"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standing alone in a bright light before a large audience waiting to see her dance or hear her sing. Chinese actresses were quite unknown until very recently, and the few that may be now found on the Chinese stage were nearly all of questionable character before they entered the theater. In the northern part of China some good Chinese women may be found in circuses, but these belong to the working class and take up the circus life with their husbands and brothers for ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... question. But we can scarcely fail to see that at its origin it possessed, even if unconsciously, a quasi-religious warrant in the worship of the Holy Mother, and we have to recognize that, notwithstanding its questionable shape, it was really an effort to attain a purer and more ideal relationship than was possible in a rough and warlike age which placed the wife in subordination to her husband. A tender devotion that inspired poetry, an unalloyed respect ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... devotion to tobacco led, on at least one occasion, to a peculiar and somewhat questionable proceeding. Mr. W.M. Rossetti had a temporary acquaintance with the poet, and in the "Reminiscences" which he published in 1906, he told a curious anecdote concerning him which was new to print. Rossetti told, on ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... enemy; since his inactivity in political affairs—his tendency to roam, at will, in that broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where brethren of the same household must diverge from one another—had sometimes made it questionable with his brother Democrats whether he was a friend. Now, after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might be looked upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he was, it seemed ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very questionable policy. If followed up it will result in a saturnalia of crime in this community. Already several of our young men are reading dime novels and taking lessons in banditry; but the sheriff has stated that this parole will not be considered a precedent. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... considered sound prior to Mr. Dewey's often-questionable and more often misused programs of schooling, Jimmy's parents had trained and educated their young man quite well in the primary informations of fact. He read with facility and spoke with a fine vocabulary—although no amount of intellectual training could make his voice change until ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... liable to scrutiny, and that the matter of his remarks is debatable; hence his allegation that other friends of Mr Robins are witnesses as well as himself, and his insinuation that what he testifies was no secret. But it is obvious, that, were his own assertions of the fact at all questionable, he would be equally obnoxious to discredit in assigning these other witnesses; for clearly, the man who could falsify in the one case, would be capable of doing so in the other. This may be said without any impeachment whatever of either Dr Wilson or the other friends ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the associations, the inevitable concomitants, of the turf and racing that stamp it, not only as something questionable, but as a bane and infamy to the nation; and if there is one spot more eminently distinguished for a general rendezvous of fraud and gambling, that place ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of stayed surfaces is questionable may perhaps be best realized from a consideration of the severe requirements as to such factor called for by the rules and regulations of the Board of Supervising ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... his spotless linen concealed a heart that plotted all the evil his hands dared to commit. For him Mildred had possessed great attractions from the first; and, with the confidence bestowed by his power, and many questionable successes, he made his first advances so openly that he received more than one public and stinging rebuff. A desire for revenge, therefore, had taken entire possession of him, and with a serpent's cold, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... it is to be presumed, by the lower sort; there are beer-shops at the barriers, where the citizens and their families repair; and beer-shops in the town, glaring with gas, with long gauze blinds, however, to hide what I hear is a rather questionable reputation. ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the way, was merely a polite fiction—had been one of the most successful. He had held, until recently, as the reward of questionable political services, a contract with the State for its convict labor, from which in a few years he had realized a fortune. But the methods which made his contract profitable had not commended themselves to humane people, and charges of cruelty and worse had been preferred ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the standpoint of over twenty-seven years later, the wisdom and necessity of answering anonymous newspaper letters of this kind might be deemed questionable, but it must be remembered that, although the Pearl Street station was working successfully, and Edison's comprehensive plans were abundantly vindicated, the enterprise was absolutely new and only just stepping on the very threshold of commercial exploitation. To enter in and possess the land ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... show that there cannot be so much advantage in employing it as would appear at first sight. As it is easier to reduce than any other compound, so it is more difficult to produce. Therefore while less energy is absorbed in its final reduction, more is needed in its initial preparation, and it is questionable whether the economy possible in the second stage would not be neutralized by the greater cost of the first stage in the whole operation of winning the metal from bauxite with the sulphide as the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... pass an examination, in what the Germans call Erd-kunde—earth-lore—in that knowledge of the face of the earth and of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so little that we have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy and questionable one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say, hardly any readable school books about it, save Keith Johnston's 'Physical Atlas'—an acquaintance with which last I should certainly require of ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... setting it forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel crowns upon the poets as victorious; not only of the historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable. For suppose it be granted, that which I suppose, with great reason, may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet, yet do I think, that no man is so much ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... discuss the legality of contingent fees; though it be clear that if the British statutes of champerty were in force here, such fees would be prohibited by them. But a contract of the sort is certainly not to be encouraged by implication, from a questionable usage, nor established by less than a positive stipulation."[49] A contract to allow a compensation for services in procuring the passage of a private Act of Assembly, has been held to be unlawful and void, as against public policy.