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More "Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ambiguity. Care must be taken to use them so as to keep the meaning clear, and your own good sense will help you in this more than rules. Notice in your reading ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... of these words rejected by Protestants? Is it because the text is in itself obscure and ambiguous? By no means; but simply because they do not comprehend how God could perform so stupendous a miracle as to give His body and blood for our ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... in tune as to be able to preserve the harmony, all are equally out of tune; so because offences differ from what is right, they will differ equally; therefore they are equal: now here we are being mocked with an ambiguous expression. For it equally happens to all the lyres to be out of tune, but not to them all to be equally out of tune. Therefore, that comparison does not help you at all. For it would not follow if we were to say that every avarice is ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... This was ambiguous, as there were more than a score of desks about, each tenanted by a busy man, more often than not accompanied ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... old acclaimed thee God and man, So, Death, our tongue acclaims thee: yet wast thou Hailed of old Rome as Romans hail thee now, Goddess and woman. Since the sands first ran That told when first man's life and death began, The shadows round thy blind ambiguous brow Have mocked the votive plea, the pleading vow That sought thee sorrowing, fain to bless ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... does thy gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate: The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Consign'd by Venus to Melissa's hand; Not less capricious than a reigning fair, Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer. In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain, In myrtle shades despairing ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... to make more generally possible a relationship of communication and interchange, that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word I must needs ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... need revision. Those sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the Navy or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... man has called himself a king it seems to me that so ambiguous a word is not sufficient to condemn him. For it is openly taught among the Romans that every wise man is a king. But you have brought forward no facts to prove that he has usurped ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... first thing we have to do is both clearly to define and understand the meaning of that word "unity." I distinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the oneness of the unit. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Jakeman of the necessity in which he found himself of sending her to a distance, upon a business which would not fail to detain her several weeks; and, though the errand by no means wore an artificial or ambiguous face, the two friends drew a melancholy presage from this ill-timed separation. Mrs. Jakeman, in the mean time, exhorted her ward to persevere, reminded her of the compunction which had already been manifested by her kinsman, and encouraged her to hope every thing from her courage ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... hour I would have wished to 'die'—Lest—aught more mean might stamp me 'mortal';"—the bull never struck me till Charles Lloyd mentioned it. The sense is evident enough, but the word is ridiculously ambiguous. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Russian, Chinese, Turkish, and Western systems of law that combines aspects of a parliamentary system with some aspects of a presidential system; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... telling what the defendant's attorney told me. He has taken up the case with zeal and interest. Aside from some ambiguous lines which this young man wrote to a young woman before departing for Europe, they have found no proof to sustain the accusation. In these few lines, the officers saw a plan and ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... aright from any teacher, we must first of all, like a historical artist, think ourselves into sympathy with his position and, in the technical phrase, create his character. A historian confronted with some ambiguous politician, or an actor charged with a part, have but one pre- occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quick; imagination is still quicker; and Joyce was giving the reins to both. Her mistress's gloomy and ambiguous words were crowding on her brain. Three o'clock and she had not been in bed, and was not to be found in the house? A nameless horror struggled to Joyce's face, her eyes were dilating with it; she seized and threw on a large flannel ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... by wear, reappearing as the threads that knot together the situations in a comedy? Let us, then, start with the games of a child, and follow the imperceptible process by which, as he grows himself, he makes his puppets grow, inspires them with life, and finally brings them to an ambiguous state in which, without ceasing to be puppets, they have yet become human beings. We thus obtain characters of a comedy type. And upon them we can test the truth of the law of which all our preceding analyses gave an inkling, a law in accordance ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... odious epithet is frequently used, applying it without discrimination to the brightest ornaments and to the darkest specimens of humanity, is calculated to engender far more heat than light. Indeed, under this very ambiguous term, three distinct schemes of doctrine, widely different from each other, are set forth; schemes which every candid inquirer after truth should be careful to distinguish. The first is that scheme of fatalism which rests on the fundamental ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the House, then, are they prepared to overthrow the existing Government on the question which the right hon. Gentleman has brought before us—a question which he has put in such ambiguous terms? Are they willing in overthrowing that Government to avow the policy of this Proclamation for India? Are they willing to throw the country into all the turmoil of a general election—a general election at a moment when the people are but just ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... delays absolutely unavoidable. An answer, however, though refused by Downing, was sent over to London; with an ambassador extraordinary, who had orders to use every expedient that might give satisfaction to the court of England. That court replied, that the answer of the Hollanders was ambiguous and obscure; but they would not specify the articles or expressions which were liable to that objection. The Dutch ambassador desired the English ministry to draw the answer in what terms they pleased; and he engaged to sign it: the English ministry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... practice of distributing the Filipino laborers, as allowed by the aforesaid laws of the Indies, under all circumstances, is the only alternate left. Even if, against the adoption of this measure, it should be attempted to urge the ambiguous sense of the concluding part of the second clause, it would be easy to comprehend its true intent and meaning, by referring to Law 1, Title 13, Book ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... ever I do return to England ... I will write a poem to which English Bards, etc., shall be New Milk, in comparison. Your present literary world of mountebanks stands in need of such an Avatar." Hence the somewhat ambiguous title. The word "Avatar" is not only applied ironically to George IV. as the "Messiah of Royalty," but metaphorically to the poem, which would descend in the "Capacity of Preserver" (see Sir W. Jones, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... a second time, cannot signify to return to life, but in a metaphorical sense; but we see continually mistakes of this kind result from the ambiguous meaning of the words made use of in ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... slender, shapely ash trees in yonder emerald copse. The whole plain is changing from a vast arena of golden splendour to a mysterious shadowy land of dreams. A fierce light still reveals every object on the hill towards the east; but westwards beneath yon purple ridge all is wrapped in dim, ambiguous shade. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... adoption lends great weight to any utterance of yours on public matters. Your interview on the war in THE TIMES of Nov. 22 will everywhere have influence for its gravity and fineness of feeling. It is with compunction that I call your attention to the fact that your statement is ambiguous on precisely those issues of the conflict which your ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Collect Patr. p. 55.) If Patavius, Bull, and others, who censure Marcellus, had seen this confession, they would have cleared him of the imputation of Sabellianism, and expounded favorably certain ambiguous expressions which occurred in his book against the Arises, which is now lost, and was compiled against a work of Asterius the Sophist, surnamed the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... "the enormities towards which precedents travel." And the people of the United States, as we have seen, appealed to the last argument, rather than acquiesce in their authority. Could it have been the purpose of Washington and his illustrious associates, by the use of ambiguous, equivocal, and expansive words, such as "rules," "regulations," "territory," to re-establish in the Constitution of their country that fort which had been prostrated amid the toils and with the sufferings and sacrifices of ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... of Soviet, German, and US systems that combine "continental" or "civil" code and case-precedent; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislative acts; has not accepted ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the object to be "to guard the plantations, and protect the inhabitants from captivity and murder." This was the first clear authority ever given by the Government to raise a negro regiment in this war. There were, indeed, some ambiguous words in the instructions of Secretary Cameron to General Sherman, when the original expedition went to Port Royal, authorizing him to organize the negroes into companies and squads for such services as they might be fitted for, but this not to mean ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Morris, in conversation with him to-day on the scene which is passing, expressed himself thus. 'How comes it,' says he, 'that Burr, who is four hundred miles off (at Albany), has agents here at work with great activity, while Mr. Jefferson, who is on the spot, does nothing?' This explains the ambiguous conduct of himself and his nephew, Lewis Morris, and that they were holding themselves free for a price; i.e. some office, either to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the low broad forehead straight nose and arched eyebrows—so pure and firm in outline, so classically antique in the modelling—might have come from some Syracusan coin. The expression of the eyes and that of the mouth were in singular contrast, giving her that passionate, ambiguous, almost preternatural look that only one or two master-hands, deeply imbued in all the profoundest corruption of art, have been able to infuse into such immortal types of woman as the Mona Lisa ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Doth any, in handling similitude and diversity, assign the cause why iron should not move to iron, which is more like, but move to the loadstone, which is less like? Why in all diversities of things there should be certain participles in nature which are almost ambiguous to which kind they should be referred? But there is a mere and deep silence touching the nature and operation of those common adjuncts of things, as in nature; and only a resuming and repeating of the force and use of them in speech or argument. Therefore, because in a writing of this ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... admitted, of perversity and Scottish "thrawnness." He had both kinds of physical courage—the active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations and consequences, of readiness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness, admitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the clouds from human intercourse, I have not known his equal. The great Sir Walter himself, as this book will prove, was not more manfully free from artistic jealousy or irritability under criticism, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the equivocal or metaphorical use of the word is justified by custom (like the use of other words which at first referred only to the body, and then by a figure have been transferred to the mind), still, why should we make an ambiguous word the corner-stone of moral philosophy? To the higher thinker the Utilitarian or hedonist mode of speaking has been at variance with religion and with any higher conception both of politics and of morals. It has not satisfied ...
