"Ambiguity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Napoleon required from the Holy See not only submission to his will, but the acceptance of his principles. The caution of the court of Rome irritated him more and more. He frightened Cardinal Caprara with a violent scene: "Write that I demand from his Holiness a declaration without ambiguity, stating that during the present war, and any other future war, all the ports of the pontifical states shall be closed to all English vessels, either of war or commerce. Without this I shall cause all the rest of the pontifical states to be occupied, I will have the eagles ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... characters are all that are needed to express the whole language. It is so simple and stenographic that the fathers often use it as a rapid way of writing French. It has, however, the disadvantage of ambiguity at times. Any Indian boy can learn it in a week or two; practically all the Indians use it. What a commentary on our own cumbrous and illogical spelling, which takes even a bright child two or three years ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the late General John A. Rawlins, and to the facts that no appropriation of money to pay for the statue is made by the resolution and no artist is named or party designated to whom the ordnance is to be delivered. In view of the ambiguity of the statute, I would recommend that Congress signify what action is desired as to the selection of the artist, and that the necessary sum required for the erection of the monument be appropriated. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... out of this ambiguity. In addressing the woman worker who does not, at the rate which her labour commands on the market, earn enough to give her any reasonable measure of financial freedom, the agitator will assure her that the suffrage would bring her more money, describing the woman suffrage cause to ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... forty-three next month, but hitherto I have known it to produce nothing like you,' he returned, and if there was ambiguity in his phrase there was none ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... grasp the ambiguity, the subtle trickery of that last line? What does it really mean? It means that Bryan W. Procter, who wrote it, had to be upon the shore to love the sea; that the more he was upon the shore the more he loved the ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... sought me out in the character of a generous editor. It is in this part that I best remember him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful stoop; looking quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an urbane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great appearance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick, with a touch of burr; telling strange tales with singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the rich student ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a mark of rank and pre-eminence: on this account it was assumed by other people, and conferred upon other places. For this reason it is never mentioned by any of the sacred writers before the captivity, in order to avoid ambiguity. The Gentile writers made use of it; and we see what mistakes have ensued. There were Phoenicians of various countries. They were to be found upon the Sinus [18]Persicus, upon the Sinus [19]Arabicus, in Egypt, in [20]Crete, in [21]Africa, in [22]Epirus, and even in Attica. [23][Greek: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... decided to ride in a street car. Therefore, I aimed my panic price cane at the driver of a cream-colored car with a blue stomach, and remarked, "Hi, there!" Before I go any further, and in order to avoid ambiguity, let me say that it was the car that had the blue stomach. He (the driver) twisted the brake and I went inside, clear to the further end, and sat down by the side of a young woman who filled the whole car with sunshine. I was so happy that I gave the conductor half a dollar and told him to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... cites it as an example of what she felicitously calls "an ambiguity, not hazy, but prismatic, and therefore not really perplexing." She gives us accordingly our choice of two interpretations, "'each cries out on account of the second death which he is suffering,' ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... his power of selection. In the one case, as in the other, selection does nothing without variability, and this depends in some manner on the action of the surrounding circumstances on the organism. I have, also, often personified the word Nature; for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws,—and by laws only the ascertained sequence of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Charley Vanderhuyn said that Christmas Eve, and as a faithful historian I give the exact words. It sounded like swearing, though why we should regard it profane to make free with the devil's name, or even his nickname, I never could see. Can you? Besides, there was some ambiguity about Charley's use of the word under the circumstances, and he himself couldn't tell whether his exclamation had reference to the Author of Evils or only to the Author of Novels. The circumstances were calculated to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Asia can the first footsteps of chronology be sought; not in Africa, because, first, the records of Egypt, so far as any have survived, are intensely Asiatic; liable to the same charge of hieroglyphic ambiguity combined with the exaggerations of outrageous nationality; because, secondly, the separate records of the adjacent State of Cyrene have perished; because, thirdly, the separate records of the next State, Carthage, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... mode of pronunciation was, in general, so indistinct, that it seldom happened that any two of us, in writing down the fame word, from the same mouth, made use of the same vowels in representing it. Nay, we even, very commonly, differed about consonants, the sounds of which are least liable to ambiguity. Besides all this, we found, by experience, that we had been led into strange corruptions of some of the most common words, either from the natives endeavouring to imitate us, or from our having misunderstood them. Thus, cheeto was universally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... draught of fishes, the draught of a ship, the draft of a picture, or a draught of medicine, or the present