[50] ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... and spontaneously offered to bring me forward as their candidate. If it should appear, on explanation, that they persisted in this wish, knowing my opinions, and accepting the only conditions on which I could conscientiously serve, it was questionable whether this was not one of those calls upon a member of the community by his fellow-citizens, which he was scarcely justified in rejecting. I therefore put their disposition to the proof by one of the frankest explanations ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... reason that Emerson left the Unitarian Church, namely, for his soul's peace. He belonged to a well-to-do family in New York, engaged in the manufacture of flour specialties, but the restraints and the questionable practices of business were irksome to him, and he eagerly sought a home among the congenial spirits who were trying to live a higher life on their sterile little property in West Roxbury. Being one of the thoroughgoing ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... never have made, and for one of them in literary material of interest to every one hoping to come to Rome or despairing of it. The psychology of the matter was very curious, and involved the sort of pleasing self-illusion by which people so often get themselves over questionable passes in life and come out with a good conscience, or a dead one, which is practically the same thing. These particular people had come to Rome with reminiscences of in-expensiveness and had intended ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the contraction of a flexible chamber through which the gas passes on its way to the burner. So far as it is safe to speak definitely on a matter of this kind, the carbide-feed device appears to work satisfactorily in a stationary (e.g., table) lamp; but it is highly questionable whether it could be applied to a vehicular apparatus exposed to any sensible amount of vibration. The device is satisfactory on the table of an occupied room so far, be it understood, as any small ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. Except for the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book called Tales of Space and Time, no short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume. Many of very questionable merit find a place; it is an inclusive and not an exclusive gathering. And the task of selection and revision brings home to me with something of the effect of discovery that I was once an industrious writer ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Machiavellism, which the latter had just published, replied, 'Sire, I fancy that the first lesson that Machiavelli would have given to his disciple would have been to refute his work.'" Whether Voltaire ever did say this to the great Frederick, is very questionable, but it would not have been ill said. After the reader has been taken through a short course of Arabian philosophy, he is enlivened by a selection of poetic sayings about human life from the Rose-garden of Sadi, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... chew the food properly. 2. Don't overload the stomach. 3. Don't eat green or overripe fruit. 4. Don't eat anything while away from camp or barracks, whose materials or manner of preparation seem questionable. 5. Don't bring a "grouch" to the table with you. 6. Don't eat on the march; don't drink too much water on ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... instrumental music and chanted speech. The measures of spoken verse are elastic and full of changefulness, while those of music and the chant maintain a very decided constancy of relations. The latter present determinable types of grouping and succession, while it is questionable whether the forms of relationship in spoken verse can ever be considered apart from the emotion of the moment. In so far as the rhythmic form which these differing modes of expression embody are to be ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the situation was explained, and Wyatt, handing the money to the proprietor and the questionable dollar to the ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... turned. The country ladies, who had been debating with themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable stranger, received their congee from the countess herself from the threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and to meet with ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves a step removed from those among their neighbors who boast of no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... they could get the chance, to vote for a woman as President of the United States or as General of the United States Army. They were even disposed to assert the physical equality of woman to man, on the strength of the rather questionable history of the Amazons, and especially of the story, believed to be authentic, of the female body-guard of the King of Dahomey,—females frightful enough to need no other weapon than their looks to scare ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... were a great source of profit to the beach men, who went off in their long yawls to such craft as "missed stays" coming through a "gat," or managed to run aground on one of the sand-banks in some way or other. The methods of the beach men were sometimes rather questionable, and Colonel Leathes, of Herringfleet Hall, tells a tale of a French brig, named the Confiance en Dieu, which took the ground on the Newcome Sand off Lowestoft about the year 1850. The weather was perfectly calm, but a company of beach men boarded her and got her off, and so established a claim ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... say what they may, it is very questionable whether a guilty man would have felt half as much misery that night, as Kit did, being innocent. The world, being in the constant commission of vast quantities of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... means, appointed to these offices certain persons who have not the requisite and desirable qualifications therefor. I therefore charge and command you to make a thorough investigation of the matter, and to remove the regidors whom you find to have been appointed through questionable means, or who are unfit for the office. You will replace them with men possessing the necessary character and ability. Let there be only eight regidors, which seems to be a sufficient number for a city of that population. You will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... to a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood behind the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. Then his venerable figure was to be seen dispensing these questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out what he feared was trash or worse, shrinking from the reproachful eyes of every ancient physician ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... and despatches, in a few lines, the important battle of Hadrianople. According to the ecclesiastical critics, who hate Sebastian, the praise of Zosimus is disgrace, (Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 121.) His prejudice and ignorance undoubtedly render him a very questionable judge of merit.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... touch. It is the absolute criterion of quality, which is supposed to be the keystone of perfection in all animals, whether for the pail or the butcher. The skin is so intimately connected with the internal organs, in all animals, that it is questionable whether even our schools of medicine might not make more use of it in a diagnosis of disease. Of physiological tendencies in cattle, however, it is of the last and most vital importance. It must neither be thick, nor hard, nor adhere firmly to the muscles. If it is so, the animal ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked "B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one marked "D. F.," and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during the voyage ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... couplet really belongs to its context, however, is questionable; the eighty warriors killed in the muro may not have been Yemishi at all. But the verse does certainly tend to show that the Yemishi had a high fighting reputation in ancient times, though it will presently be seen that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... It is questionable whether the opening couplet quotes the deliverance of Israel from Egypt as a precedent for the future return of the northern tribes from captivity, described in the lines that follow; or whether this return is at once predicted by the couplet, with the usual prophetic assurance as though it had ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... on the stage and in the light reading of the time. Whether the creation of this taste