— Philebus • Plato
... man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... introductory there 53. Shall and will 54. Principal parts. List 55. Tense, mode, auxiliaries: a Tense in dependent clauses or infinitives; b The past perfect; c Present tense for a general statement; d Mode; e Auxiliaries 56. Adjective and adverb: a Adjective misused for adverb; b Ambiguous cases; c After verbs pertaining to the senses 57. A word in a double capacity 58. List of the terms of grammar 59. EXERCISE A. Case of pronouns B. Agreement C. Shall and will D. Lie, lay; sit, set; rise, raise E. Principal parts of ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... conveys the information that begging for money on the main street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes; number three, that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four, however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat, and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven bothers me. I cannot make out whether the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred privilege: to be unexpected and always—yes, always without exception—in the spirit of its irrational and sympathetic role. It needs Kipling's ambiguous "And when the thing that couldn't has occurred" for a motto. And yet—and yet—like all true nonsense, this nonsense is rooted in a beautiful and disconcerting compromise ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... forests, and who, in their firm belief, holds communication with spirits of another world. For, be it observed, Smith possesses all the qualities and exercises all the tricks of the necromancers during the middle ages. His speech is ambiguous, solemn, and often incomprehensible—a great proof to the ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... [final s invisible] Here all was solemn and silent [s in "was" invisible] Its appearance was tall and robust, wrapped in a tattered white robe [a in "and", r in "robe" invisible] By the fate of war, he replied [r in "war" invisible] he was worn to a skeleton [spacing in this line is ambiguous; the word "a" may be either missing or invisible] I find by your father's letters that [final t invisible] they projected scenes of connubial bliss [t in "they" invisible] reflected in the glassy lake [l in ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... hand I dislike the use of the term fire, as a constituent principle of natural bodies, because, in consequence of the use that has generally been made of that term, it includes another thing or circumstance, viz. heat, and thereby becomes ambiguous, and is in danger of misleading us. When I use the term phlogiston, as a principle in the constitution of bodies, I cannot mislead myself or others, because I use one and the same term to denote only one ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... confoundedly picturesque, too rich and brilliant, too sharp and smart and glib, too—well!—theatrical; like characters from the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?" ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... was told me by his lawyer, who looked after the case with interest and zeal. Outside of some ambiguous lines which this youth wrote to a woman before he left for Europe, lines in which the government's attorney saw a plot and a threat against the government, and which he acknowledged to be his, there wasn't anything found to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Bishop of Durham's house till July 11th. And the King, who was then at St. John's house, removed to the Bishop of London's palace, and thence to his house at Rotherhithe."[287] But the Chronicle suggests no reason for these movements and ambiguous proceedings. Thus, too, on the 23rd of September, the mere fact is stated that "Prince Henry came to the council with a huge people," supplying no clue as to the meaning and intention of the concourse. It cannot, moreover, escape observation, that, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... few words of distrust and indifference, but it was plain that the ambiguous language of the juggler, as usual, had succeeded in awakening interest. With the affectation of a mind secretly conscious of its own infirmity, he pretended to be indifferent to what the other professed a readiness to reveal, while with the rapacity of a grasping spirit he betrayed ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... these secrets is significant, but at the same time ambiguous. The initiate is convinced that it would be a sin to tell what he knows and also that it would be sinful for the uninitiated to listen. Plutarch speaks of the terror of those about to be initiated, and compares their state of mind to preparation ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... and daughter? How would they regard him if he maintained an obstinate and ambiguous silence towards them? They were no longer little children, scarcely separate from their father, seeing through his eyes, and touching life only through him. They were separate individuals, living souls, with a personality of their own, the more free from his influence because of his long ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... last the band-master was moved to Woolwich, he hoped that the effect of such prosaic surroundings would put an end to Ted's mooning, and that he would settle down to a career more likely to reward him in this world rather than in that ambiguous world beyond to which his dreams aspired. Edward, who was by this time seventeen and who had so far submitted to his father's wishes as to be working in a solicitor's office, found that the effect of being banished from ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... if I was old enough I wouldn't be gittin' married," said fourteen-year-old Hiram, in a somewhat ambiguous burst ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... Dr. Opimian. There is an ambiguous present, which somewhat perplexes me, in an epigram of Rhianus, 'Here is a vessel of half-wine, half-turpentine, and a singularly lean specimen of kid: the sender, Hippocrates, is worthy of all praise.'{2} Perhaps this was a doctor's present to a patient. Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Nonnus could not ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Captain Murray, it was agreed that a proclamation should be issued at the different settlements, requiring the attendance of the people at the respective posts on the same day; which proclamation would be so ambiguous in its nature, that the object for which they were to assemble could not be discerned, and so peremptory in its terms, as to insure implicit obedience. This instrument having been drafted and approved, was distributed according to the original plan. That which was ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... London looked forward to having a good old summer time with Handy and his all-star company the following Saturday evening, they were wofully out in their reckoning. Though "Pinafore" was announced with due managerial formality, perhaps somewhat ambiguous, for that particular occasion, when the time for presentation arrived there was not a vestige of either tent or performers. After the entertainment on the night of the fair the company went aboard the Gem of the Ocean. Handy alone remained ashore. As he had been manager, advance and press ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... recommended. There was a muffin, too, identified and labelled, but without any Latin name, a captured crumpet, a collection of buns, a dinner-roll, and a something novel to us, called Pumpernickel, that we had rather be without, or rather—for the expression is ambiguous—that we had rather not be without, but altogether remote from. And all these things have been tested by an analyst, with the most painful results. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and the like nasty chemical things seem indeed to have occurred in everything he touched. Those sturdy ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... beloved Havanas, retailing the latest news, discussing the chances of a change of ministry, or the most recent and interesting scandalous anecdote current in that gallant metropolis. It would be wrong to infer, from his somewhat ambiguous appellation, that the student's skin had the copper hue of a Pawnee or an Osage, or his hair the ruddy tint usually deemed detrimental and unbecoming. The name implied no sneer—it was given and taken as a compliment; and Federico was at least as proud of it as of the abundant golden curls to which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... is an AFFECTED OBSCURITY; by either applying old words to new and unusual significations; or introducing new and ambiguous terms, without defining either; or else putting them so together, as may confound their ordinary meaning. Though the Peripatetick philosophy has been most eminent in this way, yet other sects have not been wholly clear ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... on civil law system; derived from Soviet and continental civil code legal principles; legislature retains power to interpret statutes; constitution ambiguous on judicial review of legislation; has ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... appears in looking at an {253} "ambiguous figure", drawn so as to represent equally well a solid object in either of two different positions. The transparent cube, showing near and far edges alike, is a good example. Look steadily at such a drawing, and the cube ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... authority and discipline. But when he accepted an archbishopric he sold his honour; his servility to Charles and Lauderdale was disgusting; fear made him cruel; his conduct at Mitchell's last trial is, at best, ambiguous; and the hatred in which he was held is proved by the falsehoods which his enemies told about his private life and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... shown in the ambiguous trametes (Trametes ambigua), a white shelving fungus which occurs in the Southern States. It is shown in Fig. 16. At the upper right hand is shown the normal plant in the normal position. At the upper left hand is shown an abnormal one with the large and first formed cap also in the ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... he had not seen the firmest of believers overwhelmed with grief by a like loss, and as completely inconsolable. Hume may have thrown off Mr. Boyle's "principles of religion," but he was none the less a very honest man, perfectly open and candid, and the last person to use ambiguous phraseology, among his friends; unless, indeed, he saw no other way of putting a stop to the intrusion of unmannerly twaddle amongst the bitter-sweet memories stirred in his affectionate nature ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Xenophanes used ambiguous language, applicable to the material as well as to the mental, and exclusively appropriate to neither. In other words, he availed himself of material imagery to illustrate an indefinite meaning. In announcing the universal being, he appealed to the heavens ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... one malicious, and has led others to say, 'God is a superfluous hypothesis, and to believe in Him brings more enigmas than it solves,' and has led still others to say, 'Why, if there is a God, does it look as if either He was not all- powerful, or was not all-merciful?' Nature has but ambiguous evidence to give ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... vain and futile reasonings, derived from the scattered passages of some early writers, from the ambiguous silence of others—and, above all, from the dreams of etymological analogy or mythological fable, I believe the earliest civilizers of Greece to have been foreign settlers; deducing my belief from the observations of common sense rather than from obscure and unsatisfactory ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks; the swift stag from underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is. But let me try to make plain to myself what is the essential quality that gives to Art the power of exciting this unconscious vibration, this impersonal emotion. It has been called Beauty! An awkward word—a perpetual begging of the question; too current in use, too ambiguous altogether; now too narrow, now too wide—a word, in fact, too glib to know at all what it means. And how dangerous a word—often misleading us into slabbing with extraneous floridities what would otherwise, on its own plane, be