draft of this essay, though it may ultimately appear medicinal, are, some of them, quite as distinct objects or notions as, for instance, vane and vein are: but the ambiguity of draft, however spelt, is due to its being the name of anything that is drawn; and since there are many ways of drawing things, and different things are drawn in different ways, the same word has come ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... that some ambiguity in my language (S.R. I. p. 483) should have misled, and given Dr Lightfoot much trouble. I used the word 'quotation' in the sense of a use of the Epistle of Peter, and not in reference to any one sentence ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... possess what was under his hand. But it is a question whether we cannot dispense with even more. The facts which constitute possession are in their nature capable of continuing presently true for a lifetime. Hence there has arisen an ambiguity of language which has led to much confusion of thought. We use the word "possession," indifferently, to signify the presence of all the facts needful to gain it, and also the condition of him who, although some of them no longer exist, is still protected as if they did. Consequently it ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... precedes there has been some intentional ambiguity in the use of the word Law. Much of the misunderstanding of Judaism has arisen from this ambiguity. 'Law' is in no adequate sense what the Jews themselves understood by the nomism of their religion. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... though at the hazard of being tedious, to examine at full length this popular notion, that wealth consists in money or in gold and silver. Money, in common language, as I have already observed, frequently signifies wealth; and this ambiguity of expression has rendered this popular notion so familiar to us, that even they who are convinced of its absurdity, are very apt to forget their own principles, and, in the course of their reasonings, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... the lady turned my attention, and prevented me from noticing the ambiguity of the reply. 'I respected and loved your brother, madam,' continued I. 'His stay was but short after I left the school, and I have not heard of him since. Is he in London?'—'I believe so; but I do not ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and who was particuarly diligent in collecting those most faithful of all geographical evidences, ancient inscriptions, it may be left to Mr. W. Bankes, to illustrate more fully the ancient geography of the Decapolis and adjoining districts, and to remove some of the difficulties arising from the ambiguity ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... either anticipated. The "lady" who acted as "alcahuete" soon placed herself en rapport with Rosita; but her success was more equivocal than that of Vizcarra himself; in fact, I should rather say unequivocal, for there was no ambiguity about it. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... happy visit East, whereat several ladies gasped audibly, yet told it over and over afterwards with infinite delight. The majority of the officers contented themselves with saying that the garrison would not be the same place without the colonel and herself, which was gospel truth despite its ambiguity, but Gleason came in from a hunt purposely to say farewell, and was most effusive in his regrets at her ladyship's departure, and as for the ladies of the regiment. Ah, well! Why should they be any different, any more frank in garrison than out of it? There was not one of their number who ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... opportunity of pleading his own cause, and obtaining forgiveness for his indiscretion. He did not judge it safe to go into any detail concerning the circumstances by which he had been misled, and upon the whole endeavoured to express himself with such ambiguity that, if the letter should fall into wrong hands, it would be difficult either to understand its real purport or to trace the writer. This letter the old man undertook faithfully to deliver to his daughter at Woodbourne; and, as his trade would speedily again bring him or his boat to Allonby, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... is apt to result in ambiguity. But I understood. In Kennington Lane, the race of mere men and women appeared to be extinct. They were all gentlemen—unless they were ladies or children—even as the Liberian army was said to consist entirely of generals. Sweeps, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Hare voted against the Stetson bill and for the Wright bill, against the absolute rate and for the maximum rate. He voted against the amendment to the Constitution to clear up the alleged ambiguity regarding the powers and ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world. When we make experiments in lies and deceptions, intrigue and low cunning, we suffer hopeless and brutal failure. Our lies are coarse and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity. The history of the War proves this by a hundred examples. When our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Constitution had conferred upon it. I do not know how the provision, or the intention, either of the Constitution in granting the power, or of the States in making the cession, could be expressed in a manner more absolutely free from all doubt or ambiguity. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Ambiguity partly due to DONELAN. Lacking the volubility common to his countrymen he had prepared heads of his speech jotted down on piece of notepaper. This so intricately folded that sequence of remarks occasionally suffered. Situation further complicated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... pulled over, there was some discussion on the chart. The red cross was, of course, far too large to be a guide; and the terms of the note on the back, as you will hear, admitted of some ambiguity. They ran, the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harmonize them, to various logical processes, but principally to the one described in the last chapter, of diverting the student, at all difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible contradicts science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad Church maintains that the inspiration of the Bible differs in kind as well as in degree from that of other books. The Second Broad Church appears to hold that it differs in degree ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... demonstrate how they left untouched the whole brood of pertinent queries which the discussion had already raised, and which at its next national convention were destined to disrupt and defeat the Democratic party. For this occasion the studied ambiguity of the Cincinnati platform made possible a last cooeperation of North and South, in the face of carefully concealed mental reservations, to secure a ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... of James was over Sir George Calvert obtained a charter for Avalon, in Newfoundland, the ambiguity of whose terms made it possible to take Catholic priests and settlers there; and in 1632 he received in exchange for this a charter for Maryland, under which Catholics held all official positions ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... several senses. So far, it has been left to the intelligent reader, as he will not fail to perceive, to decide from the context in what sense the word was used. But at the present point, before we proceed to discuss sexual psychology in relation to marriage, it is necessary, in order to avoid ambiguity, to remind the reader what precisely are the chief main senses in which the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... language of sporting gentlemen, have cared to 'back' my original opinion. There was, however, a sufficient uncertainty to make me uncomfortable; and there was another uncertainty to enhance the unpleasant sense of ambiguity. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... making the proposition of the committee clear and plain. I was aware that a construction might be placed upon it different from that which the committee intended; and it is due to the frankness which is manifested here, that the purposes of the committee should be made plain. There ought to be no ambiguity in a constitutional provision. Some of the most important constitutional questions decided by the Supreme Court have been questions of construction. Lawyers would differ about the construction to be given the committee's proposition. I think the Supreme Court has placed a construction upon the terms ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently rendered; also, that in a platform of intolerable length there was such a cunning ambiguity of word and concealment of sense, such a double dealing of phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some antislavery Democrats of the North might join for the last time to elect a "Northern ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and appreciate the discreet ambiguity of style with which I have chosen to address you. I may assure you at once that I have done this not without considerable thought. For, though I have often watched you in the exercise of your energies, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant, when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for itself, was not of the highest order. ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... inexplicable ambiguity in this passage, which the original translator must have misunderstood, and which cannot ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... I can define to you clearly, and without ambiguity, what I mean by the just and unjust, according to my notion of them: When anger and fear, and pleasure and pain, and jealousies and desires, tyrannize over the soul, whether they do any harm or not—I call all this injustice. But when the opinion of the best, in whatever ...
— Laws • Plato
... valued in the capital, and we must believe that the language possesses an imperishable charm for Germans when we remember that this was the case so shortly after the glorious uprising against the terrible despotism of France. True, French, in addition to its melody and ambiguity, possesses more subtle turns and apt phrases than most other languages; and even the most German of Germans, our Bismarck, must recognize the fitness of its phrases, because he likes to avail himself of them. He has a perfect knowledge of French, and I have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that it was impossible to read anything from it except sternness and resolution, qualities which are as likely to be associated with the highest natures as with the most dangerous. It may have been on account of this ambiguity of expression that the world's estimate of the old merchant was a very varying one. He was known to be a fanatic in religion, a purist in morals, and a man of the strictest commercial integrity. Yet there were some few who looked askance at him, and none, save one, who could apply the word ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at bridge and baccarat). I dote on Futurism, and so a mate would give me little ease Whose views were strictly orthodox on MYRON and PRAXITELES. You do not understand," she sneered, "so gross is your fatuity; Well then, I answer 'No,' without a trace of ambiguity." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... insure them, and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run any hazard, even upon the credit of my own ingenuity, I was very much in doubt for some weeks whether any bookseller would be willing to subject himself to an ambiguity that might prove very expensive in case of a bad market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures at defiance, and takes the whole charge upon himself. So out I come. I shall be glad of my Translations from Vincent Bourne ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... this evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of lecture has been announced: for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and another material of ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... always used in the same meaning. While, in order to veracious conclusions, it is necessary that every matter of fact should be truly given, it is equally necessary that the language should be free from ambiguity. If an author uses the word "law," at one time as an enactment: by some authority, and at another time, as a sequence in the order of nature, he is sure to land us in fallacy and confusion, as Butler did in explaining the Divine government. The remedy is, not to perform the operation of ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... lost by homophony with 1 mead meadow and 2 mead metheglin: and it is a very serious loss. No. 1 is almost extinct except among farmers and hay merchants, but the absurd ambiguity ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English