is to be ascribed to the appearance of two writers with such genius for wit and fun as Thackeray and Dickens, or whether they only supplied a natural demand, may be questionable; they undoubtedly headed the army of Comus, and thereby raised the whole standard of facetious literature. But the defect of this school was its propensity to take a hilarious or sardonic view, not only of mediaeval romance, but of quaint old times generally; and one leading ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... had aided him to scrawl that postscript to her letter to his mother in his own handwriting, when he had so far recovered that he might be said to be almost convalescent. "No, what—anything important?" he replied, answering her question in questionable fashion by ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... impossible or undesirable. So it was in the case of the girl whom he calls Gretchen, and of whom we know nothing except what he chose to tell us. He made her acquaintance through his association with a set of youths of questionable character whom we are surprised to find as the chosen companions of the son of an Imperial Councillor. Of all Goethe's loves this was the one that was accompanied by the least pleasant complications and the most painful of disillusions. Through his intercourse with Gretchen's intimates he was led ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... "in all honour, and according to the law," almost a Xenophontine motto, and important in reference to the "questionable" conduct on his part in exile—"questionable" from a modern rather than an "antique" standard. [The chief reference is to Xenophon's presence on the Spartan side at the battle of Coronea against his native city of Athens. See ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... in his exercise of the prerogative of mercy he was ever influenced by any improper motives or showed any partiality; though Lord Wellesley said, that 'he dramatised royalty, and made mercy appear blind instead of justice.' But the system is of very questionable propriety, and on some occasions he probably was rather too free with it, and went a little further than in strict prudence he ought to have done. Generally speaking, however, on this point as well as on the other ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and personal freedom should beget this vast amount of infidelity; while slaveholders and slavery have begotten so little of it in the same length of time? Is there nothing in all this to render the correctness of Northern views questionable, as to the deleterious tendency of slavery? The facts, however, are given to the world in the census of 1850. All are left to draw from these facts their own conclusions. One of these conclusions must be, that there is something ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... printed accounts of crime with detailed descriptions, or scandals in private life. Then they noticed that the advertisements of liquor and tobacco were dropped, together with certain others of a questionable character. The discontinuance of the Sunday paper caused the greatest comment of all, and now the character of the editorials was creating the greatest excitement. A quotation from the Monday paper of this week will show what ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... successful pastorate, Mr. Edwards preached a sermon about the reading and conversation of young people upon subjects of questionable propriety, which led to such local excitement that upon the recommendation of an ecclesiastical council he was dismissed by a vote of 200 to 20, and the town voted that he be not permitted on any occasion to preach or lecture in the church. Mr. Edwards was wholly ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... promise given of an early visit to the parsonage on the following day, an affectionate parting at the garden gate, and the incumbent proceeded on his homeward road. The doctor and I returned together to the house in silence and one of us in partial fear; for I could see the coming sarcasm in the questionable smile that played about his lips. Not a word was spoken when we resumed our seats. At last he rang the bell, and Williams ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... he proceeded, "it may interest you to know that we have just planned a new method to recover stolen automobiles and apprehend the thieves. A census of all cars in the questionable garages of the city has been taken, and each day every policeman is furnished with descriptions of cars stolen in the past twenty- four hours. The policeman then is supposed to inspect the garages in his district and if ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... what papa would say next, or whether our talk had come to a deadlock then and there. I had a great deal more myself to say; but the present opportunity seemed to be questionable. And then it was gone; for Mr. Dinwiddie mounted the hill and came to take ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... He honestly detests any man who takes advantage of a pure woman. He detests any man who deceives a woman. He believes that there is only one way to go through life, and that is to be frank with those with whom one deals. He is a master-hand in stock manipulation, and in the questionable practises of Wall Street he has realized that he has to play his cunning and craft against the cunning and craft of others. He is not at all in sympathy with this mode of living, but he thinks it is the only method by which ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... the little valley of Rio Arimao.* (* This river flows towards the east into the Bahia de Xagua.) The streets of Trinidad have all a rapid descent: there, as in most parts of Spanish America, it is complained that the Couquistadores chose very injudiciously the sites for new towns.* (* It is questionable whether the town founded by Velasquez was not situated in the plain and nearer the ports of Casilda and Guaurabo. It has been suggested that the fear of the French, Portuguese and English freebooters ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... in question! And yet, although I could not refrain from doing, what a score of admiring votaries had probably done before me—namely, bestowing a sort of oscular benediction upon the first leaf of the text—yet, I say, it may be questionable whether this copy be as large and fair as that in our Royal Collection!? Doubtless, however, this is a very fine and almost invaluable copy of the FIRST BOOK printed with metal types, with a date subjoined. You will give me credit for having asked for a sight of it, the very ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... nobles were setting at defiance. Whether the plays ought to have been put down, and whether the laws were necessary, is a different question; but certainly the court and the aristocracy stood in the questionable, though too common, position of men who made laws which prohibited to the poor amusements in which they themselves indulged ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... realm, take this: And, for some obvious reasons, let there be 195 No seal on it, except my kingly word And honour as I am a gentleman. Be—as thou art within my heart and mind— Another self, here and in Ireland: Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence, 200 And stick not even at questionable means. Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall Between thee and this world thine enemy— That hates thee, for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... contrary has expressed the view, that the normoblasts may arise from the megaloblasts, and thereby denies the principal distinction between them. Schaumann also holds that the separation of the two kinds rests on doubtful foundation, since occasionally it is questionable whether particular cells are the normoblasts ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... a thousand years. The most general teaching of the millennialist is that there will be a personal reign of Christ upon this earth of a thousand years after his second coming. There are very many theories respecting the millennium. This of itself is enough to make the doctrine very questionable. If there is such a doctrine in the Bible it should be so sufficiently clear as to not admit of so much disagreement. The millennial doctrine as taught by sectarian teachers we emphatically declare to be wholly without Scriptural foundation. It is a purpose of Satan to cause man ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... compels one sometimes to state unpleasant facts in portraying historic characters, it is as needless and unjust as in private life to repeat idle and unproved tales, or to draw imaginary conclusions from questionable data. The conflict of contemporary opinion on the simplest matters leads one often to the suspicion that all personal history is more or less disguised fiction. The best one can do in default of direct records is to accept ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the sculptors, if it contains some questionable statements, is a thoughtful address by one who is himself an artist, though not perhaps an artist of a high class. His artistic endowments, transmitted from his parents, have been already indicated. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... questionable authority has given to the perverse widow the name of Mrs. Catharine Bovey, or Boevey, of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire, to whom Steele dedicated the second volume of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... difficulty I have been enabled to collect these biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers of them so questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A] also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,—a right exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant." From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... set more or less on showing off their persons to advantage by their dress. Now I think of it, I believe you are in great danger of making a little god out of your caps and your drab color, and 'thee' and 'thou.' Besides, the tendency is quite questionable. The moment certain shades of color, or a certain combination of letters, or modulation of sounds, or arrangement of seams and angles, are made the sine qua non of religion and principle, that moment religion and principle are hurled from their vantage-ground and become slaves ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... the churches are not exempt from these demonstrations: I was present at the Te Deum performed on the Emperor's birthday, in St. Mark's, when the moment of elevating the host was signalized by the bursting of a petard in the centre of the cathedral. All this, which seems of questionable utility, and worse than questionable taste, is approved by the fiercer of the Italianissimi, and though possibly the strictness of the patriotic discipline in which the members of the Committee keep their fellow- ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and ministers of grace defend us! ... Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape That I will speak to ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... view to ten shillings worth of Sunday display in the Parks, the turnout being always detected; nor shall be permitted to drive a gig, in a fierce scarf, under similar circumstances. Nor shall any Gent imagine that an acquaintance with all the questionable resorts of London is "knowing life"; or that trousers of large check pattern are ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... a condition of mental suspense unable to decide which is the filthiest city of the Republic. The residents of Foochow boast that for offensiveness to the senses no town can compare with theirs, and although Amoy and several other places dispute this questionable title, we were inclined to grant it unreservedly to Foochow. It is like a medieval city with its narrow, ill-paved streets wandering aimlessly in a hopeless maze. They are usually roofed over so that by no accident can a ray of purifying sun ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... corrections in matters of detail; and I would gladly mention his name if it could be supposed that an historian of established reputation would wish to be associated, even in any slight way, with an enterprise of questionable orthodoxy. ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... inexcusable. No argument can possibly alter that fact. Everyone was waiting about for a considerable time in the supper-room, desirous of drinking your health, while you, it transpires, were hiding in a corner with this very questionable foreigner whom Trevor has been eccentric enough to befriend, but of whom I can ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Winchester. This was the beginning of the fortune of that amiable prelate, of whom it must be said that if he owed his early advancement to a questionable influence, no man has filled the episcopal office with more unaffected piety, dignity, and goodness. The difference between George IV. and Lord Liverpool on this occasion was a very serious one. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Kent county, and educated at Edinburgh University. Under him the college continued to flourish, until the withdrawal of the State's appropriation in 1805. The constitutionality of this withdrawal is questionable, as the original grant was to be paid annually "forever;" but the State refused to permit itself to be sued by the college and, some years later, on increasing its appropriation to the college, the legislature required a release of all claims on the ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... to the extremely questionable manner in which the Quaker proposed to beat the devil about the stump. Presently he ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... Reverend Mr. Mordaunt walked under the great trees, he remembered that this questionable little boy had arrived at the Castle only the evening before, and that there were nine chances to one that his lordship's worst fears were realized, and twenty-two chances to one that if the poor little fellow had disappointed him, the Earl was ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are engaged to each other, they should not dance together so often as to be conspicuous. Nor may they disappear into secluded corners and sit out dances. It is poor taste and very questionable ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... is no such shadow or cloud on the faces in Club windows, or in the eyes of drivers of four-in-hands, or of fashionable young men walking down Piccadilly. For these live by a Rule which has not been drawn down from far-off and questionable skies, and needs no sanction; what they do is Correct, and that is all. Correctly dressed from head to foot, they pass, with correct speech and thoughts and gestures, correctly across the roundness of ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... summed up with great clearness. There is no design of entering here upon an examination of this little historical problem; but it is a bounden duty to point out that, if the authenticity of the Pragmatic Sanction, as St. Louis's, is questionable, the act has, at bottom, nothing but what bears a very strong resemblance to, and is quite in conformity with, the general conduct of that prince. He was profoundly respectful, affectionate, and faithful towards ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... W. Hershey reports the Alpine and Lancaster are the same and that the Franquette, Hall, Nebo and Rush should be listed as obsolete for northern planting, and that the use of the Eureka in the north is questionable. W. R. Fickes, Wooster, Ohio, reports that the Franquette, Lancaster, Mayette, Pomeroy and Rush winter kill at ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... general merchant. His wife had died some twenty years before the period of this story—died in giving birth to a boy, who was sometimes mistaken for the Co., but who at present occupied no better position than that of a superior clerk, with the questionable advantage of living with his father in the dull old house, where he had to go through the warehouse amidst innumerable bales and crates and packages to reach the staircase that conducted him to the