Art! To be decorative where decoration is not suitable, to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that not Apollo, but my own vanity had been the cause of my ruin. How could 'the kingdom to be destroyed' possibly mean mine, the mighty realm of the powerful Croesus, the friend of the gods, the hitherto unconquered leader? Had a friend hinted at this interpretation of the ambiguous oracle, I should have derided, nay, probably caused him to be punished. For a despotic ruler is like a fiery steed; the latter endeavors to kick him who touches his wounds with intent to heal; the former punishes him who lays a hand on the weak or failing points of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... committed rashly to improper hands. If the rhetoricians of Newmarket, who may be supposed likely to conceive in its full strength the dignity of the subject, should undertake to express it, there is danger lest they admit some phrases which, though well understood at present, may be ambiguous in another century. If posterity should read on a publick monument, that the lady carried her horse a thousand miles in a thousand hours, they may think that the statue and inscription are at variance, because one will represent the horse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... word "first" because Scott's language is ambiguous. In the list of the bookseller's collection in 3 vols. 4to, advertised in Amphitryon (1690), "Mac-Flecknoe" and the Cromwell poem do not appear. The later plays, however, soon gave material for another volume, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... look of inexpressible contempt, and then turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... their friends on their way to the oratory, where they went to worship, were met by a female slave who was possessed with a spirit of divination and uttered ambiguous predictions. She had acquired great reputation as an oracle or fortune-teller and for making wonderful discoveries. By this practice she brought her masters considerable gain and was very valuable to them. When Paul cast out the evil spirit and restored the maiden to her ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... hee) why linger you in this ambiguous thought, Open thine eyes, no longer blinded bee, those wounding lookes, thy Louer, deere hath bought. Vnbolt thy harts strong gate of hardest steele, O let him nowe the ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... recites the separate pretensions and attributes of the great deities, first, of Hutasa, a name of Agni, the god of fire. The sense here is extremely obscure. Bopp renders it literally. 'Qui hanc terram totam contraxit,' seems ambiguous. It may refer to the agency of fire in compacting the world and again consuming it, or simply shrivelling it up, while ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meager ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... bounds could be described. This fact disturbed the upright and conscientious Marbois, who thought that "treaties of territorial cession should contain a guaranty from the grantor." He was especially anxious, moreover, that no ambiguous clauses should be introduced in the treaty. He communicated his troubles on this point to the First Consul, advising him that it seemed impossible to construct the treaty so as to free it from obscurity on the important matter of boundaries. Far from exhibiting any sympathy with his faithful ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of building or equipment) nor purchased unless an appropriation be first made by law therefor." The building of the two cutters under contract can not be said properly to have commenced, although preparations have been made for building; but even if the construction be ambiguous, it is better that all ambiguity should be removed and thus the hazard of violating the pledged faith of the country be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... having drunk of the waters of a spring within it, he delivers answers in verse upon what the persons have in their thoughts, though he is often ignorant, and knows nothing of composing in measure. It is said, that he foretold to Germanicus his sudden death, but in dark and ambiguous terms, according to the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... to a room where they first made each other's acquaintance. Then two bridesmen led them to the nuptial chamber where they watched over them until after the first conjugal union. This last usage was not universal, and after some experience of its ambiguous character it was abolished. The purpose was that there might be witnesses to the consummation of the marriage, not merely to the wedding ceremony. The whole proceeding was a domestic and family affair, in which no priest or other outsider had any part, except as witness, and there ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Europe." "I frequently visited her," he writes, "and after passing regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant formal bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I ventured, in my careless way, to talk of friendship in rather ambiguous terms; and after her return to ——, I wrote her in the same terms. Miss, construing my remarks farther than even I intended, flew off in a tangent of female dignity and reserve, like a mounting lark in an April morning; and wrote me an answer which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... magistrate!—on men, the guiltiest of whom were pure as the spotless snow, when compared with his own conscious guilt; and Catiline to glide through dark streets, visiting discontented artizans, debauched mechanics, desperate gamblers, scattering dark and ambiguous promises, and stirring up that worthless rabble—who, with all to gain and nothing to lose by civil strife and tumult, abound in all great cities—to violence and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the original book were ambiguous: text ended at mid-line, but the following line was not indented. These are shown as single blank lines. Unambiguous paragraph breaks are shown with two blank lines. Sidenotes are shown in ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... expressions used is inquired into, as if it were in the definitive statement of the case, in which it has been placed. Wherefore, the first kind is that concerning the written document and the intention of it; the second arises from the laws which are contrary to one another, the third is ambiguous, the fourth is argumentative, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... her she has potent charms within the house which will rid her of the malady without danger to her good name or her life. Phaedra suspects her plan and absolutely forbids her to speak with Hippolytus. The answer is ambiguous: ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... written on the leaf of his pocket-book, but they were of by far too indistinct and ambiguous a nature to lead ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... out at the door as the servant opened it, but neither of us had seen it do so; and we were every one of us in such a state of nervous excitement, that even this incident was something in the catalogue of our ambiguous experiences. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... comes out with bloody hands. Warned however by the chorus of the approach of Aegisthus, he hastily re-enters the house in order to take him by surprise. Aegisthus inquires into the story of Orestes' death, and from the ambiguous language of Electra is led to believe that his corpse is in the palace. He commands all the gates to be thrown open, immediately, for the purpose of convincing those of the people who yielded reluctant obedience to his sovereignty, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... has seen much of interest, and feels hopeful aspirations of young manhood. Many clear-cut, positive views are expressed in courteous, deferential manner, but in no uncertain or ambiguous phrase. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... pleading their rival claims before Pompey, ambassadors from the Pharisees had made their appearance in Damascus to petition for the abolition of the kingship; this object had now to some extent been gained. Less ambiguous than the victory of the Pharisees was the fall of the Sadducees, who in losing the sovereignty of the Jewish state lost all real importance. But the intervention of the foreign element exercised its most powerful influence upon the temper of the lower ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... been implied in the text, at this place, and also in the preface, that the "historic method of study" is the great feature of this century. The term is ambiguous. The meaning of it however is, that each problem ought to be approached from the historic side. Whether the problem be a fact of society, or of thought, or of morals, in each case the questions are asked—What are its antecedents? how did it happen? ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... element at the commencement of the reign of a prince, he pretended to foretel the events that would take place and the length of its continuance; but, at the same time, he was cautious enough to wrap them up in such ambiguous and mysterious expressions that, like most prophecies of the kind, they might admit of a variety of interpretations. This manner of expounding the lines of Fo-shee by Confucius, the supposed system of binary arithmetic by Leibnitz, laid the foundation of consulting future destiny, at this ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the United States, probably on account of pressure brought to bear on it by the "Left Wing," stated that the party repudiated the Berne Conference, but, at the same time, was not yet affiliated with the Communist Conference of the Bolshevists at Moscow. The phraseology of this ambiguous announcement is ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if there might," Or such ambiguous giving-out, to note That you know aught of me: this not to do, So grace and mercy at your most ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... intent whereof being to instruct men in so necessary a point of faith as that relating to the Messiah, it is reasonable to think they would be delivered in the most perspicuous and intelligible terms. Since ambiguous expressions (capable of such strange meanings as they pretend,) would be too slippery a foundation to build such a point of faith upon; would be of no use, or worse than none; would be unable to teach the clear truth, and apt to ensnare men into dangerous errors, by leaving too great a latitude ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... undressed, showing exquisite underclothing, she followed her ambiguous remark by pouring out information concerning herself, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Germany. Aggression upon Germany is not the subject and forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object." There is nothing ambiguous or equivocal about that. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... that the conduct of congress in this emergency has given little satisfaction. They affect to give a declaration of the national will, and are as ambiguous as the Delphic Oracle; and it is said that their half- measures, and determination not to see that public opinion is against them, and that a thorough change can alone undermine this military revolution, will contribute more than anything to its ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... it even so? then this ambiguous doubt No man can better than myself decide; That compound powder was of poppy made and mandrakes, Of purpose to cast one into a sleep, To ease the deadly pain of him whose leg Should be saw'd off; That powder gave I to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the Pace; Encrease of Science, the Way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the End. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like Ignes Fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... fin-spine—most primitive of spear-heads—Ulysses was slain; and again, he may learn not a little about that ναρκη {narkê}, or torpedo, to which Meno compared his master Socrates, in a somewhat ambiguous compliment. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... movements, or steps, is, for every one of them to be distinct; not huddled and running into one another, so as that one should begin before the precedent one is finished. This so necessary avoidance of puzzled or ambiguous motion, can only be compassed by an attention to significance and justness of action. This simplicity will arise from sensibility, from being actuated by feelings. No one has more than one predominant actual feeling at a time; when that is expressed clearly, the effect ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... to select his terms with care, to define them with accuracy, and to abide by them with steadiness; thus he will make a philosophical vocabulary for himself. Persons who want to puzzle and to deceive, always pursue a contrary practice; they use as great a variety of unmeaning, or of ambiguous words, as they possibly can.