspoken professor whose chair he occupies. And when a political party dangles a full dinner-pail in the eyes of the toiling masses, it is offering more for a vote than the dubious dollar of the opposing party. Even a money-lender is not above taking a slightly lower rate of interest ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... guard and looked dubious. But presently the captain's orderly appeared and took charge of the situation, so Johnny straight-way found himself standing before Captain Riley "Well, I'm back," he announced cheerfully. "And I've got ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... held in the left hand, is of still more dubious interpretation. It is an object of great elegance, always elaborately and sometimes very tastefully ornamented. Possibly it may represent the receptacle in which the divine gifts are stored, and from which they can be taken by the genius ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing that a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... them at the courtroom door with a pleasant greeting. Then he saw Baby Fuzzy on Jack's shoulder and looked dubious. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... bay that bears the name Of proud Tarentum, proud to share the fame Of Hercules, though by a dubious claim.' ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... anxious to see for myself, naturally, suspecting some hocus-pocus, so I ventured to be respectfully dubious. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... "reconstruction" according to the artist's fancy, of the pithecanthropus, the Heidelberg man, the Piltdown man, and the Neanderthal man, the "ancestors of the human race;" and the multitude of high school students and teachers, as well as the general public, are not told how dubious and ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... but intuitively understood by all, and invariably acted upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not nearly civilized, we must remember. Thus, not to follow your leader whithersoever he may think proper to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end of it frowns dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a comrade on the road, and return home without him: these are tricks which no boy of spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any description of mortal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to smother my derision and unbelief. My glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his curling dark hair and the dubious diamond ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... that you have had little or no selling experience. You are conscious that you entirely lack sales art. Therefore, though in other ways you feel qualified to succeed in life, you may be dubious about your future. Perhaps you realize that skill in selling true ideas of your best capabilities is all you need to make your success certain. But you question, "Can I be sure of becoming a skillful salesman of myself?" You have no doubt of your ability to learn the selling ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... Farbish's pleasant smile with a look of blank and studied lack of recognition. The circumstances out of which Farbish might weave unpleasant gossip did not occur to Samson. That they were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand. Adrienne Lescott, following her companion's eyes, looked ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... YOUR lucid bands condense with fingers chill 20 The blue mist hovering round the gelid hill; In clay-form'd beds the trickling streams collect, Strain through white sands, through pebbly veins direct; Or point in rifted rocks their dubious way, And in each ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... and weaklings, was gathered together, and in 1311 laid before provincial councils, but neither province came to any fixed decision. "Inasmuch," says Hemingburgh, "as the Templars were not found altogether guilty or altogether innocent, they referred the dubious matter to the pope." They sent the evidence they had collected to swell the mass of testimony from all Christendom, which was laid before the council of Vienne. When the pope suppressed the order in April, 1312, and transferred its lands to the Knights of St. John, the papal decrees were quietly ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the other, 'if I covers it at all, it must be with silver, for divil a bit of gold have I by me.' 'Well, then, produce the value in silver,' said the jockey, 'and do it quickly, for I can't be staying here all day.' The thimble man hesitated, looked at Jack with a dubious look, then at the gold, and then scratched his head. There was now a laugh amongst the surrounders, which evidently nettled the fellow, who forthwith thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulling out all his silver treasure, just contrived to place the value of the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the two women across the field watched him from their window. "It ain't a good sign—he's got a hard life before him," said the older of the two, who had wild blue eyes under a tousle of gray hair, and was held in somewhat dubious repute ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and of London, and into those haunts of infamy in which adventurers and pamphleteers drag on a filthy existence: he left them an intriguer. Yet in the very midst of these vices which had rendered his honesty dubious, and name bespotted, he nurtured in the depths of his soul three virtues capable of again elevating him—an unshaken love for a young girl, whom he married in spite of his family, a love of occupation, and a courage ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... locked the stern door, and drew the curtains; she went to the bow and looked carefully at the anchor-line fastenings. With no light on board to blind her gaze, she scrutinized all the surroundings, to make sure of her locality. In that blank gloom she was dubious but brave. Not a thing visible, not a sound audible, nothing but her remote and little understood sensation of premonitory dread explained her perturbation. She entered the cabin, locked the door, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... to himself, as he walked up and down, for by now he was beginning to feel very drowsy himself, in spite of the coffee. "He needs it more than I do. And besides, I'm a little dubious as to what sort of watch Andy would keep. Anyhow, I can stand it a while ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... services, let it always be remembered to your praise and as an instructive example in our annals that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead; amidst appearances sometimes dubious; vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging; in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts and a guaranty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... interpose and slaves debate— But did not Chance at length her error mend? Did no subverted empire mark his end? Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound? Or hostile millions press him to the ground? His fall was destined to a barren strand, A petty fortress and a dubious hand; He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral and ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... speedily came true. The secretary intrusted to his servant, a dubious mulatto named Scott, two letters for Europe sewn up in a waistcoat: one of them was a long letter to Lucien Bonaparte. The servant showed the letters to his father, who in some alarm revealed the matter to the Governor. It is ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... had left no writing) served in turn to give effective outline to the contemplations of Marius. There was something in the doctrine itself congruous with the place wherein it had its birth; and for a time Marius lived much, mentally, in the brilliant Greek colony which had given a dubious name to the philosophy of pleasure. It hung, for his fancy, between the mountains and the sea, among richer than Italian gardens, on a certain breezy table-land projecting from the African coast, some hundreds of miles ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... appeared generally to be was seldome what he really was.' His portrait, {149a} in Highland dress, displays a handsome, fair, athletic young chief, with a haughty expression. Behind him stands a dark, dubious-looking retainer, like ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... ever could tower upwards into a very great philosopher, unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies. 'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for half a century through the very mire of despondency and destitution, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... down-stairs, and found lying on his breakfast table, the first thing that met his eye, the note which Lucy Wodehouse had written to him on the previous night. As he read it, the earth somehow turned to the sun; the dubious light brightened in the skies. Unawares, he had been wondering never to receive any token of sympathy, any word of encouragement, from those for whom he had made so many exertions. When he had read Lucy's letter, the aspect of affairs changed considerably. To be ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Protestant, deliberately enough; wrote books on controversial subjects, against his old party, before he had taken orders in the Church of England; besides a strange, morbid speculation on the innocence of suicide. He used his lawyer's training for dubious enough purposes, advising the Earl of Somerset in the dark business of his divorce and re-marriage. And, in a mournful pause in the midst of many harrowing concerns, he writes to a friend: 'When I must shipwreck, I would fain ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... reasoned loud, In dubious Hindoo phrase mysterious; While she, poor child, could not divine Why girls so young ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... word and trope absurd must stump up One-and-four; Still frequent "friendly lines" were barred to all save Wealth and Rank, Or Parliamentary "pots" who held the privilege of "Frank;" Still people stooped to dubious dodge and curious device To send their letters yet evade the most preposterous price; Still to despatch to London Town a business "line or two" Would cost a Connemara peasant half his weekly "screw;" Still mothers, longing much for news, must let their letter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... in Greek, and adds a new Translation of it, he leaves out indeed the Cranes fighting with the Pygmies, yet makes them Men, which Aristotle do's not; and by anti-placing, ut aiunt, he renders Aristotle's Assertion more dubious; Neque enim (saith he in the Translation) id est fabula, sed revera, ut aiunt, Genus ibi parvum est tam Hominum quam Equorum. Julius Caesar Scaliger in translating this Text of Aristotle, omits both these Interpretations ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... him, and then turned dubious gaze on Hiram, who leaned back against the whitewashed wall, nesting his head comfortably ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... metropolitan sesquipedalian serving-man. She was, she said, Mrs. Quiverful of Puddingdale, the wife of the Rev. Mr. Quiverful. She wished to see Mrs. Proudie. It was indeed quite indispensable that she should see Mrs. Proudie. James Fitzplush looked worse than dubious, did not know whether his lady were out, or engaged, or in her bedroom; thought it most probable she was subject to one of these or to some other cause that would make her invisible; but Mrs. Quiverful could sit down in the waiting-room ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with Hall and the driver, stretched out alongside each other in the dubious shelter of ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... down the canon was searching her insufficient clothing already. He picked her up in his arms and ran with her toward the house, setting her down in the trench outside the door. She caught her startled breath and looked at him in shy, dubious amazement. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... A late and dubious tradition asserts that the family name became so discredited owing to the pusillanimous conduct of John and Edward Baliol that it was abandoned by its owners in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the murdered man was carried to the cemetery at San Michele. In spite of some attempt on the part of the police to keep the hour secret, half Venice followed the black-draped barca, which bore that flawed poet and dubious ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chieftain called Bogoja attacked the town of Arta, and in order to gain an easier victory announced, the chroniclers tell us, that he was of Serb, Albanian, Bulgar and Greek descent. One must therefore be a little dubious of maps which ascribe the Macedonian Slavs to any particular nationality. Much more than the rival maps, it was Kiepert's that was used by the Russians and others for determining the Bulgaria of San Stefano. "It is the best ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... traits, and not by a concentration. The vernacular Irish literature is there to prove that Irish fancy gives too much rather than too little. One may observe, again, that a nation laughs habitually over its besetting weakness; and if the French find their mirth by preference in dubious adventures, it