gloomy rooms, the old-fashioned ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... be forced to attempt a series of conundrums propounded by a teacher who takes pride in maintaining a high percentage of failures, is indefensible. An examination should not be conducted with the primary object of making it a thing to be feared. However desirable such a questionable asset may seem to certain college professors, it is a serious fault in a high school teacher to have any considerable number of normal children fail. The ambition of the good instructor is to give an examination which shall at once ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... abhorrence of the execution of Miss Cavell, aggravated as it was by the indecent and stealthy haste with which it was carried out, is in no need of enhancement by questionable arguments, such as, I venture to say, are those addressed to you by Sir ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... think you would say if, in some of these moments of unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people, you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wing. On 27th July he framed such an agreement with Hardenberg. This statesman was destined to be one of the saviours of the Prussian State in its darkest days, 1810-12; but now, as always, his conduct was shifty; and it is questionable whether he, any more than Haugwitz, dealt honourably with England. It must suffice to say that Moellendorf made not even a demonstration towards Treves. His inactivity was in part due to the withdrawal of several regiments towards Poland, though Great Britain and Holland ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... be sure there is something that is blighting your life and dwarfing your usefulness. It may possibly be that practically in your daily life you are exerting no more power for God than a dead man! A christian, indeed, but without power because of compromise with something questionable or outrightly wrong! Is that so with you? I do not say it is, for I do not know. But you know. The hungry, critical world knows. Subtle, keen Satan knows. The Lord Jesus knows. Do you know if that describes you? You may ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... certain Rudolf called out: I have eaten too much. Whether it's healthy is very questionable. After such a greasy lunch I really feel uncomfortable. But I belch beautifully and smoke Cigarettes now and then. Lying on my heavy belly, I chirp nothing but songs of spring. Longingly, as though on a ramp ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... said at luncheon, I hope you didn't imagine that I thought there was anything—well, in questionable taste, in your coming to Nina's party!" said Madame Carter to Harriet an hour later, when the men had started on their long run back to camp, and she was about to go upstairs ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... China, and as Sec. of Legation in Japan. In 1865 he entered Parliament, and gave promise of political eminence, when in 1867 he came under the influence of Thomas L. Harris, an American mystic of questionable character, went with him to America, and joined the Brotherhood of the New Life. In 1870-71 he was correspondent for the Times in the Franco-German War. Ultimately he broke away from the influence of Harris and went to Palestine, where he founded a community of Jewish immigrants at Haifa. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Wealth there was no doubt. Lord Poddle, although a questionable cousin of his, would have been glad to possess his spurious kinsman's acres. I should put down the young Esquire's income as at least Twenty Hundred Pounds a year. His Father had been, it cannot be questioned, a Warm Man; but I should ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... others would echo his voice in defense of aggressive domination, on some plea of pretended schemes of colonization, and the progress of civilization. But I do not believe in overturning the immutable laws of moral obligation for any questionable policy of expediency. I look upon the great civil wars of the Romans, which followed these conquests, in which so much blood was shed, and in which Marius and Sulla and Caesar and Pompey exhausted the resources of the state, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... be a malice of which I am incapable not to gratify it, I will show you what it was I had in reserve," and the Sepoy produced the small shagreen case with which Raikes had been on such questionable terms of familiarity, and pressing back the lid revealed the splendid diamond ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... the next day, a distance of nearly two hundred miles by the river, they left Eagle at an early hour after taking on board a supply of fuel of a rather questionable character, for which they had to pay a heavy price. The trading companies said that this was the second launch that had visited Eagle and the demand for ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... his history Lord Mansfield found his most dangerous opponent. A secret enemy had arisen in the outside world amongst the people, one even more unscrupulous than Chatham in his animosity: one who reveled in his questionable privilege of striking in the dark, and who justified abuse that knew no mercy, and acknowledged no law, by reiterated and fervid appeals to God and his country. The moral courage of Murray had once given way in the House of Commons, when Pitt, speaking daggers to him, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Lord Sandwich [from office] but was beaten by a large majority.' Walpole's Letters, vii. 194. One of her children was Basil Montague, the editor of Bacon. Carlyle writes of him:—'On going to Hinchinbrook, I found he was strikingly like the dissolute, questionable Earl of Sandwich; who, indeed, had been father of him in a highly tragic way.' Carlyle's Reminiscences, i. 224. Hackman, who was a clergyman of the Church, had once been in the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... articles submitted to taxation; the question may well be asked, whether or not, in some instances, unwisely. In connection with this subject, too, I venture the opinion that the means of collecting the revenue, especially from imports, have been so embarrassed by legislation as to make it questionable whether or not large amounts are not lost by failure to collect, to the direct loss of the Treasury and to the prejudice of the interests ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... embrace. It was to her a reflected realisation of what it must be to be loved by Jim Airth. And, thereafter, whenever Miss Murgatroyd saw fit to use such adjectives as "indecent," "questionable," or "highly improper," Miss Susie bravely gathered up her wool-work, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... otherwise than auriferously, and at the same time lightly, on Mr Dorrit's mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupendous character looked at him, in the course of his official looking at the dinners, in a manner that Mr Dorrit considered questionable. He looked at him, as he passed through the hall and up the staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed fixedness that Mr Dorrit did not like. Seated at table in the act of drinking, Mr Dorrit still saw him through his wine-glass, regarding him with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him that the Chief ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... or less moral North American deity whose evolution is rather questionable. Pere Brebeuf (1636), speaking of the Hurons, says that "they have recourse to Heaven in almost all their necessities,... and I may say that it is, in fact, God whom they blindly adore, for they imagine that there is an Oki, that is, a demon, in heaven, who regulates the seasons, bridles the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... union of Archie and Christina would have proved equally essential to the plot may perhaps to most readers seem questionable. They may rather feel that a tragic destiny is foreshadowed from the beginning for all concerned, and is inherent in the very conditions of the tale. But on this point, and other matters of general criticism connected with it, I find an interesting discussion by the author himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent the night, chin in hand, turning over ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... in Spinoza's argument can thus be expressed: that which is important is questionable, and that which is unquestionable is of doubtful importance. Have I indeed a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely infinite being? The answer turns upon the meaning of the phrase "idea of." It is true I can add to such meaning as I apprehend the thought of possible other meaning, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... knowledge of God or use of reason,"—a pious design, held doubtless in full sincerity by the royal profligate, now, in his decline, a fervent champion of the Faith and a strenuous tormentor of heretics. The machinery of conversion was of a character somewhat questionable, since Cartier and Roberval were empowered to ransack the prisons for thieves, robbers, and other malefactors, to complete their crews and strengthen the colony. "Whereas," says the King, "we have undertaken this voyage for the honor of God our Creator, desiring with all our heart to do that ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... doubt greatly blessed because they were the servants of God and were principal in the Holy Temple, to do His work therein, . . . their name, their garb, and work, did so intoxicate and bewitch me." If it is questionable whether the Act forbidding the use of the Book of Common Prayer was strictly observed at Elstow, it is certain that the prohibition of Sunday sports was not. Bunyan's narrative shows that the aspect of a village ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... however, beyond the rank of a small and questionable looking public-house was apparent, until at a distance somewhat remote from the theatre, and in a quaint, old-fashioned, deserted square, a neat, newly whitewashed house displayed upon its frontispiece, in large black letters of funereal aspect, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to foresee that this country is destined to undergo great and rapid changes. Those that more properly belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record, and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse; but there is little hope that any traces of American society, in its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us, through ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... is generally conceded that Theodosia Burr Alston must have been acquainted with her father's most intimate ambitions, and with at least part of the questionable plans by which he purposed to further them. Her blind and unswerving loyalty to him, passing all ordinary filial affection, was a predominant trait of her singular and by no means weak or hesitant character, in which masculine ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... was questionable, or more truly null, and he had only obtained the crown from the desire of the nation to be independent of Castile, and by the assistance of our own John of Gaunt, whose daughter, Philippa of Lancaster, became his wife, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bounties upon home productions, and of enforcing restrictions against those which can be produced more cheaply in other countries, is of a very questionable nature: and, except for the purpose of introducing a new manufacture, in a country where there is not much commercial or manufacturing spirit, is scarcely to be defended. All incidental modes of taxing one class of the community, the consumers, to an unknown extent, for the sake of supporting ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... doubtless there are to be given up—amusements that are dangerous, society that is questionable. What we give up, let us give up, not from quick feeling, but from principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely thing, but let us be calm in what we do. In that solemn, grand thing—Christian life—one ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... to be here discussed furnishes to him who has the will for a higher development, the means for accomplishing the transformation of his soul. Any questionable encroachment on the personality of the student would only then be possible, should the teacher proceed to carry out the change by methods of which the pupil was not conscious. But no true teacher of occult science in our day ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... for a harvest festival. An entirely different kind of reason for its Lenten suitability is provided by H.P. Cornish (Notes on P.B., Evans, Redditch, n.d., p. 17). Lent, he says, is the time "when all nature begins to wake from its Lenten sleep": hence its appropriateness in spring. It is questionable, however, whether mediæval liturgical authorities paid much attention to the natural seasons of the year; and the variety of 'reasons' proves the difficulty of discovering a really conclusive one. The idea that the Benedicite is consonant with Lenten ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... along the banks to keep up with the boats, and cheer on their own men, and it will be necessary for our trio to make the best possible use of their legs, before the living cataract pours down upon them. Indeed, they would not have been on the towing-path at all, but among the rather questionable occupants of the grass plot before the inn on the other side of the river, were it not for their desire to run along with the boats, and inspirit the rowers ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he accept such hospitality ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... corresponding with a Wesleyan Missionary in Ovalau (Fiji) on a matter that you may see mentioned some day in the papers, a very questionable practice of importing from the Southern New Hebrides (principally Tanna) natives to work on the cotton plantations of white settlers in Fiji. It is all, as I am assured, under the regulation of the Consul at Ovalau, and "managed" properly. But ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extensive, treatment should not be attempted, but the immediate destruction of the animal is advised. A burn of the third degree, where there is a destruction of the vitality of large areas of tissue, even on parts not subject to much motion, is extremely tedious to treat; in fact, it is questionable whether the treatment and keep of the animal will ever be compensated for, even though recovery does take place; this, in any event, will require at least six or eight weeks. Burns caused by lightning stroke and trolley wires are liable to occur ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... detective science. They entered upon their self-appointed task with a fine fervor, but, as Miss Benham had suggested, with no other qualifications in particular. Ste. Marie had a theory that, when engaged in work of this nature, you went into questionable parts of the city, ate and drank cheek by jowl with questionable people—if possible, got them drunk while you remained sober (difficult feat), and sooner or later they said things which put you ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... those she loved, that the visit to the sorceress was made, as before recorded. How much of additional information she may really have expected to gain from the sorceress, it is impossible to say,—or whether this matter of the attempted poisoning was really the matter which sent her to that questionable fountain of intelligence; but it is not at all strange that she should have blended the terrors of the real and the imaginary together, and been powerfully impressed by the events of that day which marked so important ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Stephen, little suspecting the questionable nature of his errand, undertook the commission, and duly delivered both rod and letter into the hands of Mr Cripps, who greatly astonished him by swearing very violently at the contents of the letter. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... that I wrote 'The Crook and Plaid'—not by request, but with the intention of supplanting a song, I think of English origin, called 'The Plough-boy,' and of a somewhat questionable character. 'The Crook and Plaid' accomplished the end intended, and soon became popular throughout the land. So soon as I got a glimpse of the Roman language, I began to make satisfactory progress in its acquisition. But I daily wrote more or less in my old way—now also embracing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... by Lilly; and entirely devoted to the adepts. He defends nothing; for this oracle delivers his dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. He sits on the tripod; and every page is embellished by a horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. This voluminous monument of the folly of the age is a quarto valued at some guineas! It is entitled, "Christian Astrology, modestly treated of in three books, by William Lilly, student ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... performed sixty-eight operations for this, within fourteen years, in the Hospital St. Eloi, and traces it entirely to the use of tobacco. Such facts are chiefly valuable as showing the tendency of the thing. Where the evils of excess are so glaring, the advantages of even moderate use are questionable. Where weak persons are made insane, there is room for suspicion that the strong may suffer unconsciously. You may say that the victims must have been constitutionally nervous; but where is the native-born American ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... has the reputation of being susceptible to disease and hence being short lived as a tree. Whether or not this is actually the case is perhaps questionable. Many butternut trees, particularly those in favorable situations of soil and moisture, live to be of large size and old age. Trees on poorer, thinner soils apparently die off earlier than those under better conditions. In any case, it is well recognized that the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... attending and enjoying wakes and fairs, only worked half time. The physical-force majority in the House, and their aiders and abettors, were they to see this, would perhaps laugh at the petty details, but their doing so would not in the least detract from their truth, or render questionable for a moment the deductions I make from them,—that poverty is so wide spread and bitter that the poor are compelled to make a stern sacrifice of innocent amusements; that the parent cannot exercise the holiest ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... personality of the recipient. He does not write to Montagu exactly as he writes to Mann; to Gray as to Mason; to Lady Upper-Ossory as to earlier she-correspondents. So once more, though there are large and important possible subjects for letters on which "Horry" does not write at all, it is questionable whether, everything being counted in that he has, and no unfair offsets allowed for what he does not attempt, we have in English any superior to him ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Jefferson's character, and the strength of his recommendation, in June, 1791, young Adams entered the lists against Paine and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on the National Assembly of France, and a commentary on the rights of man, inferring questionable deductions from unquestionable principles. In a series of essays, signed Publicola, published in the Columbian Centinel, he states and controverts successively the fundamental doctrines of Paine's work; denies that "whatever a whole nation chooses ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... at the state of Spain, and consider whether the filling up a blank in the scheme of her representative Constitution with an amount, more or less high, of qualification for the members of the Cortes—whether the promising to consider hereafter of some modifications in other questionable points—was too much to be conceded, if by such a sacrifice peace could have been preserved! If we had declined to interfere on such grounds of punctilio, would not the very passage which I have now read from Vattel, as our vindication, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... assassination of one of the world's throned rulers, and the Weircombe fishermen, discussing the news, sought the opinion of "old David" concerning the matter. "Old David" was, however, somewhat slow to be drawn on so questionable a subject, but Angus Reay was not ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that bay—more Breton than Norman—may exert a sedative influence, though even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are contra-indicated.... Good night to you, neighbours," ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... law, which is for the preservation of life at all hazards. This is simply the human idea of 'murder.' Animals kill one another for food, or in rivalry, or in blind ferocity of predatory disposition; but there is not a particle of evidence that they 'commit murder' for ulterior ends. It is questionable whether they comprehend the condition called death, or its nature, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the questionable belief that he was on the side of the people, or his ethical and theological audacities, or his prolonged Continental exile, which won for Byron a greater name abroad than he has retained at home; but the character of his poetry. "The English may think of Byron as they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... highly improbable that such brief tremors of the earth's crust could have been any agency in the generation of rhythmical oscillations of the whole mass of water in the lake. Indeed, it is very questionable whether any earthquake waves are ever produced in the ocean, except when the sea-bottom undergoes a ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... shrink from entering into the sacred bond; the holy joys of home and family lose their divine attractions; he prefers the cold life of an ignominious celibacy to the humiliation and opprobrium of the questionable privileges of an ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... went by it remained questionable whether Agatha was the more to be congratulated on having begun life after leaving school or Henrietta on having ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Besides these principal dishes there were roasted and boiled fowls, and ducks, and tongues, flanked by cranberry and apple sauces, and mashed turnips and potatoes. On the sideboard (for be it remembered, it was "when this old cap was new," and a practice which now is considered, at least, questionable, was then held in all honor, and its neglect was never dreamed of, and would have drawn down an imputation of nigardliness and want of breeding) stood bottles of wine, and flagons containing still stronger liquors, together with a large pitcher ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... patent laws, it is more than questionable whether the discoverer of a great scientific principle could pursue his own discovery, or whether he would not be arrested on the threshold by a subsequent patentee; if Jacobi lived in constitutional England instead of despotic Russia, it is doubtful if he could work out his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Pope, who carried Waller's method to the farthest possible limit. Dryden's vigorous instincts largely saved him from this fault; by skilful variations in accents and pauses and by terse forcefulness of expression he gave the couplet firmness as well as smoothness. He employed, also, two other more questionable means of variety, namely, the insertion (not original with him) of occasional Alexandrine lines and of frequent triplets, three lines instead of two riming together. A present-day reader may like the pentameter couplet or may find it frigid and tedious; at any rate ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of women's highly practical sanity and also of their irrelevancy in the conduct of Miss de Barral's amazing governess. It appeared from Fyne's narrative that the day before the first rumble of the cataclysm the questionable young man arrived unexpectedly