[14] That state juggler, Oliver Cromwell, excelled in this species of eloquence; his speeches are models in their kind. Count Cagliostro, and the Countess de la Motte, were not his superiors in the power of baffling the understanding. The ancient ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... think the best thing for Myra to do will be to marry, so as to get rid of the ambiguous position in which she is placed. Wife to a convict serving his time. Poor child, it gives me a shudder every time I think of it. There, I will not think of it any more. I've made my mind ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... you refer to ours in that ambiguous And filmy phrase, why then you lie; And if to yours—we hope to be contiguous To our objective by-and-by, But for the present, though the end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... stated that the Duke Barnim gave an ambiguous answer to Otto upon the subject; but the knight, after his visit to Wolgast, was so certain of seeing his daughter in a short time Duchess of Pomerania, that he already looked upon the Jena dues ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... principles, which will be established now sufficiently for our purposes when we have examined the nature of that form of government last on the list in Sec. 105,—the purely "Magistral," exciting at present its full share of public notice, under its ambiguous title of "slavery." ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... a good sailer and solid in its timbers; it had no need to fear a gale of wind, and it ought, according to the calculation of D'Artagnan, to have either returned to Brest, or come back to the mouth of the Loire. Such was the news, ambiguous, it is true, but in some degree reassuring to him personally, which D'Artagnan brought to Louis XIV., when the king, followed by all ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mood. She broached the subject of grouse, addressing to Otway an ambiguous remark which led March to ask, with veiled surprise, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... in this Lecture, many idealistic writers who insist upon the necessity of God as a universal, knowing Mind to explain both the existence of the world and our knowledge of it, are more or less ambiguous about the question whether the divine Mind is to be thought of as willing or causing the world, though passages occur in the writings of most of them which tend in this direction. 'God {57} must be thought of as creating the ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... days then. It was useless to upbraid her mother. She always posed as the injured one, and could not see that in robbing her child of a real home she was strewing her path with dangers as well, by placing her in an ambiguous, comfortless position, from which ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Canada, New South Wales, and other places. Interspersed with these, are the advertisements of Jewish clothesmen, informing the judicious seamen where he can procure of the best and the cheapest; together with ambiguous medical announcements of the tribe of quacks and empirics who prey upon all seafaring men. Not content with thus publicly giving notice of their whereabouts, these indefatigable Sangrados and pretended Samaritans ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Heartsick, I ventured at the last to tell Unto my sire these visions of the dark. Then sent he many a wight, on sacred quest, To Delphi and to far Dodona's shrine, Being fall fain to learn what deed or word Would win him favour from the powers of heaven. But they came back repeating oracles Mystic, ambiguous, inscrutable, Till, at the last, an utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... any undue squeamishness. . . . I spoke of AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult of Kore, or Pherephatta, and of the swine of Eubouleus, and of certain ambiguous maidens, whom those old Grecians fabled—oh, very ignorantly fabled, my lad, of course—to rule in a more quietly lit and more tranquil world than we blunder about. I think I could explain much which now seems mysterious—yes, and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... had been a complete misunderstanding, which I think, as it was, might have been cleared up if there had been less precipitation and more openness and further endeavours to explain what was doubtful or ambiguous, I began to turn in my mind whether something could not be done to avert the impending danger, and renew the negotiation with Peel while it was still time. Labouchere had had a conversation with Graham, who had enlightened him, much as Wharncliffe had me; we came home ...
— 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
... Unfortunately, Aristotle says very little more about his [Greek: nous poietikos], and does not explain how the two Reasons are related to each other, thereby leaving the problem for his successors to work out. The most fruitful attempt to form a consistent theory, on an idealistic basis, out of the ambiguous and perhaps irreconcilable statements in the De Anima, was made by Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), who taught that the Active Reason "is not a part or faculty of our soul, but comes to us from without"—it is, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... startling omen appeared, in a much milder but ambiguous communication from General La Fayette. He stated that he was on his march from Paris with the national guard, and part of the people, coming to make remonstrances; but he begged Her Majesty to rest assured that no disorder ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... learned the language himself sufficiently to rebuke them in their own tongue. His next position was at Dresden in 1816, and here he remained nine years until his death. His position at first was somewhat ambiguous. There were two troupes of singers in the opera—an Italian and the German. The grand operas were given in Italian by the Italian company, and the light operas in German by the German company. It was Weber's task to change this, by producing new works of a distinctly higher character ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... he wanted. Or, if he wanted anything, it was to be rid of a scrivener's table altogether. Among the manifestations of his diseased ambition was a fondness he had for receiving visits from certain ambiguous-looking fellows in seedy coats, whom he called his clients. Indeed, I was aware that not only was he, at times, considerable of a ward-politician, but he occasionally did a little business at the Justices' courts, and was not unknown on the steps of the Tombs. I ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... same,' says Boggs, 'them outcries of theirs makes me feel a heap ambiguous. I'm drawin' kyards to a pa'r of fours that first howl they emits, an' I smells bad luck an' thinks to myse'f, "Here's where you get killed too dead to skin!" But as I takes in three aces, an' as the harvest tharof is ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... language and definitions can be instruments of investigation as well as of thought, but lest, as too often happens, we should waste time over trash. There are many books to which one may apply, in the sarcastic sense, the ambiguous remark said to have been made to an unfortunate author, "I will lose no time ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... noted at the time but afterward widely commented upon. "Our title to the country of the Oregon," said he, "is clear and unquestionable." The text of the Baltimore platform read, "Our title to the whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and unquestionable." Did President Polk mean to be ambiguous at this point? Had he any reason to swerve from the strict letter of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... troubles, she was now fourteen, and, according to the laws of her race, a woman. I do not think the most romantic fancy would have called her pretty. Her complexion defied most of those ambiguous similes through which poets unconsciously apologize for any deviation from the Caucasian standard. It was not wine nor amber colored; if anything, it was smoky. Her face was tattooed with red and white lines on one cheek, as if a duo-toothed comb had been drawn from cheek-bone to jaw, and, but for ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... too and cast me a startled look which I met with a smile possibly as ambiguous as the feeling which ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... this as on most other occasions, was even more strongly conservative. The two brothers adopted their usual superstitious practice of opening their Bibles at random, under the belief that the texts on which their eyes first fell would guide them in their decision. The texts were ambiguous and somewhat ominous, relating for the most part to violent deaths; but on drawing lots the lot determined them to go. It was on this slender ground that they resolved to give the weight of their example to this most important development of the movement. They went to Bristol, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... it became one of the great questions in the history of this century which would first arrive on the field. Napoleon believed that Grouchy was at hand. Wellington in his desperation breathed out the wish that either night or Bluecher would come. The ambiguous result of the principal conflict made it more than ever desirable to both of the commanders to gain their reinforcements, each before the other. The event showed that the arrival of Buelow's contingent was really the signal for the oncoming of the whole Prussian ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... been most violent.[6] It was a harsh and continuous invective. It is probable that he did not remain quite a stranger to politics. Josephus, who, through his teacher Banou, was brought into almost direct connection with John, suggests as much by his ambiguous words,[7] and the catastrophe which put an end to John's life seems to imply this. His disciples led a very austere life,[8] fasted often, and affected a sad and anxious demeanor. We have at times glimpses of communism—the rich man being ordered to share all that ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... for "the Virgin" in the Hebrew text is ha-almah. It is an ambiguous word, and does not necessarily imply, though it certainly does not necessarily exclude, the idea of virginity. Etymologically it means puella nubilis—a maiden of ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... produce the extracts which make up these pages to show what is the meaning of the clauses above cited. For no man or party, of any authority in such matters, has ever pretended to doubt to what subject they all relate. If indeed they were ambiguous in their terms, a resort to the history of those times would set the matter at rest for ever. A few persons, to be sure, of late years, to serve the purposes of a party, have tried to prove that the Constitution makes no compromise with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Voltaire, "than to read and to converse to no purpose. In history, in morals, in law, in physic, and in divinity, be careful of equivocal terms." One of the ancients wrote a book to prove that there was no word which did not convey an ambiguous and uncertain meaning. If we possessed this lost book, our ingenious dictionaries of "synonyms" would not probably prove its uselessness. Whenever the same word is associated by the parties with different ideas, they may converse, or controverse, till "the crack of doom!" This with a little ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the critical moment, when men are dividing and disagreeing among themselves, and most needing a prompt and clear decision, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... proposed in Oregon, and in 1905 rejected. Illinois follows New York in abolishing the common-law marriage, and raises the age to eighteen in a woman and twenty-one in a man. As is often the case, it does not appear from the ambiguous wording of the statute whether this invalidates the marriage or merely subjects the offenders, or the minister or the magistrate, to a penalty; probably the latter. Minnesota forbids the marriage of imbecile or epileptic persons; Nebraska that ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... possessed almost absolute power at Geneva; and he exerted himself vigorously in establishing the Presbyterian form of church government. The reformer, who so loudly exclaimed against the tyranny of Rome, directed the whole torrent of his persecution against Servetus, a physician, who had in an ambiguous style written upon the Trinity; and his vengeance was not appeased till the unfortunate heretic had expired in the flames. He died May 26, 1564; and, though he had long enjoyed a high reputation and exercised ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... they may do their friend the service of protesting their disbelief of it. More reputations are thus hinted away by false friends, than are openly destroyed by public enemies. An if, or a but, or a mortified look, or a languid defence, or an ambiguous shake of the head, or a hasty word affectedly recalled, will demolish a character more effectually, than the whole artillery of malice when ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... less a giddy fool. Are people to be run against without warning? No! And have I any right to go and peep under their cloaks to see what is not there? He would have pardoned me, he would certainly have pardoned me, if I had not said anything to him about that cursed baldric—in ambiguous words, it is true, but rather drolly ambiguous. Ah, cursed Gascon that I am, I get from one hobble into another. Friend d'Artagnan," continued he, speaking to himself with all the amenity that he thought due himself, "if you escape, of which there is not much chance, I would ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all kinds. Of the more important he sends home interesting sketches to his superiors in Whitehall, Vischnegradsky, the 'wizard of finance', who raised the value of the rouble 30 per cent., became one of his intimate friends. When that ambiguous figure, Witte, his rival and successor, tried to discredit him, Morier vindicated with warmth the honesty and patriotism of his friend. Baron Jomini of the Foreign Office was of a different kind, witty, volatile, audaciously outspoken, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... he does not mention their visit in a letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an ambiguous prayer:—'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a blaze hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are both wrongly dated. Letters of Boswell, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Lenthall was once more in the chair, and the journals were resumed without the least notice of past occurrences. Monk, having reached London amidst great excitement, went down to the House and delivered an ambiguous speech. Up to the last Monk seems to have remained uncertain what to do. The temper of the City, which was fiercely anti-Rump, may have decided him. At all events he invited the secluded, that is the expelled, members ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... very much better for geology if so loose and ambiguous a word as "contemporaneous" had been excluded from her terminology, and if, in its stead, some term expressing similarity of serial relation, and excluding the notion of time altogether, had been employed to denote correspondence in position in two or ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... of interest, and feels hopeful aspirations of young manhood. Many clear-cut, positive views are expressed in courteous, deferential manner, but in no uncertain or ambiguous phrase. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... accounts were the bete noire of the old sailor's existence. Upon his own confession he "wasn't no arithmetician," and Christian found, upon inspecting his accounts, no cause to contradict this ambiguous statement. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... found, he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold, feeling if he could lay hold on any man going out with the sheep, which (the day now breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their accustomed pastures. But Ulysses, whose first artifice in giving himself that ambiguous name, had succeeded so well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be caught by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape (no less ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thinking, from the recollection of several minute circumstances, that Clarence Hervey had endeavoured to gain an interest in her affections, and she felt that there would be great impropriety in receiving his ambiguous visits during Lady Delacour's confinement to her room. She therefore gave orders that Mr. Hervey should not in future be admitted, till her ladyship should again see company. This precaution proved totally superfluous, for Mr. Hervey never called again, during the whole course of Lady Delacour's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... and discussions, arising from the ambiguity that attends them. It requires great experience, as well as the command of a perspicuous diction, to frame a law in such clear and precise terms, as to secure it from ambiguous expressions, and from all doubts and criticisms upon ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us that this "order of nature, which constitutes the world's experience, is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler of both worlds, ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... is the same in all cases. Acts fitted to convey to a reasonable man the proposal of an agreement, or the acceptance of a proposal he has made, are as good in law as equivalent express words. The term "implied contract" is current in this connexion, but it is unfortunately ambiguous. It sometimes means a contract concluded by acts, not words, of one or both parties, but still a real agreement; sometimes an obligation imposed by law where there is not any agreement in fact, for which the name "quasi-contract" is more appropriate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... Hervey de Montmorency, whom he had sent over to report upon the condition of affairs. Even after Hervey's return bringing with him a favourable report, he had still the king's permission to gain. Early in 1170 he again sought Henry and this time received an ambiguous reply, which, however, he chose to interpret in his own favour. He sent back Hervey to Ireland, accompanied by Raymond Fitzgerald, surnamed Le Gros, and a score of knights with some seventy archers. These, landing in Kilkenny, entrenched themselves, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... what he had seen or heard in the Boer lines. That condition has been honourably kept, but the Major does not feel himself bound to make any secret of the fact that while the Boers kept him under detention they treated him "devilish well." This way of putting it may seem a little ambiguous, but those who know General Hunter's light-hearted A.D.C. will understand the sincerity of his tribute to the hospitality of Commandants ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... tell how far the ramifications of the plot might extend, and it was impossible to sift the matter. The people openly talked of an extermination, and claimed to have the tacit favour of the Government in this; nay more, the Government itself issued ambiguous, if not insinuating, proclamations, which fomented the excitement of the populace to such an extent that the days were fixed for the "Clearing of Peking." The mob was thoroughly quieted on the first of the days fixed by a twenty hours' pour of tremendous ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the Association's collection of relics to hurried ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... dates are well enough known, it is perhaps not always remembered that Miss Austen, while representing what may, using a rather objectionable and ambiguous word, be called a more "modern" style of novel than Scott's, began long before him and had almost finished her work before his really began. If that wonderful Bath bookseller had not kept Northanger Abbey in a drawer, instead of publishing it, it would ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Maimonides' death, was absorbed in the conflict between philosophy and tradition. Controversial pamphlets without number have come down to us from those days. Enthusiasts eulogized, zealots decried. Maimonides' ambiguous expressions about bodily resurrection, seeming to indicate that he did not subscribe to the article of the creed on that subject, caused particularly acrimonious polemics. Meir ben Todros ha-Levi, a Talmudist ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... remark is somewhat ambiguous, but the sense demands that we take lo as referring to Don Flix. Remember that it was the Fourth Gambler who had resented Don Flix's overbearing conduct. He acted the coward and now talks like a coward. The Third Gambler is the most skeptical regarding ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... into vain and futile reasonings, derived from the scattered passages of some early writers, from the ambiguous silence of others—and, above all, from the dreams of etymological analogy or mythological fable, I believe the earliest civilizers of Greece to have been foreign settlers; deducing my belief from the observations of common sense rather than from obscure and unsatisfactory ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nice on the twentieth of July, to join—as Peter supposed—Madame Covington in Paris. Monte himself had been extremely ambiguous about his destination, being sure of only one fact: that he should not return inside of a year, if he did then. Peter had asked for his address, and Monte had given him the same ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... thoughtful, refined, modest behavior; she was so sensible, so clever in everything. In the most delicate situation she could so well maintain a woman's dignity, while side by side she displayed a maiden's innocence. When his comrades were at the table, Topandy strove always by ambiguous jokes, delivered in his cynical, good humor, to bring a blush to the cheeks of the girls, who were obliged to do the honors at table; on such occasions Czipra noisily called him to order, while Melanie cleverly and spiritedly avoided the arrow-point of the jest, without opposing ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... function, as it is occasionally his achievement, to give satisfying, determinate forms to the indeterminate and miscellaneous materials at his command. Formlessness is for the creator of beauty the unpardonable sin. To give clarity and coherence to the vague ambiguous scintillations of sound, to chisel a specific perfection out of the indefinite inviting possibilities of marble, to form precise and consecutive suggestions out of the random and uncertain music of words, is to achieve, in so far, success in art. Nor does form mean formality. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the mountain Stream Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest Is come, and thou art silent in thy age; Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs. 5 Oh! there is life that breathes not; Powers there are That touch each other to the quick in modes Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, No soul to dream of. What art Thou, from care Cast ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... what terrors, does this gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate! The myrtle (ensign of supreme command, Consign'd to Venus by Melissa's hand), Not less capricious than a reigning fair, Oft favours, oft rejects a lover's prayer. In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain, In myrtle shades despairing ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... said to have visited a temple at Heraclea, where he had her spirit called up and implored her pardon. She duly appeared, and told him that "he would soon be delivered from all his troubles after his return to Sparta"—an ambiguous way of prophesying his death, which occurred soon afterwards. She was certainly avenged in the manner ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... "Lucid, but ambiguous; pathetic, but amusing; poetical, but comprehensive; prosaical, but full of emphasis. That's my nature. Plain-dealing, too, is my nature, and I adore the same quality in others; most especially in those ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... brilliant light break across a sombre surface like cries of joy; the frightened darkness flies away, leaving here and there a melancholy twilight, trembling reflections that seem to be lamenting, profound obscurity gloomy and threatening, flashes of dancing sunlight, ambiguous shadows, shadows uncertain and transparent, questionings and sighs, words of a supernatural language like music heard but not understood, which remains in the memory like a dream. Into this atmosphere he plunged his figures, some of them enveloped by the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... hacek (Unicode "caron", angled) or breve (curved). Breve was used in the utf-8 versions of this document, as it is phonetically plausible and the characters are more widely available. Hacek is used here because the bracketed form [va] is less ambiguous visually than ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... Simond de Burgh is mentioned in many financial transactions of the time, and he was for some time treasurer of Calais; of John Tichemerssh, I find no mention, and of Robert la Souche very little; Esmon Rose was keeper of the King's horses; information about Laurence Hauberk is ambiguous since there seem to have been two or more men of that name; Griffith de la Chambre and John de Thorpe received minor grants; of Raulyn Erchedeakne I find no mention; Thomas Hertfordyngbury, Hugh Strelley, Hugh Lyngen, Nicholas Prage and Richard Torperle received various small grants; Richard ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... fumes. A priestess took her seat on a tripod over this chasm, and the answers she gave to inquiries were supposed to be dictated by the god. These answers were almost always unintelligible, and even when interpreted by the priests were ambiguous and of little use. Nevertheless, the Greeks believed in oracles firmly, and never undertook any important work without first consulting one or more of them.] of Apollo whether he or his family had ignorantly offended any of the gods. Eagerly he watched for the return ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... going to be somebody in the house who was congenial. It wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the rest of them—they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable substitute for the things ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by hints, suggestions, ambiguous terms, allusions, phrases that may mean anything or nothing, and then leave at the end, in obscurity, the whole matter, which could have been explained and made perfectly clear and settled on a satisfactory ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... brought up all over the world, divided her time now between two continents and quaintly diversified her dancing, hunting, yachting existence by the arduous study of biology. Jack, in appearance more ambiguous than either, looked neither useful nor ornamental; but, in point of fact, he was a much occupied person. He painted very seriously, was something of a scholar and devoted much of his time and most of his large fortune to intricate benevolences. His shabby clothes ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was made. When the questions were not known beforehand we are in the dark as to the source of the answers. Sometimes, doubtless, they were happy or unhappy guesses; sometimes they were enigmatical or ambiguous in form, so that they could be made to agree with the events that actually occurred. In most cases the authorities would know how to explain the issue in such a way as to maintain the credit of the oracle. The best-known and the most impressive ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... those who interrogated Him. But I rejoin, First, That this does not abolish the rule which He has given us to make confession of our faith when so required. (I Peter iii., 15.) Secondly, That He never used any disguise to save His life: and, Thirdly, That He never gave an answer so ambiguous as not to embody a sufficient testimony to all that He had to say; and that, moreover, He had already satisfied those who came to interrogate Him anew, with the view not obtaining information, but merely of laying ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... it must be fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the critical moment, when men are dividing and disagreeing among themselves, and most needing a prompt and clear decision, which may ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... the beginning of a sentence is used for alone: "Only ten came," "Only Caesar approved." Alone is less ambiguous. The ambiguity of only is illustrated by such a sentence as, "Don't hesitate to bring a few friends of yours to shoot on my estate at any time. Only five (fifteen) came yesterday," which might mean, "I don't mind a few; ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... them of old, and they have clung about her waist ever since. She has put her uniform upon them, and made them do service in her cause, and keep alive with their breath the fast expiring embers of faith and imaginative credulity, which she so much loves and commends. Like an equivocal and ambiguous nature, the old Mother Church, as she is called, is upward fair and Christian, but downward foul and ethnic. She attacks human nature on the side of the heart, the senses, and those old instincts which Coleridge says bring back the old names. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... objected. "Say rather that the forces are drawn up in the proportion of one and a half to one and a half. I stand in the ambiguous position of the peacemaker, inclining now this way, now that, and receiving in turn the whacks of each contestant. I have been compelled to accept on faith the reward that Scripture promises to such as myself, for it has not yet ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... prudent to omit, dwelt upon one thing, and slurred over and accommodated another, just as would best suit the purpose they had in hand. Beside this, for the most part they clothed the apparent meaning of the oracle in obscurity, and often devised sentences of ambiguous interpretation, that might suit with opposite issues, whichever might happen to fall out. This was perfectly consistent with a high degree of enthusiasm on the part of the priest. However confident he might be in some things, he could not but of necessity feel that his ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... to rest with interest, curiosity, speculation, on the unemblazoned name which but a day before had seemed slipped out of date,—obsolete as that of an actor who figures no more in play-bills. Unquestionably the sensation excited was due, in much, to the "ambiguous voices" which Colonel Morley had disseminated throughout the genial atmosphere of club-rooms. "Arrived in London for the season!"—he, the orator, once so famous, long so forgotten, who had been out of the London world for the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... And that man Fothergill had put all this before him in so terribly clear a light! Now that the day for his final demolishment had arrived, the necessity that he should be demolished—finished away at once, out of sight and out of mind—had not been softened, or, as it were, half hidden, by any ambiguous phrase. "You have had your cake, and eaten it—eaten it greedily. Is not that sufficient for you? Would you eat your cake twice? Would you have a succession of cakes? No, my friend; there is no succession ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... heart warmed to the girl. I respected her brave departure—I rejoiced that it was needless. Willingly I would have quieted her distress with some hopeful, ambiguous word, but that would have been trenching, as no one ever ought to trench, on the lover's sole right. So I held my tongue, watching with an amused pleasure the colour hovering to and fro over that usually ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Atchison, Kans., it was supplanted by the present doctrinal basis. Inasmuch as it canceled both the former limitation to the twenty-one doctrinal articles and the phrase "in a manner substantially correct," the York Amendment was an improvement on the General Synod's basis. Yet the formula was left ambiguous, because the question was not decided whether all of the articles of the Augsburg Confession were to be regarded as fundamental doctrines of the Bible. The facts are: 1. While, indeed, all doctrines ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking "illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Sweet's the dawn's ambiguous light, Quiet pause 'tween day and night, When afar the mellow horn Chides the tardy gaited morn, And asleep is yet the gale On sea-beat mount, and rivered vale. But the morn, though sweet and fair; Sweeter is when thou art there; Hymning ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... will think the best thing for Myra to do will be to marry, so as to get rid of the ambiguous position in which she is placed. Wife to a convict serving his time. Poor child, it gives me a shudder every time I think of it. There, I will not think of it any more. I've made my mind up, and I ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... that, after all, is "Government" as understood by the man in the street; he is still the intellectual equal of the rustic, or of the child, who, smiting the reptile upon the head, "learns him to be a toad"; and it is down to his imagination that modern government has to play. And so, to ambiguous cheers uttered by rival factions, the triumphal procession of prisoner and escort ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... heaven! Is she dead? Ah, yes, now I remember you wrote to me that she was dead——Look at this dress, sisters—a present from my dear husband; is it not handsome? and then quite modern. Yes, yes, dear Gabriele, you need not make such an ambiguous face; it is very handsome, and quite in the fashion, that I can assure you. But, a propos, how is the Court-preacher? Exists still in a new form, does it? Now that is good! I'll put it on this afternoon on purpose to horrify Jacobi, and tell ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... could be accomplished, or the duty performed at once. In going to the House of God, he left all worry about the world on the outside of it, the moment he entered the porch; the drudgery of every-day life did not go with him into the pew; the prejudices of an ambiguous man troubled him not, while the disposition to "take things easy," while others bore the burden, was never ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his sword so tightly that his knuckles start out from the thin covering of flesh; passing into the mature Donne as we know him, the lean, humorous, large-browed, courtly thinker, with ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... him under guard, though not in bonds. And [Decebalus sending an envoy to Trajan, asked that he might get back the territory as far as the Ister and receive indemnity for all the money he had spent on the war,] in recompense for restoring Longinus to him. An ambiguous answer was returned, of a kind that would not make Decebalus think that the emperor regarded Longinus as of either great value or small, the object being to prevent his being destroyed on the one hand, or being preserved on excessive terms, on the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... second, Warren gave an ambiguous answer; but said that the majority of persons afflicted with all the different species of this disorder, recovered. An explanatory question was put to him, which it took about an hour and a half to settle; whether, as far as experience enabled him ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... was soon made at Rome by the Pontifices who had the regulation of the Kalendar. The rule was to intercalate a day in every fourth year (quarto quoque anno). Now such expressions are ambiguous in Latin, as is shown by numerous examples. (Savigny, System des heut. Roem. Rechts, iv. 329.) The expression might mean that both the year one and the year four were to be included in the interpretation of this rule; and ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... had heard any thing, that he ought to have come to him, and let him know, before he began loading pistols. He then demanded to know, what he had heard. Humphreys answered at first in a very suspicious and ambiguous manner, but at length said, that Gilbert Smith, the boat-steerer who was saved, and Peter Kidder, were going to re-take the ship. This appeared highly improbable, but they were summoned to attend a council at which Comstock presided, and asked if they had entertained any such intentions. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... in the text, at this place, and also in the preface, that the "historic method of study" is the great feature of this century. The term is ambiguous. The meaning of it however is, that each problem ought to be approached from the historic side. Whether the problem be a fact of society, or of thought, or of morals, in each case the questions are asked—What are its antecedents? how did it happen? How came ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over the interview; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discovered, with that cautious perception which is an instinct with rustic minds, that before them stood a man completely ignorant of the customs of the country, and very poorly informed on Claude de Buxieres's affairs. They made no scruple of mystifying this "city gentleman," by means of ambiguous statements and cunning reticence. The young man could get no enlightenment from them; all he clearly understood was, that they were making fun of him, and that he was not able to cope with these country bumpkins, whose ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... necessary and impersonal flow or radiation but a voluntary activity having a purpose. The solution is unsatisfactory, as all such solutions are bound to be, because it introduces as many difficulties as it solves. The nature of this divine Will is ambiguous. If it is God's will, and God is the One in whom there can be no distinctions, we have only a new word, and nothing is solved. If on human analogy we are inclined to take the will seriously, we are endangering God's unity. This ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... greater than that which is cogitated in the general conception. And yet the whole intellectual system of Leibnitz is based upon this false principle, and with it must necessarily fall to the ground, together with all the ambiguous principles in reference to the employment of the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Ja'afar swore to him an ambiguous oath that they were not those he named, whereupon he laughed and said: "Know, O my lords, that I am not the Commander of the Faithful and that I do but style myself thus, to win my will of the sons of the city. My true name ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... is that the word "supremacy," so often used in this controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, Parliament is likewise supreme in New Zealand; but the two supremacies are of widely different kinds. Supremacy consists of two ingredients—authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the latter the former is little more than a legal ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... crags of the hill, on the other by an old graveyard. Between these two the roadway runs in a trench, sparsely lighted at night, sparsely frequented by day, and bordered, when it was cleared the place of tombs, by dingy and ambiguous houses. One of these was the house of Colette; and at his door our ill- starred John was presently beating for admittance. In an evil hour he satisfied the jealous inquiries of the contraband hotel-keeper; in ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certain inequalities in the distribution of wealth; but they fiercely resented the idea that such inequalities should give a group of men any special advantages which were inaccessible to their fellow-countrymen. The full meaning of their complaint against the Bank was left vague and ambiguous, because the Bank itself possessed special legal privileges; and the inference was that when these privileges were withdrawn, the "Money Power" would disappear with them. The Western Democrat devoutly believed that an approximately ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Herzchen," said she, with her usual ambiguous, mocking laugh; "but I was not compelled to come home, like a good little girl, the moment I came out of the Tonhalle. I have been visiting a friend. But where have you been, for the probe must have ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... had been listening to some work of mine: and he said at the end, "That is graceful enough, and rather attractive—but it has a great fault: it is sometimes ambiguous. Several of your sentences can have more than one meaning. I remember once at Oxford," he said, smiling, "that Collins, one of our lecturers, had been going through a translation-paper with me, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as well as thought, are copied; as, Nathan said to David, "Thou art the man." An indirect quotation is one whose thought, but not whose exact words, is copied; as, Nathan told David that he was the man. The reference here of the pronoun he is somewhat ambiguous. Guard against ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... communicating with Fitzgerald. The difficulty is in what tone I should address him. I cannot say that the man directly affronted me—I cannot recollect any one expression which I could lay hold upon as offensive—but his language was ambiguous, and admitted frequently of the most insulting construction, and his manner throughout was insupportably domineering. I know it impressed me with the idea that he presumed upon his reputation as a DEAD SHOT, and that ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and when Dr Kirke came, which he did every few days, he listened with patience which grew to pleasure as time went on. When at last he repeated to Doctor Fleming himself, the question which he had put to Allison, the doctor's rather ambiguous answer ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... first hear of Indian influence spreading northwards. His Empire included Nepal and Kashmir, he sent missionaries to the region of Himavanta, meaning apparently the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and to the Kambojas, an ambiguous race who were perhaps the inhabitants of Tibet or its border lands. The Hindu Kush seems to have been the limit of his dominions but tradition ascribes to this period the joint colonization of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... copiousness, the consequence of its great flexibility in adopting foreign words, merely as roots, from which, by means of its own resources, stems and branches seem naturally to spring. Another excellence is the great freedom of construction which it allows, without any danger of becoming ambiguous. It is clear, euphonious, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... that I would not favor a bill that limited volume of business, and would not sign it if it were passed; but that I favored legislation that would make it impossible to place, through agents, policies that were ambiguous and misleading, or to pay exorbitant prices to agents for business, or to invest policy-holders' money in improper securities, or to give power to officers to use the company's funds for their own personal profit. In reaching this determination I was helped by Mr. Loeb, then ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of Julian Avenel, engaged in a variety of feuds, and a party to almost every dark and mysterious transaction which was on foot in that wild and military frontier, required all these precautions for his security. His own ambiguous and doubtful course of policy had increased these dangers; for as he made professions to both parties in the state, and occasionally united more actively with either the one or the other, as chanced best to serve his immediate purpose, he could not be said to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... at the due epoch in 1900, its individuality might have been considered assured; but the formidable vicegerent of the sun once more interposed, and, in 1897, swept it out of the terrestrial range of view. Hence the recognition remains ambiguous. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... clearly ambiguous as that of the President here referred to, it was my duty to inform the President of my interpretation of it and to abide by that interpretation until I ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... taken to task for rendering lisiere "fringes," but the actual English equivalent "list" is not only ambiguous, not only too homely in its specific connotation, but wrong in rhythm. And "selvage," escaping the first and last objections, may be thought to incur the middle one. Moreover, while both words signify a well-defined edge, lisiere has a sense—special enough to be noted in dictionaries—of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... got the power to draw the teeth of seven devils, and you both consider the words of his mouth or he'll git the teeth outen yourn," Mammy called after us in ambiguous warning. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... exclaims;— "Of Daphnis' love, so known, on Ida's hill, "His flocks who tended, whom his angry nymph, "To stone transform'd (such fury fires the breast "Of those who desperate love!) I shall not tell: "Nor yet of Scython, of ambiguous form, "Now male, now female; nature's wonted laws "Inconstant proving: thee, O Celmis! too "I pass; once faithful nurse to infant Jove, "Now chang'd to adamant: Curetes! sprung "From showery floods: Crocus, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... flatuous melancholy, the symptoms are so ambiguous," saith [2633]Crato in a counsel of his for a noblewoman, "that the most exquisite physicians cannot determine of the part affected." Matthew Flaccius, consulted about a noble matron, confessed ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a quiet, inoffensive creature, without any principle or opinion whatsoever at variance with those of her husband, rose upon hearing this announcement; but so ambiguous were her motions, that we question whether the most sagacious prophet of all antiquity could anticipate from them the slightest possible clue to her opinion. The husband, in fact, had not yet spoken, and until he had, the poor woman ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... promising. Emden, which I had inclined to on the spur of the moment, was out of court in comparison, for many reasons; not the least being that it was served by three trains between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., so that the phrase 'night train' would be ambiguous and not ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... my condition and my whereabouts from all except near relatives and a few intimate friends who shared the secret. I quite enjoyed leading this legitimate double life. The situation appealed (not in vain) to my sense of humor. Many a smile did I indulge in when I closed a letter with such ambiguous phrases as the following: "Matters of importance necessitate my remaining where I am for an indefinite period." ... "A situation has recently arisen which will delay my intended trip South. As soon as I have closed ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... him to the king of heresy; but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, "The Franciscans," a long satire, compared to which the "Somnium" was bland and merciful. The storm rose. Cardinal Beaten, Buchanan ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... melody remains unaltered. Let any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents—how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat below the "gangway." There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which many men are their own priests, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Mlle. de la Haye's ambiguous position brought most of the upper town to the signing of the marriage contract. The comparative poverty of the young couple and the absence of a corbeille quickened the interest that people love to exhibit; for it is with beneficence as with ovations, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... acknowledgment he would desire, but Ainsworth though poor would accept of nothing but conference with some of his rabbis upon the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, which the other promised, but not having interest enough to obtain it he was poisoned." This rather ambiguous sentence means that Ainsworth was poisoned, not the Jew. Brooks's account of the story is that the conference took place, the Jews were vanquished, and in revenge poisoned the champion of Christianity afterwards. Dexter most ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... harvest in their happier years. And, 'companying the order of their steps Upon the way, they sung the choruses And sacred burdens of their country's songs, And, sitting down by hospitable gates, They told the histories of their far-off cities. And sometimes in the lonely darknesses Upon the ambiguous way they found a light,— The deathless lamp of some great truth, that Heaven Sent in ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of the intellect coheres with the well-known formula, "Nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything is transformed"—a formula by means of which it has been sought to interpret the ambiguous principle of the conservation of energy, forgetting that practically, for us, for men, energy is utilizable energy, and that this is continually being lost, dissipated by the diffusion of heat, and degraded, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... You have wounded this poor fellow, and you very nearly hit me! Are you satisfied?" It was an awkward question to answer with due tact. Rattled as he was by the dressing down he had just received the man could hardly be blamed if his reply was ambiguous. At least it might have been more neatly expressed. It ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... woman, perhaps it was the consciousness of the bribe which the bargain covered and a desire to leave as little record of it as possible, perhaps it was only the carelessness of extreme haste, that caused Irons to send to the widow so ambiguous and dangerous a note as ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... meaning of this rather ambiguous sentence may either be, that all men are not able to succeed in more enterprises than one at a time; or that it is not given to every one to make the best both of the present world and of ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... daily presented to their eyes, were flattered with the stern joy of believing that the war which then raged around them was intended to put their moral armor to the proof, and that out of the triumph of their victories were to flow honor and security to the church. Then came ambiguous qualifications, which left it questionable whether a return of the invisible powers, that had been known to be so busy in the Provinces, were not the judgment intended. It is not to be supposed that Meek himself had the clearest mental intelligence on a point of this subtlety, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... bring to bear upon a matter vital to the State one-half the intelligence, zeal and sense of responsibility you will throw this evening into some ambiguous question of fleeting policy of speculative finance. Here are one hundred and eighty souls to whose correction, cure and protection the State is pledged. No one of all these lives is safe a single day. In six weeks I have saved two lives that were gone but for ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... idea that I was not alone in the tavern. At the other end of the room stood a hideous group with haggard faces and harsh voices. Their dress indicated that they belonged to the poorer class but were not bourgeois; in short they belonged to that ambiguous class, the vilest of all, which has neither fortune nor occupation, which never works except at some criminal plot, which is neither poor nor rich and combines the vices of one class with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... on the other hand, etc., are used to indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ambiguity. Care must be taken to use them so as to keep the meaning clear, and your own good sense ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... church-yard!' said the white gentleman, with an ambiguous playfulness, very like a sneer. 