cannot be denied that much Irish humour has a pronounced alcoholic flavour. But it is better neither to define nor to describe; there is more harmful misunderstanding caused by setting down this ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... disheartened. She was certain that the book was a worthy book, and only needed to be made a little more 'personable' to find favour in the eyes of a publisher. Accordingly, blotted sheets were hastily re-copied, new articles introduced, and passages of dubious interest omitted, husband and wife working together at this remodelling until their fingers ached and their eyes were as dim as an owl's in sunshine. Their labours were rewarded by the acceptance of the work by Bentley and Colburn, and its triumphant success with both critics ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... approaching me in the opposite direction. My faculties were fatigued with the crowded sensations of that evening, and I took no notice of her. Even when she stopped to peer into my face I thought nothing of it, and put her gently aside, supposing her to be some dubious character of the night hours. But she insisted ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... declared for a Free Parliament, and it soon became apparent to every one that the whole country was eager to return as soon as possible to the old mould. Nothing now stood between Charles and his own but half a dozen fierce old soldiers and their dubious, discontented, unpaid men. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the Lieutenant had regarded with such prodigious pride as the one emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... causeway across the moat and its adjoining platform on the wall, had indeed been taken by the English, and was to them a decided advantage, but still their further progress even to the next tower was lingering and dubious, and it appeared evident to both parties that, from the utter impossibility of the Scotch obtaining supplies of provision and men, success must finally attend the English; they would succeed more by the effects of famine than ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... calling, love it, rejoice in it, regret its defects, and honor its achievements, they begin consciously to try to show how good a newspaper can be made with nothing but the tuition of the office. Inaccuracy, carelessness, bad taste, and dubious ethics present themselves at a different angle when judged in the light of a calling for which colleges and universities furnish training. A corporate spirit and a corporate standard are felt more strongly, and men who have learned all they know in a newspaper office have ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... think," he said, "that for an artist to buy a Gallery is a bit dubious? Besides, ten thousand pounds is a lump, and I'm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... myself.' This is sometimes done, but this does not leave the person's credit who refuses, so clear as the other, though perhaps it may not so directly reflect upon him; but it leaves the case a little dubious and uncertain, and men will be apt to write back to the person who sent the bill to inquire what the drawer says to it, and what account he gives, or what character he has upon his tongue for the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... fine result this, of that which the German Press, before William's departure, described as the Russo-German Economic Entente, at a moment when, even for the Berlin newspapers, the prospects of a political entente were somewhat dubious. ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... the northern part of the state. He was going to look over the ground personally, and when Herb learned of this, he urged his father to take him and the other radio boys along for a brief outing over the Easter holiday. When his father seemed extremely dubious over this plan, Herb reminded him that Mr. Layton had taken them all to Mountain Pass the previous autumn, and that it would be only ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... the captain scratched his head in a dubious manner. "But I wasn't lookin' upon you as a cook, fer I had no idea that ye understood anything about ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... made contradicts laws that have been established in so many instances that they are practically beyond peradventure, it is suspect. A law, for example, that should be an exception to the laws of motion or gravitation, is a priori dubious. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Island has increased. Following the example of Buck Chizler and the Governor himself, scores of dubious lovers took heart. They succeeded in dispelling certain misgivings—and doubts lurking in the hearts,—not to say consciences,—of approximately three-fourths of the unmarried women on the island, with the result that Father Francisco and ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... And now it was in a state of intolerable stress, that laid bare the elemental facts of a great social organization. It was having its South African war, its war at the other end of the earth, with a certain defeat instead of a dubious victory.... ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... state: President Laurent GBAGBO (since 26 October 2000); note - took power following a popular overthrow of the interim leader Gen. Robert GUEI who had claimed a dubious victory in presidential elections; Gen. GUEI himself had assumed power on 25 December 1999, following a military coup against the government of former President Henri Konan BEDIE head of government: Prime Minister and Minister of Planning and Development ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... showed the remarkable resilience of the economy. Moderate recovery took place in 2002 with the GDP growth rate rising to 2.4%. A major short-term problem in first half 2002 was a sharp decline in the stock market, fueled in part by the exposure of dubious accounting practices in some major corporations. The war in March/April 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq shifted resources to the military. In 2003, growth in output and productivity and the recovery of the stock market to above ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... considerable fiction prevails, many persons shipping under the same mark, and even when the shipper stands alone, he might have been provided with the necessary funds from the pious and charitable establishments, possibly without risking a dollar of his own in the whole operation. Under circumstances so dubious, far from presuming to give a decided opinion on the subject, I am compelled to judge from mere conjectures, and guided only by the knowledge and experience I have been able to acquire