in Brighton to stay with his "Aunt." To all outward appearance everything was going on normally; the fellow went out riding with the girl in the afternoon as he often used to do—a sight which never failed ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... story written for the purpose of deterring the listeners from doing similar bad deeds, pointing to the punishment even of Gods herein designated; thus they sought to save the credit of Homer, treating him quite as some commentators have treated certain morally questionable stories in the Bible. Thus along down the ages to the present the loves of Venus and Mars ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... from outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to carry out our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Frequent observation has convinced me that, when such researches are concluded, that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable, considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when I left this doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business in hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... recklessly in support of the man for whom she had given up her life. And the full force of the tragedy of it all found a deep echo of pitying admiration in his heart. It seemed to him that the hand of Providence had fallen hard, and, in his human understanding, with more than questionable justice. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband. "I always think that any man who is privileged to sit down to table with you is privileged to ask. There are disparities of course which may make the privilege questionable,—disparities of age, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... battle of life—which, from the commonness of the plant, they seem likely to have. And what their choice will be, there is little doubt. There are trees here of a truly noble nature, whose ancestors have conquered ages since; it may be by selfish and questionable means. But their descendants, secure in their own power, can afford to be generous, and allow a whole world of lesser plants to nestle in their branches, another world to fatten round their feet. There are humble and modest plants, too, here—and those some of the loveliest—which ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Booth had accepted, a drama in blank verse. Our minor poets still wrote in the style of Pope, and the narrative shared honors with the moral platitude in popular regard. Tennyson, of course, was a great poet, and Patmore no mean one, even at that time, but it is questionable whether the huge popular success of their works, such as The Princess and The Angel in the House, was due to their strictly poetic merits. At any rate, the poetry of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, lacking narrative ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... that the ruin might not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn, helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself, but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation in the minds of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... understanding that effectiveness is what counts will cut out every questionable habit, every association of idleness and sloth. No social club for you; that institution is for the man of dollars and of Greek. No evenings with gay parties for you; you must use those precious ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... business on hand: but not for the real hard work of life; not for times of ambition and struggle, any more than of distress and anxiety, or of danger and difficulty. In such times, if a man may not lie a little, cheat a little, do a questionable stroke of business now and then; how is he to live? So it is in the world, so it always was; and so it always will be. From statesmen ruling nations, and men of business "conducting great financial operations," as the saying is now, down to the beggar- woman ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... apparent difficulty is found in studying the exact words used. The accuracy, precision and inerrancy of the exact words used is amazing. To the superficial student, the doctrine of verbal inspiration may appear questionable or even absurd; any regenerated and Spirit-taught man, who ponders the words of the Scripture day after day and year after year, will become convinced that the wisdom of God is in the very words, as well as ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... romance in the sober morning. What a stupid piece of folly! The idea of his sending that personal inquiry to the paper! To-morrow he would see it sandwiched in between samples of shop-girl romance, questionable intrigues, and divers search-warrants. Ye gods! "Will the blonde who smiled at gentleman in blue serge, elevated train, Tuesday, meet same in park? Object, matrimony." Hillard fidgeted. "Young man known as Adonis would adore stout elderly lady, independently situated. Object, matrimony." ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... in their pleasant and peaceful homes. One of the first things that Frank Miller did after he returned to A.P. was to open a large and elegantly furnished saloon and restaurant. The license to keep such a place was very high, and men said that to pay it he resorted to very questionable means, that his place was a resort for gamblers, and that he employed a young man to guard the entrance of his saloon from any sudden invasion of the police by giving a signal without if he saw any of them approaching, and other ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... republic, our bulwark in war, our guide in peace, is no more. Oh that this were but questionable! Hope, the comforter of the wretched, would pour into our agonizing hearts its balmy dew; but, alas! there is no hope for us. Our Washington is removed forever. Possessing the stoutest frame and purest mind, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... largely propagated at Alexander the Second's accession. Again, men like Lawroff—who, ten years later, was imprisoned as a suspect, after Karakasoff's attempt against the life of the Czar—had celebrated the advent of the successor of Nicholas with such ironically questionable sentiments ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... his father at Rome to inquire what he wished him to do, seeing the gods had granted him to be all-powerful at Gabii. To this courier no answer by word of mouth was given, because, I suppose, he appeared of questionable fidelity. The king went into a garden of the palace, as if in deep thought, followed by his son's messenger; walking there for some time without uttering a word, he is said to have struck off the heads of the tallest poppies with his staff.[49] The messenger, wearied with asking and waiting for ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... Miss Anthony reached home she read in the morning paper that two of the State Industrial School girls and two of the free academy boys had been seen the night before coming out of a questionable place; the girls were arrested and locked up in the station house, the boys were told to go home. It was an everyday injustice but she determined to protest, so she went straightway to the police court, where she insisted that the boys should not go free while the girls ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... lanceolata) is one of those plants, the value of which for forage purposes is questionable. Many persons believe it to be a useful food. Its composition, which looks favorable, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... to expedients of a questionable character. Madame de Gabry will not come back to Paris for at least three months more, at the very soonest. Without her, I have no tact, I have no common sense—I am nothing but a cumbersome, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... quite new ideas to me," said Miss Benson, coldly. "I think you, Thurstan, are the first person I ever heard rejoicing over the birth of an illegitimate child. It appears to me, I must own, rather questionable morality." ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