'I'm too old to play Horatio; but standing at his elbow, if the Prince permits, I have a friendly word or two to say, in my own ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... miserable days then. It was useless to upbraid her mother. She always posed as the injured one, and could not see that in robbing her child of a real home she was strewing her path with dangers as well, by placing her in an ambiguous, comfortless position, from which any ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... way I proposed to employ the treasure when I had secured it; but that question I refused to answer, hinting that, in the present position of affairs, the less they knew about my plans the better it would be for everybody concerned; and with that rather ambiguous assertion they have been obliged to remain content. The outcome of the whole affair, however, is that to-morrow we start for the Sacred Island, accompanied by a gang of thirty labourers provided with the necessary tools; ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... have reflected that in prosecuting Jeanne for a matter of faith he was serving his master's wrath and furthering the temporal interests of the great of this world. On these things he did not reflect; on the contrary, this case at once temporal and spiritual, as ambiguous as his own position, excited his worst passions. He flung himself into it with all the thoughtlessness of the violent. A maiden to be denounced, a heretic and an Armagnac to boot, what a feast for the prelate, the Councillor of King Henry! ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... breaking off of the conference was the crisis, and to appreciate men you must watch them in a crisis. Mr. Balfour expressed his unbounded confidence in Kruger's sweet reasonableness and in the justice of the British cause; he could not believe there would be war. Mr. Chamberlain entered into ambiguous negotiations, beginning in a way that made everyone, especially Kruger, imagine that the Government would accept less than the Bloemfontein minimum. Of preparing to coerce the Boers there was no sign. The Boers began to get their forces in order. In England big speeches ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... so terrible in its nature, and in its manifest consequences, that there is no way of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous quality, and describing such a connexion under the terms of 'the usual relations of peace and amity.' By this means the proposed fraternity is hustled in the crowd of those treaties, which imply no change in the public law of Europe, and which ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... most vapid pas of Maenads and Bacchantes, forbids our elegant, new-fangled conductors to cut the traces of their "culture." They are afraid such a thing might lead to a scandal a la Offenbach. Meyerbeer was a warning to them; the Parisian opera had tempted him into certain ambiguous Semitic accentuations in music, which fairly scared the ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... automatically eliminate the Lansing-Ishii agreement with its embarrassing ambiguous recognition of ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... Greece. Here the oracle of Apollo gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult of Kore, or Pherephatta, and of the swine of Eubouleus, and of certain ambiguous maidens, whom those old Grecians fabled—oh, very ignorantly fabled, my lad, of course—to rule in a more quietly lit and more tranquil world than we blunder about. I think I could explain much which now seems mysterious—yes, and the daffodils, also, that Herrick wrote of so constantly. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... ask Proofs of his love, and not proofs of his honor. Duty and honor! Those are ambiguous words with many meanings. You should interpret them for him: his love Should be the sole definer of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... executing the latter clause of the Seventh Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the principal and interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859, we reply that said last clause of said section is certainly indefinite, general, and ambiguous in its description of the bonds to be issued by you; giving no time at which the bonds are to be made payable, no place at which either principal or interest are to be paid, and no rate of interest which the bonds are to bear; nor any other description except that they are to be coupon ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... other Ralph had come, and she learned in half-pronounced ambiguous whispers what was the nature of his position in the world. She did not know,—at that time her cousins did not know,—how nearly successful were the efforts made to dispossess the heir of his inheritance in order ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... for her. But, as if to tarnish its delight, like an envious sprite of evil, deep down in her mind lay that other news, just read—the ambiguous ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the master of my ceremonies," she said to des Lupeaulx,—ambiguous words, by which she expressed the annoyance she felt with the secretary for presuming to interfere with her private parties, to which she admitted only a select few. She left the room without bowing to Rabourdin, who remained alone with des Lupeaulx; the latter was twisting ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the data of the memorandum. To Professor Laughton's argument may be added another, which goes far actually to fix the date. The principal signal which Nelson's second method of attack required was 'to engage to leeward.' Now this signal as it stood in the Signal Book of 1799 was to some extent ambiguous. It was No. 37, and the signification was 'to engage the enemy on their larboard side, or to leeward if by the wind,' while No. 36 was 'to engage the enemy on their starboard side if going before the wind, or to windward if by the wind.' Accordingly ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... meant till now. Comfort your heart, dearest Bess, I shall sorrow for us both. I shall sorrow the less because I have not long to sorrow, because not long to live.' He expressed a hope, which must be allowed to be ambiguous, that 'God will send us somewhat before we return.' He bids her tell about Keymis to Lord Northumberland, Sir John Leigh, and Silvanus Skory, a London merchant, who had in verse dissuaded him from the Guiana ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... sufficiently patent to students of those matters today that no such community of free and ungraded men had any part in the Germanic beginnings; that is to say, in the early experiences of the Fatherland under German rule. The meager and ambiguous remarks of Tacitus on the state of domestic and civil economy among the inhabitants of Germany need no longer detain anyone, in the presence of the available archaeological and historical evidence. The circumstantial evidence of the prehistoric antiquities ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... is such an ambiguous phrase!" she said. "Every man is a good fellow who eats a lot and laughs a lot and flirts a lot. Is he that sort of good fellow? Oh! I hate milksops. I needn't tell you that; but there are plenty of good fellows whom I should be sorry to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Elizabeth, Whose avarice all disbursements did importune, If history, the grand liar, ever saith The truth; and though grief her old age might shorten, Because she put a favourite to death, Her vile, ambiguous method of flirtation, And stinginess, disgrace her ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... we detest their system of slavery in our hearts, let us not play the hypocrite with our lips. Let us not pay so poor a compliment to their understandings as to suppose that we can deceive them into a compliance with our views of justice by ambiguous sophistry, and overcome their sinful practices and established prejudices by miserable stratagem. Let us not first do violence to our consciences by admitting their moral right to property in man, and then go to work like so many vagabond pedlers ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... presented a somewhat comical sight, for though the back seat did not appear to be occupied, in the front seat two ambiguous looking individuals were sitting with their backs to the coachman. Who or what they were it was difficult to make out, for they had wrapped themselves up so completely in their shaggy woollen mantles, or gubas, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... told nowadays of evolution, as if the progress of humanity were upwards; but if you withdraw the influence of supernatural revelation, the evidence of power in manhood to work itself clear of limitations and lower forms is very ambiguous at the best—in reference to morals, at all events. Evil is capable of development, as well as good; and perhaps Nebuchadnezzar's colossus is a truer representation of the course of humanity than the dreams of modern thinkers who see manhood becoming steadily better ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... impression that it would compel the Treasury officers to receive all bank notes possessing all the characteristics described in the first and second sections, and that the Secretary of the Treasury would have no power to forbid their receipt. It must be confessed that the language is sufficiently ambiguous to give some plausibility to such a construction, and that it seems to derive some support from the refusal of the House of Representatives to consider an amendment reported by the Committee of Ways and Means of that House, which would substantially have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Christians from teaching the arts of grammar and rhetoric. The motives alleged by the emperor to justify this partial and oppressive measure, might command, during his lifetime, the silence of slaves and the applause of flatterers. Julian abuses the ambiguous meaning of a word which might be indifferently applied to the language and the religion of the Greeks: he contemptuously observes, that the men who exalt the merit of implicit faith are unfit to claim or to enjoy the advantages of science; and he vainly contends, that if they refuse to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Company. Afterward they would stroll home in the balmy air of August night, dreaming along Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues, through the gay crowd. Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... to the assembly, and act as jurors; which at first seemed nothing, but afterward was found an enormous privilege, as almost every matter of dispute came before them in this latter capacity. Besides, it is said that he was obscure and ambiguous in the wording of his laws, on purpose to increase the honor of his courts; for since their differences could not be adjusted by the letter, they would have to bring all their causes to the judges, who thus were in a manner masters of the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
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