... ambitious, artful young woman—why, that may incline them to inflict a merely nominal penalty." (But why, I should like to know, does a Judge, who is infinitely more capable than a dozen doltish juryman to express a decided opinion, thus put on the double-faced mask of ambiguity, and run with the hare and halloo with the hounds, like some Lukeworm from Laodicea?) ... Now he is mentioning "certain circumstances, which he is bound to tell the jury have made a strong impression on his own mind." ... Alack, that, owing to the incorrigible ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... that the conduct of the Calvinists was more liberal and conciliating; but that, on the other hand, the conduct of the Lutherans towards the Calvinists, was generally repulsive, and sometimes deserving a much harsher name; while the conduct of the Calvinists, was sometimes chargeable, with ambiguity. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... positively cannot recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writer should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is at the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances; and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a man further and further from writing the "Address to a Louse." Yet Burns, like most great artists, proceeded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not amiss, but the reason for it is very inconclusive; we use the same mode of speaking on many occasions. When I say of one, he squanders like a spendthrift, of another, he robbed me like a thief, the phrase produces no ambiguity; it is understood that the one is a spendthrift, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... No. 12, she invariably added, "Not but wot I'd work my 'ead orf to please any gentleman that is a gentleman; and when you've eaten one of my dinners, sir, you won't want nobody else to cook and do for you no more." And though Ted had pointed out to her the sinister ambiguity of this formula, she ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... she said, without consciousness of the seeming ambiguity of the remark. "I did so ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... each passage is marked in the notes by printing each word which commences a line with an initial capital letter. In the Folios, many substantives, other than proper names or titles, are printed with initial capitals; but, in order to avoid ambiguity, we have generally made our quotations conform, in this respect, ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... used in poetry chiefly in conjunction with a poetical word for the moon, and refers to the sun's warmth, as the other does to the whiteness of the moon. Thus the Bride in the Song of Solomon is described as "fair as the moon, clear as the sun." The third word has given use to some ambiguity. In the eighth chapter of Judges in the Authorized Version, it is stated that "Gideon, the son of Joash, returned from the battle before the sun was up," but in the Revised Version that he "returned from the battle from the ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... special creation in antagonism to evolution is really to use an ambiguous phraseology. No doubt it is not easy to find the proper phraseology. Some have employed the terms "immediate" and "mediate," to which also a certain amount of ambiguity is attached. Perhaps "direct" and "derivative" might convey more accurate ideas; but whatever terminology we adopt, we are still safe in saying that whether God makes things or makes them make themselves He is creating ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... [which Bacon] because in order to make the revelation complete we must be told that it is "Francis" Bacon, so as to leave no ambiguity or possibility of mistake. How then is it possible that we can be told that it is Francis Bacon? We read in answer ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... holding radical principles of government, and even of society itself. The charters which we call by distinction great are public instruments of this nature: I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... could afford you from such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less light part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in darker, because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... ordered to march "towards the Bridle Drift at the junction of the Doornkop Spruit and the Tugela, and to cross at that point." Here was yet another ambiguity. As there were two "Iron Bridges" so also were there two "Bridle Drifts," one on each side of the isthmus of the river loop, and yet another at the head of it. The West Drift was unfordable on the morning of December 15, and a hasty sketch ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... ambiguity is found in Lichter v. United States,[1277] but on the whole the opinion seems to espouse the second theory, as the following excerpts indicate: "A constitutional power implies a power of delegation of authority ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... (3) It prevents ambiguity. For example, in such a sentence as, "This introduction of Atterbury's has all these advantages" (Dr. Blair), the statement clearly means only one thing,—the introduction which Atterbury made. If, however, we ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... visit of the Daiho[u]-in, of which he seemed to have heard. What information Iemon might have withheld, or minimised, or given a different complexion, was cheerfully volunteered by others, who also corrected and amplified any undue curtailing or ambiguity of their spokesman. Shu[u]den listened to Iemon with a gravity and an expression hovering between calculation and jeering comment. He turned from him to the committee, giving great attention to those scholiasts ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... as printed. When there is an error or ambiguity, corrections are given in [[double brackets]] at the end of the entry or as a separate paragraph. Where possible, these standard wordings ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... work was frequently criticized for its ambiguity and lack of consistency. But he claimed that these defects were unavoidable consequences of his way of writing. He had to write what he saw and could not be expected to express that clearly which he himself saw only dimly. "I naturally desire to please ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... man is always awkward and miserable when placed between two women to whom he is making love. But Rousseau had never seen Mr. Churchill, and had but an imperfect idea of the dexterity, the ambiguity, that in our days can be successfully practised by an accomplished male coquette. Absolutely to blind female jealousy may be beyond his utmost skill; but it is easy, as every day's practice shows, to keep female vanity pleasantly perplexed by ocular deception—to make her believe ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... ambassador has a peculiar ambiguity about it, owing to its use in modern political affairs; and these clergymen assume that the word, as used by St. Paul, means an Ambassador Plenipotentiary; representative of his King, and capable of acting for his King. What right have ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... we have fixed in the subjoined schedule the prices of the various articles of produce, which prices are to remain free from all ambiguity. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the words which so often occur in this passage—'Invariable, continual, immutable, inevitable, irresistible.' There is an ambiguity in these words, which may lead—which I believe does lead—to most unphilosophical conclusions. They are used very much as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men. Are you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the world- old arguments ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the somewhat ambiguous answer. Not that the reply was at all ambiguous in itself; it was the peculiar emphasis with which the words were spoken, and the peculiar expression of the man's countenance as he uttered them, which constituted the ambiguity; the words simply implied that the Pensacola had been boarded; the look spoke volumes, but the volumes were written in an unknown tongue, so far as we at least ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... explains the sense. I agree with the Cambridge editor, that if Euripides had intended to use [Greek: hosias] substantively, he would hardly have joined it with [Greek: theas], thereby causing an ambiguity. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... now to philosophy. An ultimate datum, even though it be logically unrationalized, will, if its quality is such as to define expectancy, be peacefully accepted by the mind; while if it leave the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not distress. Now, in the ultimate explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied have always played a fundamental part. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... ru [c]ux huyu. The ambiguity of the word huyu, here, as often, offers difficulty in ascertaining the precise sense of the original. It means mountain or hill, woods or forest, or simply place or locality. While [c]ux, means literally "heart," ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... this answer, but after it was done he was as much at a loss to know its contents as before its perusal. He knew it was unfavorable to their wishes, but could not comprehend its meaning or expressions, and immediately attributed their ambiguity to the strange conference he had witnessed between Denbigh ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... her own powers in penetrating the future, we have seen that Hilda had never consulted her oracles on the fate of Harold, without a dark and awful sense of the ambiguity of their responses. That fate, involving the mightiest interests of a great race, and connected with events operating on the farthest times and the remotest lands, lost itself to her prophetic ken amidst omens the most ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the subject it discusses, the general misapprehension both of the strong and weak points in the physiology of the woman question, and the ignorance displayed by many, of what the co-education of the sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression should be employed in the discussion. The subject is treated solely from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms have been employed, only where their use is more exact or ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... adopted as a principle of Republicanism, which was hailed by its adherents as a new and brilliant economic device for enriching everybody at nobody's expense, and which had really enriched a few at the expense of the many. The Democrats, with considerable hesitation and ambiguity, pronounced against it, arraigned the Republican party for corruption, and named as their nominee Grover Cleveland, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... filled." And when the old man had said this, he was dejected in his mind, and so continued. But in a little time news came that Antigonus was slain in a subterraneous place, which was itself also called Strato's Tower, by the same name with that Cesarea which lay by the sea-side; and this ambiguity it was which ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... plausibility to the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or gazing through a medium ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... issues McCloy thought the board did "not speak with the complete clarity necessary," but he considered the ambiguity unintentional. Experience showed, he reminded the secretary, "that we cannot get enforcement of policies that permit of any possibility of misconstruction." Directness, he said, was required in place of equivocation based on delicacy. If the Gillem Board ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... general position, that an opinion or belief is nothing but a strong and lively idea derived from a present impression related to it, maybe liable to the following objection, by reason of a little ambiguity in those words strong and lively. It may be said, that not only an impression may give rise to reasoning, but that an idea may also have the same influence; especially upon my principle, that all our ideas are derived from correspondent impressions. For suppose I form at present an idea, of which ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... city. He had tried once or twice himself, but never with encouraging success, chiefly, he was told, because his paper was not good enough. Many people, he added, would not scruple to mislead me with evasive ambiguity on this one subject owing to an ill-balanced conception of what constituted true dignity, but he was unwilling that his countrymen should be thought by mine to be sunk into a deeper barbarism ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... and second personal pronouns, "mi", "ni", and "vi", ("ci") are used for the reflexive pronouns of the first and second persons. There can be no ambiguity, since words such as "me, myself, us, ourselves," can refer to no one else than the person or persons speaking; while words such as "you, yourself, yourselves (thee, thyself)," can refer to no one else than the ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... neck with both hands. Neck: part of the body, or instrument by which B is held; hands: part of the body by which A holds B. The preposition should, therefore, in my opinion be 'Per.'" (In the first case there is a certain amount of ambiguity, and je or per can be used indiscriminately). "(2). The little boy returned home quite by himself. This somewhat peculiar idiom obviously means that the child returned alone, and must be rendered thus 'La knabeto ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 • Various
... writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."[6] A similar confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... misuse of technical terms. Ambiguity of the terms Rotation and Revolution, owing to the double meaning improperly {20} attributed to each of the words. (No date nor place, but by Mr. Perigal,[42] I have no doubt, and containing ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of its ambiguity of sex and in spite of its irregular metre, I find, with Mr. Ellwanger, more force of poetry in Hood's ode than in Keats's; and this in spite of one's prejudice in favour of the greater poet. It came on me with a small shock therefore to find that Mr. Bridges, in his already famous ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lies. The conception of space is too often treated in philosophy—even by those who on reflection would not defend such treatment—as though it were as given, simple, and unambiguous as Kant, in his psychological innocence, supposed. It is the unperceived ambiguity of the word "place" which, as we shall shortly see, has caused the difficulties to realists and given an undeserved advantage to their opponents. Two "places" of different kinds are involved in every sense-datum, namely the place at which it appears and the place from ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... strangeness that stayed him in the very act of laying his hand on his friend's arm. It lasted but the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a wild question. Was NOT Mrs. Creston dead?—the ambiguity met him there in the short drop of her husband's voice, the drop conjugal, if it ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each other. Creston, making a step to look at something else, came nearer, glanced at him, started ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... questions of convenience, of enjoyment, of prestige and of material interests must sink far into the background. This word must sound so that all who hear it can look in each other's eyes with a full mutual understanding and without the slightest sense of ambiguity; just as they do in Japan when the name of the common head of all families, the Mikado, is named. There must be one thing in Germany and it must be this thing, which is altogether out of reach of the yawning, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... silver; autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of Mars, or of iron. Afterwards when astronomers invented the great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which were thus measured were easily converted into so many revolutions of the sun. Thus the different periods of creation which have been so great a source of difficulty ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... raccoon of sorts, with a long, ever-wriggling snout, sharp teeth, eyes that twinkle with humor, and clawed paws which are more skilful than many a fingered hand. By the scientists of the world he is addressed as Nasua nasua nasua—which lays itself open to the twin ambiguity of stuttering Latin, or the echoes of a Princetonian football yell. The natural histories call him coati-mundi, while the Indian has by far the best of it, with the ringing, climactic syllables, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... alone be careful to distinguish between the nominative and objective cases of the pronouns, but try to avoid ambiguity in their use. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... in which Christopher Columbus was born remains unidentified, and the year of his birth undecided, no such ambiguity attaches to the place and year of Vespucci's nativity. Above the doorway of the mansion which "for centuries before the discovery of America was the dwelling-place of the ancestors of Amerigo Vespucci, and ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... the father of, II. rise of the new, II. completion and ratification of, II. signed, II. launching the, II. benefits from, II. popularity of, II. Federalists and anti-Federalists on interpretation of, II. XIIth amendment to, II. broad construction of, III. ambiguity of, on slavery, III. precludes ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... there," echoed the Baron. It was so significantly said, that her face changed; and the schemer, fearful of the sinister ambiguity of his expressions, hastened to explain. "This time he shall go hunting in a carriage, with a good escort of our foreign lancers. His destination shall be the Felsenburg; it is healthy, the rock is high, the windows are small and barred; it might have been built on purpose. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... jury looked down from the awful circle, in the midst of which stood Saunders, and surveyed the little hard-faced, yellow-haired farmer, with eyes which seemed intent on searching him through all his shadowy ambiguity. If only he would make such answer as any other man in all the land might expect,—thought the prisoner,—"Why, your wife, of course." The doctor was prepared to believe in a miracle. Since he went away his wife might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... their haughty work. Evidently this was the beginning of different families of men,—different nationalities, and hence different languages. In the ninth verse it reads, that "from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." There is no ambiguity about this language. He did not only "confound their language," but "scattered them from thence," from Babel, "upon the face of all the earth." Here, then, are two very important facts: their language was confused, and they were "scattered." ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... English laws, and under the protection of England. Its principal center will be London. I cannot tell yet how large the Company's capital should be; I shall leave that calculation to our numerous financiers. But to avoid ambiguity, I shall put it at a thousand million marks (about L50,000,000 or $200,000,000); it may be either more or less than that sum. The form of subscription, which will be further elucidated, will determine what fraction of the ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... not declared them to be 'snaps'; and as each snap had been followed by a few glasses of 'mixture'; containing a less liberal proportion of water than the articles he himself labelled with that broadly generic name, he was in that condition which his groom indicated with poetic ambiguity by saying that 'master had been in the sunshine'. Under these circumstances, after a hard day, in which he had really had no regular meal, it seemed a natural relaxation to step into the bar of the Red Lion, where, as it was Saturday evening, he should ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... memory of such delightful sayings encouraged her to be extravagant. She thought that perhaps he would find her ankles worth a moment—if she took pains with them. Anyhow, he was worth dressing for. James never noticed anything—or if he did, his ambiguity was two-edged. "Extraordinary hat," he might say, and drop his eyeglass, which always gave an air of finality to comments of the sort. But her shopping done, for Lancelot's sake, life stretched before her a grey waste. She went ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Sir William Temple speaks of a pamphlet in the library of the Earl of Leicester, which gave an account of a set of morrice-dancers in King James's reign, composed of ten men or twelve men, for the ambiguity of his expression renders it impossible to say which of the two numbers is meant, who went about the country: that they danced a Maid Marian, with a tabor and pipe, and that their ages one with another made up ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... now considered to be an isolating language in the making while Chinese is cited by authoritative European scholars as being a language which with the simplest possible means at its disposal can express the most technical or philosophical ideas with absolute freedom from ambiguity and with admirable ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... responded with an unintentional touch of ambiguity. "But I daresay I'll manage in time to ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... faintly belonged to them in her own mind; she had done them in perfect good faith and with a remarkable absence of palpitation. This superficially ingenuous proposal to walk around the colleges with Mr. Ransom had really another colour; it deepened the ambiguity of her position, by reason of a prevision which I shall presently mention. If Olive was not to know that she had seen him, this extension of their interview would double her secret. And yet, while she saw it grow—this monstrous little mystery—she couldn't ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... communicating a less ideological message as a problem: most of the readers of Organic Gardening and Farming magazine and the buyers of organic gardening books published by Rodale Press weren't open to ambiguity. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... apparently couched in terms of studied ambiguity, for the expression "the first among the bishops of every nation" admits of various interpretations. In many cases it probably meant the senior bishop of the district; in others, it perhaps denoted the chief pastor of the chief city of the province; and in others ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... was so equivocal, that the persons to whom it was addressed did not know whether or not they ought to interpret the contents into a challenge; when our hero observed, that the ambiguity of his expressions plainly proved there was a door left open for accommodation; and proposed that they should forthwith visit the writer at his own apartment. They accordingly followed his advice, and found the abbe in his morning gown and slippers, with three huge nightcaps on his head, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Yet when the usher stood before me, holding the slate out in his white and shaking hand, I seized the pencil, and, ignoring the first question, I wrote 'Yes' firmly against the second. I suppose that the ambiguity of this action puzzled Mr. B. He pressed me to answer: 'Did you do it?' but to that I was obstinately dumb; and away I was hurried to an empty bed-room, where for the whole of that night and the next day I was held a prisoner, visited at intervals ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... his own poetry—'Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose.' This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with what fatal alacrity human language lends itself in the hands of so many performers upon the pliant instrument, to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, disguise, and pretentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: ''Tis said the Basques understand one another; for my part, I will never believe it.' The same pungent doubt might apply to loftier members of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... liable to change their minds at every breeze of every fresh hope which presents itself, giving themselves up wholly to the impulse and inclination of the moment; and, like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express themselves with great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition whatever; are immoderately covetous of gold; and are so fickle and irascible, that they very often on the same day that they quarrel with their companions without any provocation, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out from some knowledge to which I had as good ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... High Priest. "That is the voice of the people! Yet in order to satisfy the nicest of consciences we will permit Him to speak once again that He may defend Himself. Jesus of Nazareth! many know that you have said that you are the Christ, sent by Heaven. Answer clearly and without ambiguity. I ask you, Are you Christ, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... professes to have translated his work from the English of one Mr. D'Avisson (Davidson?) although there is a terrible ambiguity in the statement. "J' en ai eu," says he "l'original de Monsieur D'Avisson, medecin des mieux versez qui soient aujourd'huy dans la cnoissance des Belles Lettres, et sur tout de la Philosophic Naturelle. Je lui ai cette obligation entre les ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which he took up his Sussex curacy, the Tracts for the Times had begun to appear at Oxford. The 'Oxford Movement', in fact, had started on its course. The phrase is still familiar; but its meaning has become somewhat obscured both by the lapse of time and the intrinsic ambiguity of the subjects connected with it. Let us borrow for a moment the wings of Historic Imagination, and, hovering lightly over the Oxford of the thirties, take a ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... argue that this very ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if languages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation between them. He might, however, propose that he and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... three distinct assertions concerning my views, and just the same number of utter misrepresentations of them. That which I have numbered (1) turns on the ambiguity of the word "same," for a discussion of which I would refer Dr. Stirling to a great hero of "Aufklaerung", Archbishop Whately; statement number (2) is, in my judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resembling it; while, as to number (3), one great object of my essay was ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... shore afterwards divide between the worthless and vile of its contents. The net "was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away." There is no ambiguity here; the drawers are also the dividers. I suppose none will take advantage of the impersonal form in which the casting of the net is expressed, and assume that while one class, representing a human ministry, cast the net into the water, another class, representing ministering angels, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Because of the ambiguity indicated above, different people with different interests, all of them good patriotic Americans, draw very different inferences from the doctrine of equal rights. The man of conservative ideas and interests means by the rights, which are to ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... was in use among the southern patriarchs. Why did he not, in plain words, and sober earnest, and good faith, describe the thing as it was, instead of employing honied words and courtly phrases, to set forth with all becoming vagueness and ambiguity what might possibly be supposed to exist in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... increasing energy and an invincible authority. Therefore you must satisfy labor and justice at once; you must give to the former guarantees more and more real, and secure the latter without concession or ambiguity. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness, interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth, for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all, only by transient ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Where this rarest of all powers manifests itself, adverse criticism can be but petty and fruitless which confines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity of thought. Moreover, what seemed to electrify and scandalise those who were most bitter in their criticism was not so much the language as the spirit of the Wagnerian operas—that is to say, his whole manner of feeling and suffering. It were well to wait until these ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... skill which I had displayed in my conference with the prince de Soubise when the duc d'Aiguillon entered. "Good heaven," said he, kissing my hand very tenderly, "into what inquietude did you throw me by your dear and cruel letter. The ambiguity of your style has caused me inexpressible sorrow; and you have added to it by not allowing me to come to you at the first moment." "I could not: I thought it would be dangerous for you to appear before the king ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... avoid the suspicion that in this instance the Hebrew chronicler purposely phrased his account to convey the impression that Sennacherib's tragic end was but the slightly delayed culmination of the punishment inflicted for his attack upon the "chosen people." On the other hand, the ambiguity may be quite unintentional, for the Hebrew writers were notoriously lacking in the true historical sense, which shows itself in a full appreciation of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... sharpness as well as the point of a needle. To the son of a cook, "ego quoque tibi jure favebo." The ancients pronounced coce and quoque like co-ke, which alludes to the Latin cocus, cook, besides the ambiguity of jure, which applies to broth or law—jus. A Sicilian suspected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres into his own hands; Cicero, who knew that he was a creature of the great culprit, opposed him, observing "What has a Jew to do with swine's flesh?" The Romans called ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... necessary, in order to avoid ambiguity, to say in the first instance concerning the Malays, of whom a more particular account will be given in a subsequent ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... interpreted according to the language of the Phoenicians, denotes what does not please. Moreover, the king of Tyre sent sophisms and enigmatical sayings to Solomon, and desired he would solve them, and free them from the ambiguity that was in them. Now so sagacious and understanding was Solomon, that none of these problems were too hard for him; but he conquered them all by his reasonings, and discovered their hidden meaning, and brought it ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... appears to be a model of ambiguity, by which it is impossible Napoleon could have been imposed upon. However, as yet he had no suspicion of the hostility of Austria, which speedily became manifest; his grand object then was the Spanish business, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... praise the maker of the law for his great wisdom / for his playne writyng without any maner of ambiguity / y^t no strau[n]ger shulde p[re]sume to go vpon the walles / & reherce y^e law word for worde / & tha[n] shew som reasonable cause that mouyd the maker of the law that he wolde vtterly that no straunger shulde as- cende the walles. &c. Exa[m]ple of ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox |
