|
|
|
More "Dubious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is bothered by a sort of quiet annoyance that the poet should so confidently take a dubious idea for a certain one. He might easily argue against the poet that on the contrary it seemed to him that a man who commits a crime for his master is more at fault than one who commits it for himself, and he could support his ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... who suggested Willems to me was not particularly interesting in himself. My interest was aroused by his dependent position, his strange, dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked, worn-out European living on the reluctant toleration of that Settlement hidden in the heart of the forest-land, up that sombre stream which our ship was the only white men's ship to visit. With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey moustache ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... were destined to experience a dangerous adventure. They had expected to cross on the ice, but the river proved to be frozen only for a short distance from the shores. That night they slept with the snow for a bed, their blankets for a covering. When dawn appeared the same dubious prospect confronted them. The current of the river still swept past, loaded ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... been expected that Scotland was effectively subdued, but ere long Robert Bruce, who had hitherto played a dubious game, raised a revolt in the beginning of 1306, got rid of the regent Comyn, his most serious rival, by a foul murder in Dumfries church, was crowned king at Scone, and kept up an incessant but varying struggle during the winter ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... a sufficient space for the accommodation of the hut was no light task for unaccustomed hands, for the bloodwood trees were mighty and tough, and the dubious work of burning up the trunks and branches while yet green, in our eagerness for free air and tidiness, was ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... I loathe it. The effect of the sweetish glue upon my inner man is singularly nauseating. I have even been driven to drink my matutinal coffee in all its after-dinner strength rather than adulterate it with the mixture. You have, it is true, the choice of using the stuff as a dubious paste, or of mixing it with water into a non-committal wash; and, whichever plan you adopt, you wish you had adopted the other. Why it need be so unpalatably cloying is not clear to my mind. They tell me the sugar is needed to preserve the milk. I never ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... like a pack of hungry though dubious wolves. He pushed his glass out of sight, accepted one of the drinks pressed upon him, and leaned ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... every day as it came and refused to borrow trouble. She never criticized other girls, nor did she gossip, and she was extremely thoughtful of the comfort of her roommate. After several days of dubious speculation the stout girl decided she liked Emma, and Emma decided that Elfreda was ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... lecture to his friends, nor did they trifle with him. They questioned him closely as to how he had reached this extraordinary decision, and he gave a vivid and truthful account of his experience. It made several of the men thoughtful, but most of them felt dubious about his persistence in the new path he had ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... conspicuous by their low and unmentionable customs. The young Gregory, known by the diminutive of Gricha, began his exploits at a very tender age, and earned the sobriquet of Rasputin, which means "debauched." He was mixed up in all kinds of dubious affairs—for instance, thefts of horses, the bearing of false witness, and many acts of brigandage. He was even sentenced more than once to be flogged—a penalty of which the local law-courts made generous use in those days. One of his boon companions, a gardener named ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... doctor in a dubious voice. "I am slow in making friends myself. It is the old-fashioned way ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... considerable man among them, Cobb of Georgia, soon declared that his loyalty to his own State was not compatible with his office and resigned; and, though others, including the Secretary for War, hung on to their position, it does not appear that they influenced Buchanan much, or that their somewhat dubious conduct while they remained was of great importance. Black, the Attorney-General, and Cass, the Secretary of State, who, however, resigned when his advice was disregarded, were not only loyal to the Union, but anxious that the Government should ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... such use of it as would always redound to her honour and advantage. "With that permission, then," said Leonisa, "I beg it may not be taken amiss if I choose rather to seem overbold than ungrateful; and so, worthy Ricardo, my inclination, hitherto coy, perplexed, and dubious, declares in your favour, that the world may know that women are not all ungrateful. I am yours, Ricardo, and yours I will be till death, unless better knowledge move you to ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the dubious honour of being the home of the public hangman. William Marwood was born at Goulceby, about six miles from Horncastle, and afterwards lived some years in Old Bolingbroke, coming to Horncastle about 1860; where he was a shoemaker, having a small shop in Church Street, now occupied ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... one. But that sort of feeling of soreness which comes from the sense of martyrdom is not quite the same as a raw wound on one's own personal score. I do hope I am clear. I try to look on the bright side, but there are days when the unseen world and its glorious realities become dubious. These are trials of faith, I know. If one could be wise, one would keep silent at such times. Now, dearest ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... at the courtroom door with a pleasant greeting. Then he saw Baby Fuzzy on Jack's shoulder and looked dubious. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... his brothers-in-law, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian masters the transition is easy. The school is here represented by a most valuable collection from Bartolomeo Vivarini, No. 1607, to Guardi. 1158, Giovanni Bellini, Virgin and Saints; and 1158A, a Man's Portrait, are however dubious attributions. 1156, Two Portraits; and 1157, a Venetian Envoy at Cairo, are Gentile school works. 1134, by Antonello da Messina, A Condottiere, is an amazingly vivid and powerful portrait. Carpaccio's St. Stephen preaching at Jerusalem, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and did battle behind shields; women were objects of devotion; conversation between lovers was in the style of high-flown courtesy, chary on one side, energized on the other by calls on the Saints to witness vows and declarations which no Saint, however dubious his reputation, could have listened to, much less excused; yet it were not well to overlook one or two qualifications. The usages referred to were by no means prevalent amongst Christians in the East; in Constantinople they had no footing at all. The two Comneni, Isaac ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... could not decide to be terrified and for that reason attempt a revolution, inasmuch as he was being honored, nor yet to become bold enough to attempt some desperate venture inasmuch as he was frequently abased. Moreover, all the rest of the people were getting to feel dubious, because they heard alternately and at short intervals the most contrary reports, because they could no longer justify themselves in either admiring or despising Sejanus, and because they were wondering about Tiberius, thinking ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... with equal lustre bright, Great Dryden rose, and steer'd by Nature's light. Two glimmering Orbs he just observ'd from far, The Ocean wide, and dubious either Star, Donne teem'd with Wit, but all was maim'd and bruis'd, The periods endless, and the sense confus'd: Oldham rush'd on, impetuous, and sublime, But lame in Language, Harmony, and Rhyme; These (with new graces) vig'rous nature join'd In one, and center'd 'em in Dryden's ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... whole ballets and only had one box of make-up, we were rushed. I thought I'd never live to see the curtain go down. Do you remember the suit of chain-mail we made for Bonnie Connaught out of wire dish-cloths? It took sixty-three, and the ten-cent store was terribly dubious about renting them to us; and then, after working every spare second for three days over the thing, we found, the last minute, that we hadn't left a big enough hole for her to ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... little social sentiment. The formal courtesies of polite society were hollow and tiresome. Though thought by friends and acquaintances to be a young man of strong mind, fascinating, magnetic manners, and high aspirations, with a brilliant prospective career, he seemed careless of that dubious prestige whose uncertain tenure is subject to the ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... not here discuss the dubious exceptions to this rule, such as words with an enclitic attached, e.g. prim[)a]que in which some authorities put the stress on the vowel which precedes the enclitic, or such clipt words as 'illuc', where the stress may at one time have fallen on the last vowel. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... solely of Protestants; it represented the miscalled 'English garrison,' and was in sympathy with the governing classes of England. With all this to promote harmony, the concord between the governing powers in England and in Ireland was dubious. The rejection of England's proposals as to trade, and the exaction of the Renunciation Act, betray a condition of opinion which at any moment might have produced open discord. When at last the parliamentary independence of Ireland had led up to a savage rebellion, suppressed I ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... disposition and temperament. With every word she spoke he found her more and more fascinating—she had a quaint directness of speech which was extremely refreshing after the half-veiled subtleties conveyed in the often dubious conversation of the women he was accustomed to meet in society—while there was no doubt she was endowed with extraordinary intellectual grasp and capacity. Her knowledge of things artistic and literary might, perhaps, have been termed archaic, but it was based upon the principles ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... this castle where the Governor was continued very furious on both sides, from break of day until noon. Yea, about this time of the day the case was very dubious which party should conquer or be conquered. At last the Pirates, perceiving they had lost many men and as yet advanced but little towards the gaining either this or the other castles remaining, thought to make use of fireballs, which they threw with their hands, designing, ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... applicant's credit. But these references may be cautious of reply. A selfish desire to retain the customer for themselves, or the higher motive of a desire to be true to the interests of both the inquirer and the customer may produce dubious or very incomplete reports. If a bank be among the references one does not place too much stress upon a very favourable reply from it, because a merchant usually learns the lesson of expediency ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... England specimens, with the exception of those from the Champlain valley, appear to be dubious intermediates between ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... they should not make up this quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had never before said to Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between himself and his dubious schoolfellow, who he could neither like nor dislike, that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Philip. And he had a right to say so when Philip hectored over him, and called him names. But perceiving that his first advances toward amity were not met, he relapsed ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and Mary, with many apologies, presented her copy, and received most gracious thanks and compliments on her firm, clear writing, a vexation to her rather than otherwise, since 'Fitzjocelyn' was called to account for dubious scrawls, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... house in Fitzjohn's Avenue, where she entertained intimately. At forty she had preserved the best part of her youth and prettiness, and an income insufficient for Mr. Norman, but enough for her. As she said in her rather dubious pathos, she had nobody ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... grimly. "Let's go to the Capitol and get it over with. Have you 'phoned Senator Ryan? I'm all right," he assured them, as he caught sight of Langley's dubious expression. "I want to get through here as quickly as possible and get back. I suppose you realize that I'll be wanted in the city in more ways than one. I was the last person, except the murderer, to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... liked it better had he been less thoughtfully polite. Richard would have preferred the main floor, with whatever delay and formal clatter such entrance made imperative. The more delay and the more clatter, the more chance of seeing Dorothy. It struck him with a dubious chill when Senator Hanway suddenly distinguished him with the freedom of that veranda door—a franchise upon which your statesman laid flattering emphasis, saying that not ten others ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian Methodist preacher you ever had at your bedside to help you look your latter end in the face, through the dubious issues of a surprise attack of cramp colic, or an overwhelming onslaught of cholera morbus. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens that the human heart is better than the human creed, and the Rev. Burlman Reynolds was wont to square his life by the dictates of his inward monitor ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... were these apprehensions from enemies, there was likewise a growing alarm from the attitude of lukewarm and dubious friends. The sincerity and good faith of all who had taken part in the late revolution were about to be subjected to the most stringent of tests. By the enactments of the preceding year the ancient Church had been swept ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the captain scratched his head in a dubious manner. "But I wasn't lookin' upon you as a cook, fer I had no idea that ye understood ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... on the publication of his Dictionary, as yet dubious of the extraordinary enterprise; perhaps, while going on with the work, he knew not at times whither he was directing his course; but we must think that in his own mind he counted on something which might have been difficult even for Bayle ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... postponement, being openly telegraphed to Escobedo at Queretaro, was known at once in San Luis, and caused a fury of excitement. For none doubted but that it meant eventual pardon. The tender hearted rejoiced. The rabid ones muttered. The wise shook dubious heads. And even as Jacqueline and Berthe were hurrying back to Queretaro in the canvas-covered coach, another caller was admitted roundly on the president's privacy, without so much as being announced. Juarez wondered ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... The prospect becoming dubious and gloomy just at the time of first contact (ten o'clock), the prime minister archly invited the foreigners who believed in an overruling Providence to pray to him "that he may be pleased to disperse the clouds long enough ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of leaving you in this dismal spot to wait for a dubious carryall," offered Mr. Stevens, but with frigid politeness. "You are quite welcome to ride ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... blow upon the independence of the States, which was thus restricted not only by the laws, but by the interpretation of them; by one limit which was known, and by another which was dubious; by a rule which was certain, and a rule which was arbitrary. It is true the Constitution had laid down the precise limits of the Federal supremacy, but whenever this supremacy is contested by one of the States, a Federal tribunal decides ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... The Marquise de Boufflers was gambling herself to ruin; the Comtesse de Boufflers was wringing out the last drops of her reputation as the mistress of a Royal Prince; the Marechale de Mirepoix was involved in shady politics; the Marechale de Luxembourg was obliterating a highly dubious past by a scrupulous attention to 'bon ton,' of which, at last, she became the arbitress: 'Quel ton! Quel effroyable ton!' she is said to have exclaimed after a shuddering glance at the Bible; 'ah, Madame, quel dommage ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Swedes feed the birds?" inquired Allee, still a trifle dubious about entering into Peace's plan, in view of ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... husband caused her less anxiety; but considering who George Goring was and how he had been brought up, he might have been much worse. Where women were concerned, scandal had never accused him of anything more flagrant than dubious flirtations. It was his political intrigues, constantly threatening unholy liaisons in the most unthinkable directions; his sudden fits of obstinate idleness, often occurring at the very moment when some clever and promising ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... quite dubious as to the sail, for he had never seen such a contrivance used. His country lay far up the broad Ugambi River, and this was the first occasion that any of his people had found their way to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... runaway menagerie; the whale a cow that went swimming and never came back, the tiger a large cat that took the prize (and the prize-giver) and escaped to the jungle. This is not (I venture to think) true; but it is true as Pithecanthropus and Primitive Man and all the other random guesses from dubious bits of bone and stone. And the truth is some third thing, too tremendous to be remembered by men. Whatever it was, perhaps the camel saw it; but from the expression on the face of that old family servant, I feel sure that he ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... hour of noon, on the next day, a gentleman might have been standing on the steps of the Tremont House, gazing with an eye of abstraction upon the passing throng. The age of this gentleman might have been a matter of dubious inquiry; he was not young, you'd swear at the first glance, and yet, after you had gazed two minutes into his superb countenance, you would be as ready to swear that he was not over thirty, or thirty-five at most. In truth, he was one of those singular persons whose external appearance ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... soft rustle of feminine hospitality, in the common catechism about cream and sugar, we know that the Worship of Tea is established beyond question. The philosophic resignation of the guest to the fate awaiting him in the dubious decoction proclaims that in this single instance the Oriental ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... four-months-old baby had been started on the same path. I explained to the mother the mechanism of elimination, told her to give up cathartics, and to set a regular time for herself and the baby, but was a little dubious about the mentally deficient four-year-old. However she soon reported that they had all three promptly acquired the new habit. Four years later she told me that they had ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... was full of sympathy. "Mr. Keston must be very fond of her," she returned in such a surprised and dubious ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Staff Captain.) A few strands of barbed wire obstruct the passage of those careless or adventurous persons who may desire to explore the forbidden side of the house. The front door is bolted and barred: visitors, after approaching stealthily along the lee of a hedge, like travellers of dubious bona fides on a Sunday afternoon, enter unobtrusively by the back door, which is situated on the blind side of the chateau. Their path thereto is beset by imploring notices like ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... response to the alarm of pistol report and shouting, but old man McGivins, whom they carried to the nearest bonfire, feebly nodded his head. Parson Acup was bending over him and when he rose it was with a dubious face. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... my line—" said the doctor with a carelessness which was somewhat dubious in its character. "It is very well for those who find the subject pleasant. I confess I have never studied ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... melancholy that had overshadowed the land had given birth to a thousand superstitious fancies; the woes and terrors of the past were clothed with supernatural miracles and portents, and the actors in the fearful drama had already assumed the dubious characteristics of romance. Or if a writer from among the conquerors undertook to touch upon the theme, it was embellished with all the wild extravagances of an oriental imagination, which afterward stole into the graver works of the monkish historians. Hence ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... interim, Hiempsal, king of Numidia, dubious of what he should determine to do, treated young Marius and those that were with him very honorably; but when they had a mind to depart, he still had some presence or other to detain them, and it was ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in a dubious gesture from the District Attorney and a half-hearted "No" from his Assistant. They were both either too awed by the circumstance or too fearful of mistake, to accept without a struggle an accusation of this grave and momentous ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... "An Essay on Puffing" (a topic which we should hardly have thought to have found under discussion at a period so much nearer the golden age than the present) remarks,—"Dubious and uncertain is the Source or Spring of Puffing in this Infant Country, it not being agreed upon whether Puffs were imported by the primitive Settlers of the Wilderness, (for the Puff is not enumerated in the aboriginal Catalogue,) or whether their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... in presenting foreigners to young ladies; sometimes titles are dubious. Here, a hostess is to be forgiven if she positively declines. She may say, politely, "I hardly think I know you well enough to dare to present you to that young lady. You must wait until her parents (or guardians, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... scraping had to be got through before we were even admitted to the portress's lodge, as much more ceremonial before the portress could be induced to convey our errand to one of the numerous clerks in a counting-house close by. At length, and after many dubious shakes of the head and murmurs of surprise at our audacity, the card ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... expression, "May your mother die!" however malevolent it may sound to Occidental ears, has in the Caucasus no offensive significance. It is a mere rhetorical exclamation-point to express astonishment or to fortify a dubious statement. The graphic curse, "May I eat all your diseases!" is precisely analogous to the American boy's "I hope to die." Generally speaking, the mountaineers use angry imprecations and personal abuse of all kinds sparingly. Instead of standing and cursing one another like enraged ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... that heard our shouts would rise To try the dubious road? Nor rather deem from nightly cries ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... whereupon Abe looked a little dubious and lifted up his two feet, wrapped as they were in the blanket, to determine the ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... towards the Queen, and strove to gain over her father to the same party. Therein she succeeded by degrees. The Duke de Longueville could not overtly separate himself from Conde, and at first promised him all he required; then he shut himself up in Normandy, and there followed a dubious line of conduct which neither compromised him with the Court party nor that of Conde. But he recalled his wife peremptorily, and sent her a mandate to rejoin him. That mandate was pressing and threatening, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... vulgus spargere voces[Lat]; keep in suspense. doubt &c. (disbelieve) 485; hang in the balance, tremble in the balance; depend. Adj. uncertain; casual; random &c. (aimless) 621; changeable &c. 149. doubtful, dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, open to discussion; controvertible; in question &c. (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... within these feudal jurisdictions. In such a system the merchant's place for a century and a half was a minor one, although far above that of the drudging laborer. Merchants resorted to sharp and frequently dubious ways of getting money together. They bargained and sold shrewdly, kept their wits ever open, turned sycophant to the aristocracy and a ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... large. Equivocal society does not exist among the Hollanders; there is no shadow of it in their life nor any hint of it in their literature; the very language rebels against translating any of those numberless expressions which constitute the dubious, flashy, easy speech of that class of society in the countries where it is found. On the other hand, neither fathers nor mothers close their eyes to the conduct of their unmarried sons, even if they be grown men; family discipline makes no exception ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... critics had given no certain sign,—the general applause might have been merely an involuntary tribute to youth and beauty. Actors and actresses hung back,—even the friendly manager was guarded in his congratulations. But in the second act the debutante put an end to this dubious state of things,—at least, so far as her audience was concerned. "The Captive Queen" took captive all, save that stern row of critics,—the indomitable, the incorruptible. Their awful judgment still hung suspended over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... learned divine, a doctor of laws, personally known to the Monk), and whether these people would ever be delivered from Purgatory was a matter of doubt; of the salvation of no other sinners does the Monk of Evesham seem so dubious. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dubious. With the exception of Job, and Daniel in the lions' den, and extracts from one or two thrilling tales like that, he considered the Bible rather tame. His foster-father read a chapter to them every night before they went to bed, but the eldest of the family was generally ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... philosopher, unless he should begin or end with Christianity.' The canon may be sound, but it at once destroys the pretensions of such men as Hobbes, Spinoza, Hume, and even, though De Quincey considers him 'a dubious exception,' Kant. Even heterodoxy is enough to alienate his sympathies. 'Think of a man,' he exclaims about poor Whiston, 'who had brilliant preferment within his reach, dragging his poor wife and daughter for half a century through the very mire of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... it enlarged the sphere of their spirits, and cleared up more of the mystery of evil. All of that mystery they did not expect to see unveiled below. It was not a possible thing to make mortal men see and understand it. But if the dark cloud still spread its dubious dusk on the sky, more and more of it melted into the rainbow as they gazed; and while part of that bow was still involved in the cloud, and part hidden away far below the horizon, enough was still glowing in glory on their sight, ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... peace reigned above the fallen. So still he lay that another fox, scared from its siesta, poked a black muzzle round a rock and sniffed the air; but it trusted not appearances and having contemplated the recumbent object lifted its head, uttered a dubious bark and trotted away. From on high an eagle also marked the fallen man, but swiftly soared upward to the crown of the mountain and disappeared. The spot was lonely enough, yet a track ran within one hundred yards and it often happened that ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... that if, as seemed to be the case, he were not urgently needed in court, he would like to leave the city and go to Brandenburg for a week or ten days, within which time he promised to be back again. The Lord High Chancellor, looking down with a displeased and dubious expression, replied that he must acknowledge that Kohlhaas' presence was more necessary just then than ever, as the court, on account of the prevaricating and tricky tactics of the opposition, required his statements and explanations at a thousand points that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... majestic proportions of a Jupiter. He stood—a breathing statue of gladiatorial beauty, towering above all who were near him, and eclipsing the noblest specimens of the human form which the martial assembly presented. A buzz of admiration arose, which in the following moment was suspended by the dubious recollections investing his past appearances, and the terror which waited even on his present movements. He was armed to the teeth; and he was ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... peered at him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly dubious air. She was never quite sure in her own mind as to the way in which "old Gold-Dust," as she privately called him, regarded her. An aged man, burdened with an excess of wealth, was privileged to have what are called "humours," and certainly ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... countenance, that often, in spite of his efforts, broadened into a sunny smile as though some