during my long residence there. In conformity thereto, I am inclined to ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... looked about, as his habit was, as though seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the same dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, as though by no means willing to allow that this game were ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... land"; there, indeed, is a word coined by the noble rage as the last century evoked it. "The madded land" is a phrase intended to prove that the law-giver of taste, Johnson himself, could lodge the fury in his breast when opportunity occurred. "And dubious title shakes the madded land." It would be hard to find anything, even in Addison, more flagrant and ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... that a large proportion of the debts from Indians that he books are not recoverable, will frequently—and I presume there is nothing savoring of dubious dealing in the matter—add, perhaps, thirty or forty per cent. to the usual retail price of the goods sold to them, that the collection of some of the debts may, as it were, offset the loss ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... "That's rather a dubious compliment. By the way, what do you think of Miss Chisholm? I suppose you saw a good deal of her ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... held by so many distinguished writers that it deserves a brief examination. If we enquire on what evidence Osiris has been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on analysis to be minute in quantity and dubious, where it is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the first modern scholar to collect and sift the testimony of classical writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways that Osiris ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the jungle to search for food when the plan came to him. At first it made him smile a little and then look dubious, for he still retained a vivid memory of the dire results that had followed the carrying out of a very wonderful idea along almost identical lines, yet he did not abandon his intention, and a moment later, food temporarily forgotten, he was swinging through the middle terraces ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... present hour we are engaged in the very dubious experiment of direct popular legislation and administration. We are trying to change our Government radically, discarding its representative form for that of delegation. The remotest cause of this is the desire to amalgamate all our elements into homogeneity. So far this policy has resulted in a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... enough now to his situation to be able to take an interest in the news of the day. At any moment his environment might split to admit of a new Voles or Spicer, or perhaps some more dangerous spectre engendered from the dubious past of Rochester; but he scarcely thought of this, he had gone beyond fear, he was up to the neck ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... knowledge of the person therein concerned. Yea, may not the king after all leave this person, with others under the same transgression, to sue for, and obtain this pardon with great expense and difficulty, with many tears and heart-achings, with many fears, and dubious cogitations. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... people. At straw-plaiting Dunstable a volunteer company of farmers joined the regular escort and nearly choked the travellers with the dust the worthy yeomen raised. On leaving Woburn Abbey the same dubious compliment was paid. In the Queen's merry words, "a crowd of good, loyal people rode with us part of the way. They so pressed and pushed that it was as ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... selecting some little thing for each one of the men—books, pictures, a piece of music, a bright cushion, and a pile of picture magazines. It made a big bundle when she had them together, and she was dubious if she ought to try to carry them all; but Bud, whom she consulted on the subject, said, loftily, it "wasn't a flea-bite for the Kid; he could carry anything ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... her as though she were leaving a place of dubious repute, Helene hurried down the staircase, reascended the Passage des Eaux, and regained the Rue Vineuse, without consciousness of the ground she was covering. The old woman's last words still rang in her ears. In truth, no; never again would she set foot in that house, never again would ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy. The return of the Company's servants into Europe poured in a constant supply of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for themselves, their agents, and dependants could not be dubious. And this latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active and efficient part of that body. To add to the votes, which is adding to the power in proportion to the wealth, of men whose very offences were supposed to consist in acts which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a house in Fitzjohn's Avenue, where she entertained intimately. At forty she had preserved the best part of her youth and prettiness, and an income insufficient for Mr. Norman, but enough for her. As she said in her rather dubious pathos, she had nobody but herself ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... in dubious sight, Along the leaguer'd wall, and bristling bank, Of the arm'd river; while with straggling light, The stars peep through the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... so, but for the time to come I shall put little trust in him. Going such a dubious way, he might well have stopped for a God ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Treasure by Subscription of all that Men are worth, and yet inrich them by taking it away. The first Part, quoth the Lord, of taking from all Men, I like; but as to the second, which is to inrich them by taking it away, I am dubious of, yet let them look to that. He looked over a Multitude of others. In the mean Time the Projectors quarrelled, each approving his own Scheme, and condemning the rest; and they grew so Scurrilous, they called one ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... of the five captive French men-of-war; and so that reading is admitted: but for my part, I will admit nothing but under Lord Howe's own hand. It is tiresome to be like the scene in Amphitryon, and cry one minute "Obvious, obvious!" and the next "Dubious, dubious!" Such fluctuability is fit only for a stock-jobber. Adieu! I must dress and dine, or I shall not be ready to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
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