humorous thought had flitted across his mind. He betrayed himself at last by asking me demurely whether I purposed taking any part in the carnival? I smiled and shook my head. Vincenzo looked dubious, but finally summoned up ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of it, Uncle Harold," she said, with a dubious look, "but I'm afraid the horses would slip ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... urns and discs. Here Olivia and Antoinette, in charming print frocks, made a kind of tea in a kind of biblical samovar and served it in vessels that resembled individual trophies of the course. And here St. George and Amory praised the admirable English muffins which some one had taught the dubious cook to make; and Mr. Augustus Frothingham tip-fingered his way about his plate among alien fruits and queer-shaped cakes. "Are they cookies or are they manna?" Amory wondered, "for they remind me of coriander ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... o' that," rejoined the captain, with a modestly dubious shake of his head; "leastwise, however unanswerable it may be, my missus always manages ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Theophilus Cibber, and the preface contains a complimentary reference to his acting, and the expected retirement of his father from the stage. Neither Genest nor Lawrence gives the date when the piece was first produced, but if the "April" on the dubious author's benefit ticket attributed to Hogarth be correct, it must have been in the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Oriental systems have treated the subject. They have included Christ in the same category with Plato and Confucius, and have generally placed Him at the head; and this supposed breadth of sentiment has given them a degree of influence with dubious and wavering Christians, as well as with multitudes who are without faith of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the rule absolute, since the Church and pulpit had long been used as a means of publicity in many ways, judicial, educational, and others, and since even sermons were sometimes delivered by humanists and other laymen. There existed, too, in Italy, a dubious class of persons who were neither monks nor priests, and who yet had renounced the world—that is to say, the numerous class of hermits who appeared from time to time in the pulpit on their own authority, and ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... King Henry the Seventh, on learning the misfortunes of Philip and his consort, was prompt to show every mark of respect and consideration for the royal pair, thus thrown upon his island. They were escorted in magnificent style to Windsor, and detained with dubious hospitality for nearly three months. During this time, Henry the Seventh availed himself of the situation and inexperience of his young guest so far as to extort from him two treaties, not altogether reconcilable, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... a gallery of women we get in the story: Mrs. Honour the maid, and Miss Western (who in some sort suggests Mrs. Nickleby), Mrs. Miller, Lady Bellaston, Mrs. Waters and other light-of-loves and dames of folly, whose dubious doings are carried off with such high good humor that we are inclined to overlook their misdeeds. There is a Chaucerian freshness about it all: at times comes the wish that such talent were used in a better cause. A suitable sub-title for the story, would be: ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... except as to the "Grange," was more dubious. The cabinet agreed, however, that the original owners might claim indemnification, and that if the property was not restored by the captors, the value of it ought to be paid by the government of the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... felt inclined to indulge his tastes as a collector of works of art, or to act as a Marine Agent. I do not believe one word of it, and emphatically decline to associate such kindly people with such dubious proceedings, even if a hundred and fifty ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... you may get your answer one day from his work. Not from the masterpiece which he used to talk over with Mrs. Steel, for it will never be written; not from any particular novel or story, much less in the reproduction of any of these incidents, wherein he himself played so dubious a part; but perhaps you will find your answer in a deeper knowledge of the human heart, a stronger grasp of the realities of life, a keener sympathy with men and (particularly) with women, than formerly distinguished ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... ceased, not dubious of the prize: Elate she mark'd his wild and rolling eye, Mark'd his lip quiver, and his bosom rise, And his warm cheek ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... too. Now, this is how I figured it out. Here's me in a hurry to get to Tucson. Here comes your train a-foggin'—also and likewise hittin' the high spots for Tucson. Seemed like we ought to travel in company, and I was some dubious she'd forget to stop unless I flagged her. Wherefore, I aired my ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... thought," she said shyly, "and Scott and I have the plans for a studio all ready; and the men are to begin Monday, and Miller is to take the new gate cottage. Oh, the plans are really very wonderful!" she added hastily, as Duane looked grateful but dubious. "Rollins and Calvert drew them. I wrote to Billy Calvert and sent him the original plans for Hurryon Lodge. Duane, I thought it ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... throve. Now ferrets and phosphorus are exterminating it in the rabbit-infested districts. Moreover, just as Vortigern had reason to regret that he had called in the Saxon to drive out the Picts and Scots, so the New Zealanders have already found the stoat and weasel but dubious blessings. They have been a veritable Hengist and Horsa to more than one poultry farmer and owner of lambs. In addition they do their full share of the evil work of bird extermination, wherein they have active allies in the rats and wild cats. On the whole, however, though acclimatization ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... The chief was dubious; but Will made an imperative gesture and the chief, in a humble manner, agreed to do as he was ordered. The day passed slowly and, before nightfall, the supply of water was entirely finished. Once or twice ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... of gentlemen were assembled in the drawing-room, conversing with solemn, serious faces, and many dubious shakes ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Now there was no period of his life in which he was more eminently favoured with these, nor do I find any of his letters so overflowing with transports of holy joy, as those which were dated during this time. There are indeed in some of them such very sublime passages, that I have been dubious whether I should communicate them to the public or not, lest I should administer matter of profane ridicule to some, who look upon all the elevations of devotion as contemptible enthusiasm. And it has also given me some apprehensions lest it should discourage some pious ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... his son this paper of notes, to be communicated to Pym, this implied such a breach of oaths and of trust as rendered him totally unworthy of all credit: that the secretary's deposition was at first exceedingly dubious: upon two examinations, he could not remember any such words: even the third time, his testimony was not positive, but imported only, that Strafford had spoken such or suchlike words; and words may be very like in sound, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... him at first; but the moment he spoke, recognized him. Cosmo had been dubious what his reception might be—after the way in which their intimacy had closed; but Mr. Burns held out his hand as if they had parted only the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... "Interested is a dubious sort of word to use, and I don't like it. Let us be quite clear about what we mean. In one sense I am interested; in another sense I am entirely disinterested—which is the exact opposite. You catch my point, don't you? It is a very instructive thing to reflect on the curious ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... will take the moral qualities on trial for the nonce. My wife is wholly occupied with her domestic and private affairs, you must understand, when we are at home, and much will devolve on you; that is, if we suit one another, which is dubious. That reminds me! I have not heard the sound of your voice yet; I am much governed by intonation in my estimates of people, and usually form a perfect opinion at first sight. Be good enough to read this item," ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... tell, Senor," he said in a low voice. "Certainly it is a dubious tale the sailors told—a tale of mutiny and shipwreck. But the sea is a strange place. Many unforeseen things happen on it and in it. I have seen shipwrecked ones come back from almost certain death, ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... fear not—doubt not—which thou wilt— We try this quarrel hilt to hilt.' Then each at once his falchion drew, Each on the ground his scabbard threw Each looked to sun and stream and plain As what they ne'er might see again; Then foot and point and eye opposed, In dubious strife ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... it been snubbed under whenever exhibited. The pursuing wraith of the young, it comes to sit, a ghost at every banquet, driving the flower of our youth to unheard-of exertions in search of escape, to dubious diplomacy, to dismal inaction, or to wine; yet time was when they set their hearts on ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... herself at the table to write the letter. An electric light burned directly over her frizzy head. She wrote a weak but legible and regular back-hand. She hated writing letters, partly because she was dubious about her spelling, and partly because of an obscure but irrepressible suspicion that her letters were of necessity silly. She pondered for a long time, and then wrote: 'Dear Mr. Belmont,—I venture——' She made a new start: ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... that no hatter will take a single one of them, notions begin to pass through his head as fast as if he were a banker racking his brains to get rid of ten million francs' worth of shares in some dubious investment. As for this Law of the Faubourg, this Nucingen of caps, do you know what he did? He went to find a pothouse dandy, one of those comic men that drive police sergeants to despair at open-air dancing saloons at the barriers; him he engaged to play the part of an American captain ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... master it is almost impossible. Having learned the composition of the hexameter, which is the easiest of all verses, I had the patience to measure out the greater part of Virgil into feet and quantity, and whenever I was dubious whether a syllable was long or short, immediately consulted my Virgil. It may easily be conceived that I ran into many errors in consequence of those licenses permitted by the rules of versification; and it is certain, that if there ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of reasons, the man I know went up to vote in Battersea in a drifting and even dubious frame of mind. As the train slid through swampy woods and sullen skies there came into his empty mind those idle and yet awful questions which come when the mind is empty. Fools make cosmic systems out of them; knaves make profane poems out of them; men try to crush them ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... progresses, proceeded from the exuberant loyalty of the people. At straw-plaiting Dunstable a volunteer company of farmers joined the regular escort and nearly choked the travellers with the dust the worthy yeomen raised. On leaving Woburn Abbey the same dubious compliment was paid. In the Queen's merry words, "a crowd of good, loyal people rode with us part of the way. They so pressed and pushed that it was ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... his position to pull up the legs of his trousers, open his knees, and extend the distance between his feet, and then with the unfolded pages carefully laid in the moonlit space thus opened before him, regarded them with dubious speculation. At the end of ten minutes he rose with a sigh of physical and mental relaxation, refolded the letter, put it in his pocket, and made his way ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... could invariably be depended on to give the school eleven as hard a tussle as it wanted—and sometimes a deal harder. Boots was a bit of a driver and believed in strenuous work, but his charges liked him immensely and performed miracles of labour at his command. His greeting of Don was almost as dubious as had been ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to them—"He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success; Coleridge told him—"If there had been a man of genius in the room, he would have settled the question in five minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... alive. He had a long time yet to live. He was a strong man, in whom the fire of life burned with an unquenchable flame. He had a great many imperative requisitions to make on life's exchequer, and while he was now sadly dubious of their being honored, either in full or in part, he ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... ascertain that I was not poking fun at him. I assured him, however, that such was the inauspicious era of my nativity, and moreover that I was born so closely on the confines of March 31—I do not feel it necessary to specify the year—as to make it almost dubious whether I could claim the honours of April-Fooldom. This seemed enough for him—though he warned me that the absence of the exact time might lead to some vagueness in his communications—and he proceeded forthwith ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... antiquity of the world. No one would know, no one could tell him, precisely what occurred. And who can know whether—if it be indeed a dream—he has dreamt it often, or has dreamt once that he had dreamt it often? That dubious night is entangled in repeated visions during the lonely life a child lives in sleep; it is intricate with illusions. It becomes the most mysterious and the least worldly of all memories, a spiritual ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... corner of Bow-street. Button's became a private house, and Mrs. Inchbald lodged there. Mr. Donaldson, observing that Maclaine paid particular attention to the bar-maid, the daughter of the landlord, gave a hint to the father of Maclaine's dubious character. The father cautioned his daughter against the addresses of Maclaine, and imprudently told her by whose advice he put her on her guard; she as imprudently told Maclaine. The next time Donaldson visited the coffee-room, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... issues finally banished the discussion of general principles. Natt had not entirely accounted for the strange circumstances when he jumped into his seat and drove away. But the old idea of Paul's dubious conduct was still fermenting; the froth and bubbles were ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... harm,[197] in flourishing circumstances, and without apprehension; overawing others, at the same time, with threats of impeachment,[198] so that when in office, they might be less inclined to inflame the people. But as soon as a prospect of change, in this dubious state of affairs, had presented itself, the old spirit of contention awakened their passions; and had Catiline, in his first battle, come off victorious, or left the struggle undecided, great distress and calamity must certainly have fallen upon the state, nor would those, who ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... All this, in itself, is unexceptionable; and it shows Burke's admirable grasp of the practical application of attractive theories to the event. But it is to be read in conjunction with a general hostility to basic constitutional change which is more dubious. He had no sympathy with the Radicals. "The bane of the Whigs," he said, "has been the admission among them of the corps of schemers ... who do us infinite mischief by persuading many sober and ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... that memory she seems to be flickering about always in the election, an inextinguishable flame; now she flew by on her bicycle, now she dashed into committee rooms, now she appeared on doorsteps in animated conversation with dubious voters; I took every chance I could to talk to her—I had never met anything like her before in the world, and she interested me immensely—and before the polling day she and I had become, in the frankest ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... his ear and looked dubious. "That sounds pretty sensational. But maybe the second lad just plain happened to fall in love with the girl ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... confusion of Lady Harman's mind that perhaps she had better go to the nursery, and see how things were getting on there. Sir Isaac watched her departure with a slightly dubious eye, made little noises with his teeth for a time, and then went towards ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... I am Jean will be with me. Do you hear that, Jean?" and paying no attention to the dubious shake of Jean's head she went on: "We must give Jean a very good time and have lots of parties. Perhaps, Mrs. Duff-Whalley, you will bring your daughter to one of Jean's parties when you are in London? You have been so very kind to us that we should greatly like to ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... great majority of Sunday school teachers have no desire to try any auxiliary organization in combination with their classes. They are somewhat dubious of the machinery, ritual, etc., which are concomitants of these schemes. Again and again they have voiced a demand, not for new organizations, but for activities to deepen interest in the organization that the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... of Nicias, that there had been three good citizens, eminent above the rest for their hereditary affection and love to the people, Nicias the son of Niceratus, Thucydides the son of Melesias, and Theramenes the son of Hagnon, but the last less than the others; for he had his dubious extraction cast in his teeth, as a foreigner from Ceos, and his inconstancy, which made him side sometimes with one party, sometimes with another in public life, and which obtained him the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... raising the qualification proved no sort of remedy. The return of the Company's servants into Europe poured in a constant supply of proprietors, whose ability to purchase the highest qualifications for themselves, their agents, and dependants could not be dubious. And this latter description form a very considerable, and by far the most active and efficient part of that body. To add to the votes, which is adding to the power in proportion to the wealth, of men whose very offences were supposed to consist in acts which lead to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Campan of the Chevalier d'Eon is now known to be incorrect in many particulars. Enough details for most readers will be found in the Duc de Broglie's "Secret of the King," vol. ii., chaps. vi. and g., and at p. 89, vol. ii. of that work, where the Duke refers to the letter of most dubious authenticity spoken of by Madame Campan. The following details will be sufficient for these memoirs: The Chevalier Charles d'Eon de Beaumont (who was born in 1728) was an ex-captain of dragoons, employed in both the open and ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... astonishment of the commanders. Not only before the battle, but in the height of the danger, he showed himself great, and manifested the self-possession of a just foresight and confidence. For the battle for some time fluctuated and was dubious. The left wing, where Parmenio commanded, was so impetuously charged by the Bactrian horse that it was disordered and forced to give ground, at the same time that Mazaeus had sent a detachment around to fall upon those who guarded the baggage, which so disturbed Parmenio, that he sent messengers ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... about evening clothes since I was married," she said to Kate. "I don't see what I'm to put on unless it's my immemorial gold-of-ophir satin." She looked rather dubious, and Kate couldn't help wondering why she hadn't made a decision before this. Marna caught the expression ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... for granted by Biblical scholars that there were no codices extant in the world but these five, which contained data of a nature to enable us to reconstruct the text of the Septuagint. And the assistance given by these manuscripts was dubious at best, for they included the misleading additions incorporated in the text by Origen, merely marking them with asterisks, which were not only insufficient in number, but oftentimes wrongly distributed. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... when Collot d'Herbois lounged before him, with mud-bespattered legs stretched out before him, with dubious linen at neck and wrists, and an odour of rank tobacco and stale, cheap wine pervading his whole personality, the more fastidious man of the world, who had consorted with the dandies of London and Brighton, winced at the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... whole its results have been beneficial to the natives in their gradual civilization. In shaping this wise policy British statesmen have had a very long and wide African experience to guide them, and in consequence they have avoided the very dangerous and dubious policies which the German new-comers have set in motion. Among these not the least dangerous is to regard the native primarily as raw material to be manufactured into ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... felt convinced that they had other craft besides canoes at their disposal; hence their anxiety to detain us. O'Toole was told to be as dumb as an oyster as to ourselves, but wide awake as to the designs of our dubious friends. The general gave him five eagles for his purchase, tribute-money. He jumped into the canoe, and all returned to the fort. We dropped anchor underfoot to await his return, keeping a sharp lookout for any strange sail. The two hours passed ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... a little dubious at this turn of the talk; Mr. Henderson was as evidently amused at the girl's acting. I said I was glad to see that goodness was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... doubtless do our readers, in passing from the dark tragic story of Swift, and his dubious and unhappy character, to contemplate the useful career of a much smaller, but a much better man, Isaac Watts. This admirable person was born at Southampton on the 17th of July 1674. His father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, and was a man of intelligence and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Jamaica or Costa Rica, &c.' A conversation ensued, by which I learned that the boats belonged to the two vessels in the distance, that they were both whalers put in for supplies, and that seeing the steamer they were rather dubious as to her nationality, and had therefore spoke me, to gain the required information. A brisk conversation was then kept up; my object in engaging them in it was to enable the Alabama to get under way ere the whalers took the alarm, feeling certain that the preparations ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... were all thanksgiving. Strangely had I been led since morning—unexpectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could I believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London, under no other guardianship than that which protects the passenger-bird—with no prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Amadis de Gaula was then in the Aveiro archives, and an Amadis de Gaula in Portuguese, which is alleged to have existed in the conde de Vimeiro's library as late as 1586, had vanished before 1726. In the absence of corroboration, these dubious details must be received with extreme reserve. A stronger argument in favour of the Portuguese case is drawn from the existing Spanish text. In book I, chapters 40 and 42, it is recorded that the Infante Alphonso of Portugal suggested a radical change in the narrative of Briolanja's relations with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 2037. There was a triple murder in Paris which was rumored to be the work of a Com-Pub spy, though the murderer's unquestionably Gallic touches made the rumor dubious. Newspaper vendor-units were screaming raucously, "Martians land in Colorado!" and the newspapers themselves printed colored-photos of hastily improvised models in their accounts of the landing of a blood-red rocket-ship in the widest part of the Rockies. The inter-continental ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... extraordinary words I made a somewhat dubious reply, and she soon left me, to walk ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... little dubious that after all the drinking and confidences he would remember to send his son around, and to tell the truth, in the calm morning, I felt I would not be too sorry if he didnt, for he had not given me a very high opinion of that young man. What on earth ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... have had little or no selling experience. You are conscious that you entirely lack sales art. Therefore, though in other ways you feel qualified to succeed in life, you may be dubious about your future. Perhaps you realize that skill in selling true ideas of your best capabilities is all you need to make your success certain. But you question, "Can I be sure of becoming a skillful salesman of myself?" You have no doubt of your ability to learn ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... cultivated hitherto, would richly repay the application of capital and modern methods. Here, I think, is a clear case where strategic considerations, which are definite, must prevail over racial considerations, which are dubious. These lands must be Italian after the war, if, with even the dimmest possibility of war remaining, Italians are to have peace of mind. Nor does a strong defensive frontier for Italy here imply a weak defensive frontier for ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... may be," answered Bertha, in a dubious voice; "we will say nothing on that point at present. You want to get ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... little gal?" Seeing a dubious look on Mrs. Browne's face, he said: "Or is it a boy, now? I call at so many houses I git confused. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... got money enough." He was apparently dubious over the proposal. In their abstracted walk they had arrived in front of the house occupied by Coleman and the Wainwright party. Two carriages, forlorn in dusty age, stood be- fore the door. Men were carrying out new leather luggage and flinging it ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... waited To learn on the morrow his doom, And his dubious spirit debated In darkness and silence and gloom, There descended a Being with whom He wrestled in agony sore, With striving of heart and of brawn, And not for an instant forbore Till the east gave a threat ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... with pain, he contorts his face, and enquires in a half-whisper—"What if this wound should mortify? would death follow quickly? I'm dubious yet!" ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... creed, outside of the pulpit his reverence was as genial, jolly, and joky as the cheeriest, smilingest, comfortingest, most latitudinarian Methodist preacher you ever had at your bedside to help you look your latter end in the face, through the dubious issues of a surprise attack of cramp colic, or an overwhelming onslaught of cholera morbus. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens that the human heart is better than the human creed, and the Rev. Burlman Reynolds ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... they were met by Mistress Grena and Gertrude, who had seen them coming, and who came forward, as in duty bound, to show extra respect to their spiritual pastor. The genuine spirituality was more than dubious: but that did not matter. He was a "spiritual person"— though ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... undeniable that in many cases appropriations of this nature have been made unwisely, without accomplishing beneficial results commensurate with the cost, and sometimes for evil rather than good, independently of their dubious relation to the Constitution. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... Pagan spiritualistic seances, with the usual accompaniments of darkness and fraud. His perplexed letter to Anebo, with the reply attributed to Iamblichus, reveal Porphyry wandering puzzled among mediums, floating lights, odd noises, queer dubious 'physical phenomena.' He did not begin with accurate experiments as to the existence of rare, and apparently supernormal human faculties, and he seems to have attained no conclusion except that 'spirits' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Virginia agreed upon the construction of a canal from Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River, and on July 4, 1828, President Adams dug the first spadeful of earth to signalize the beginning of the undertaking. Some financiers of Baltimore, dubious of the success of an effort to build a waterway over the difficult route adopted by the promoters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, withdrew their support from that enterprise, and putting their confidence in a new and almost untried transportation device, which they believed ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... were not urgently needed in court, he would like to leave the city and go to Brandenburg for a week or ten days, within which time he promised to be back again. The Lord High Chancellor, looking down with a displeased and dubious expression, replied that he must acknowledge that Kohlhaas' presence was more necessary just then than ever, as the court, on account of the prevaricating and tricky tactics of the opposition, required his statements and explanations at a thousand points that could not be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... said to himself, as he walked up and down, for by now he was beginning to feel very drowsy himself, in spite of the coffee. "He needs it more than I do. And besides, I'm a little dubious as to what sort of watch Andy would keep. Anyhow, I can stand it a while longer. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... that tottering ledge called society. The cad and the snob are only infrequently well-born. Mrs. Harrigan was as yet far from being a snob, but it required some tact upon Nora's part to prevent this dubious accomplishment. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... not quite the same as a raw wound on one's own personal score. I do hope I am clear. I try to look on the bright side, but there are days when the unseen world and its glorious realities become dubious. These are trials of faith, I know. If one could be wise, one would keep silent at such times. Now, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... his soul, and little realizing that between her and her beloved son there was now a gulf fixed which would never be bridged, saw only the happy fruition of a life ambition. Fortunately she had been kept in ignorance of the dubious incident of the Testament translation and its results upon the boy; and when the long anticipated day dawned her eyes swam in tears of hallowed joy. The Archbishop and his grim secretary each congratulated the other heartily, and the latter, breaking ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... this," pursued Hazon, the other having uttered a dubious affirmative. "Taking it all round, it and its crowd, it's not far from the queerest place I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen some queer places and some ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... had turned to devious ways. He had never put that part of his life under the microscope. But the simple facts were that he had become an orphan at fifteen and a broker's clerk at nineteen after a course in a business college; and that experiences with wash-sales and such devious and dubious practices of brokers, his high spirits, his instinct for pleasure, his desire for big winnings—these had swept him into a wild crowd before he had been old enough to take himself seriously, and had started him upon a brilliant career of adventures and unlawful money-making in whose ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... at the office, I proceeded to my late abode. I approached, and lifted the latch with caution. There were no appearances of any one having been disturbed. I procured a light in the kitchen, and hied softly and with dubious footsteps to my chamber. There I disrobed, and resumed my check shirt, and trowsers, and fustian coat. This change being accomplished, nothing remained but that I should strike into the country ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... put the kingdoms of Europe to the hazard. The Sphinx propounded her riddle to all nations alike, and all were required to answer. Should they cleave to the old, or should they embrace the new? Some pressed forward, others held back, and some, to their own confusion, replied in dubious tones. Surrounded by faint hearts and fearful minds, Henry VIII. neither faltered nor failed. He ruled in a ruthless age with a ruthless hand, he dealt with a violent crisis by methods of blood and iron, and his measures were crowned with whatever sanction worldly success ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... course to pursue, and that was to go to Eleanor and beg her to renounce her scheme of vengeance. Grace felt very dubious as to the outcome of such an interview. Eleanor had in the past proved anything ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... ten years of critical and dubious peace along the English border, and then the war broke out again. The occasion of this new uprising is not very clear, and it is hardly worth while to look for it. Between the harsh and reckless borderer on the one side, and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... discovered them, he also drew up his forces, and ranged them in order of battle. The signal was given, and he attacked them with extraordinary vigour; nor was the opposition inferior. Much blood was shed on both sides, and the victory long remained dubious; but at length it seemed to incline to the sultan of Harran's enemies, who, being more numerous, were upon the point of surrounding him, when a great body of cavalry appeared on the plain, and approached the two armies. The sight of this ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... Frenchmen even—the song of the Cigale is unknown, for she dwells in the country of the olive-tree; but we all know of the treatment she received at the hands of the Ant. On such trifles does Fame depend! A legend of very dubious value, its moral as bad as its natural history; a nurse's tale whose only merit is its brevity; such is the basis of a reputation which will survive the wreck of centuries no less surely than the tale of Puss-in-Boots and of Little ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... amount of confidence in the man before him; but then, he did not have in any one. He was on a little of the paper, and just now he felt exceedingly dubious about it. Some arrangement ought to be made whereby members of the family who had stood by Mr. Lawrence ought not ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... form of tobacco had been discovered and was being put on the market by a syndicate consisting of rather dubious characters. The campaign was to start with a free distribution of millions of packets of cigarettes made from the new leaf. But the whole consignment of the tobacco was burnt, and one by one the members of the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... hysteric pains or cold fits of fever, instances of many of which are to be found in Dr. Mead's work on this subject. The solar influence also appears daily in several diseases; but as darkness, silence, sleep, and our periodical meals mark the parts of the solar circle of actions, it is sometimes dubious to which of these the periodical returns of these diseases are ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... have been revolutionary reformers. Joseph II of Austria and Peter the Great of Russia were reformers of that type. But revolutionary reforms have usually failed. They failed lamentably in the case of Joseph II and produced many very dubious results under Peter. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... hymn, as one may call it, of Lucretius to Death, to Death which does not harm us. "For as we knew no hurt of old, in ages when the Carthaginian thronged against us in war, and the world was shaken with the shock of fight, and dubious hung the empire over all things mortal by sea and land, even so careless, so unmoved, shall we remain, in days when we shall no more exist, when the bond of body and soul that makes our life is broken. Then ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... Deposit General Wayne sent word to the Miamis that they must make peace at once, or be attacked. Little Turtle called a council. Some of his men were dubious. ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... not alone, fluctuated in sorrow like a stormy sea; and though her purpose was fixed and her heart was resolute when she first began to make preparations for the impious work, her mind now wavered, and feared. She hurried, she procrastinated; now she was bold, now tremulous; now dubious, now agitated by rage; and what was the most singular thing of all, in the same being she hated the beast and loved the husband. Nevertheless, as the evening drew to a close, she hurriedly prepared the instruments of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... unacknowledged consciousness of alarm. Mutually reserved, though ever courteous, the count and the captain were secretly drawn together by the prospect of a common danger; and as their return to the earth appeared to them to become more and more dubious, they abandoned their views of narrow isolation, and tried to embrace the wider philosophy that acknowledges the credibility ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... old memories of its underworld. His characters are mostly real persons, and their sufferings, the sufferings of women burdened and oppressed with wrongs which women alone bear, are a strong indictment against a dubious civilisation. ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... of which not only enabled us to discharge the deposit loan, but left us a material surplus. Under these circumstances a two-handed banquet was proposed and unanimously carried, the commencement of which I distinctly remember, but am rather dubious as to the end. So many stories have lately been circulated to the prejudice of railway directors that I think it my duty to state that this entertainment was scrupulously defrayed by ourselves and not carried to account, either of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive analysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena. To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... becomes a judge himself. In this way, the authorities will insure that the artist shall be competent, regular, and obedient to the best traditions of his art. Those who fail to fulfil these conditions will be compelled by the withdrawal of their license to seek some less dubious mode of earning their living. Such will be the ideal ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... played as it seems to be on the surface, and my cousin was exactly the sort of woman to use ordinary faculties with ability and acuteness; but there are scores of things in which her interference would have been hurtful, and her secrecy dubious. I will give you an instance, and it will serve to show my implicit confidence in yourself. Now with respect to this man, Donogan, there is nothing we wish less than to take him. To capture means to try—to try means to hang him—and how much better, or safer, or stronger ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... daughter-in-law of a Prince utterly incapable of popularity, yet singularly jealous of power. She was surrounded by a court, half Jacobite, and wholly unprincipled; and exposed to the constant observation of a people still dubious of the German title to the throne, contemptuous by nature of all foreign alliances, disgusted with the manners of the court, and still disturbed by the struggles of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the blood of princes in her veins. Generations back—how we children used to reckon the thing over!—she was cradled in a throne. A miserable race, to be sure, they were,—the Stuarts; and the most devout genealogist might deem it dubious honor to own them for great-grandfathers by innumerable degrees removed. So she used to tell us, over and over, as a damper on our childish vanity, looking such a very queen as she spoke, in every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... glowed, and bowed his acknowledgments in a dubious, half remonstrative way, as if Madame might be producing material for her next confession, as, indeed, she diligently was doing; but she went straight on once more, as a ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... morning arrayed in his best clothes he got into the dog-cart. There, without good-bye to anyone, not even to his beasts, he sat staring straight before him, square, and jolting up and down beside the farmer, who turned on him now and then a dubious almost anxious eye. ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... precisely identical with the above. They are described as a diminutive race of beings of a mixed or rather dubious nature, capricious in their dispositions and mischievous in their resentment. They inhabit the interior of green hills, chiefly those of a conical form, in Gaelic termed Sighan, on which they lead their ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... even Millicent at first surmised. Her husband, who acted as marshal, was kept busy most of the time, but she noticed a swift look of annoyance on his face when, before the steamer sailed, a tastefully-dressed young woman ascended the gangway, where he was receiving the guests. There was nothing dubious in the appearance of the lady or her elderly companion, and yet Millicent felt that Leslie was troubled by their presence, and hesitated to let them pass. The younger lady, however, smiled upon him in a manner that suggested they had met before, and Leslie stood aside when Shackleby ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... flutter. He could not decide to be terrified and for that reason attempt a revolution, inasmuch as he was being honored, nor yet to become bold enough to attempt some desperate venture inasmuch as he was frequently abased. Moreover, all the rest of the people were getting to feel dubious, because they heard alternately and at short intervals the most contrary reports, because they could no longer justify themselves in either admiring or despising Sejanus, and because they were wondering about Tiberius, thinking first that he was going to die and then that ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... dinner, and told her that she had learned that habit of abstinence from Saint-Germain; that HE might do as he pleased, "but you, madame, whose health is precious to me, I forbid to imitate the regimen of such a dubious character." Gleichen, who tells the anecdote, says that he was present when de Choiseul thus lost his temper with his wife. The dislike of de Choiseul had a mournful effect ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... being at last arranged, the Rhapsodist took his leave for the present, going, as he informed me, on an errand of mercy for his stomach. The magazine aboard ship being of dubious character, he had prevailed on himself to supply his concern with a limited number of first-class cereals with his own imprimatur,—copyright and profits to be in his own hands. As some consolation for his absence, I was favored with a brief oral treatise on Fats, considered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... monotonously barren; the lounge in the corner—how suitable then to this solitary languor! Lulled here, the traveller for awhile admires the leathern trappings of the coach, hums a tune perhaps, and affects a dubious whistle. Meantime the operations of doziness have been gently applying themselves. His eye is sated with the road and the coach; his hands become stationary on his lap; his feet supinely rested on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... be so," said Van der Kemp in a dubious tone; "but the sounds, though faint, seem to me a good deal nearer. I can't help thinking that the craters which have so recently opened up in Krakatoa are still active, and that it may be necessary for me to shift ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of their affairs; perhaps it signified that the fire of debt, and poverty, and misfortune would burn them, as it were, to the ground. She tried to think whether in the dream they were getting the fire under before she woke, or whether they could not master it; it seemed dubious. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... few who expected to learn from the trial the origin of the quarrel were disappointed. Among the various conjectures, that which ascribed some occult feminine influence as the cause was naturally popular, in a camp given to dubious compliment of the sex. "My word for it, gentlemen," said Colonel Starbottle, who had been known in Sacramento as a Gentleman of the Old School, "there's some lovely creature at the bottom of this." The gallant Colonel then proceeded to ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... considerable confederacy keeping for any length of time together, when the immediate danger which had stilled their jealousies, and bound together their separate interests, is in appearance removed. Such was the dubious and anxious state of Europe, when the death of Charles II. at Madrid, on the 1st November 1700, and the bequest of his vast territories to Philip Duke of Anjou, second son of the Dauphin, and grandson of Louis XIV., threatened at once to place the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... sacrifice. Since her sister's departure she had taken sole charge of her father's domestic affairs and the few rude servants he employed, with a certain inherited following of his own moods and methods. To the neighbors she was known as "Miss Hays,"—a dubious respect that, in a community of familiar "Sallies," "Mamies," "Pussies," was grimly prophetic. Yet she rejoiced in the Oriental appellation of "Zuleika." To this it is needless to add that it was impossible to conceive any one who looked more ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... contrary, we must fail in many ways to do this, else there would not be such a crying out for help and comfort as there is at present among all Christian peoples. We no longer speak with a grand certainty as we ought to do. We only offer vague hopes and dubious promises to those who thirst for the living waters of salvation and immortality,—it is as if we did not feel sure enough of God ourselves to make others sure. All this is wrong—wrong! It forebodes heavy punishment and disaster. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... nuisance, for a row here would bring in the police, and my dubious position would be laid bare. I thought of putting up a fight, for I was certain I could lay out the jock a second time, but the worst of that was that I did not know where the thing would end. I might have to fight the lot of them, and that meant a noble public shindy. I did my best to speak ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... movement, and by Luther Holton and John Young. Now for the first time it became a practical question. Erastus Wiman, a Canadian who had found fortune in the United States, began in 1887 a vigorous campaign in its favor both in Congress and among the Canadian public. Goldwin Smith lent his dubious aid, leading Toronto and Montreal newspapers joined the movement, and Ontario farmers' organizations swung to its support. But the agitation proved abortive owing to the triumph of high protection in the presidential election of 1888; and in Canada the red herring ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... river, exchanging Manchester goods and cutlery for palm-oil, ivory, gold-dust, and other articles of value. King Bom-Bom received the midshipmen most politely, and gave them a handsome feast, though, as Paddy remarked, the cookery was rather dubious. He then frankly assured them that he was growing far richer as an honest trader, keeping a monopoly of the chief articles himself, by-the-by, than he had by all his connexions with the slave-dealers, taking into account the occasional burning ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... looking dubious. "But give me the broth, all the same. If it does not suit my stomach, I can ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... many persons shipping under the same mark, and even when the shipper stands alone, he might have been provided with the necessary funds from the pious and charitable establishments, possibly without risking a dollar of his own in the whole operation. Under circumstances so dubious, far from presuming to give a decided opinion on the subject, I am compelled to judge from mere conjectures, and guided only by the knowledge and experience I have been able to acquire during my long residence there. In conformity thereto, I ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... wholly frozen up.... I am busy as far as my limited powers of exertion allow upon a new edition of Bishop Butler's Works, which costs me a good deal of labor and leaves me, after a few hours upon it, good for very little else. And my perspective, dubious as it is, is filled with other work, in the Homeric region lying beyond. I hope it will be very long before you know anything of compulsory limitations on the exercise of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... winter was raging, and by Sabbath morning the snow was two feet in depth. During the following night the winds piled it into drifts that made the roads nearly impassable. What was to be done? The prospect certainly looked dubious. But it occurred to me that a little preparation for the meeting would be of service, and this could now be done before the crowd should rush in upon us. We decided to go on. Illustrating the saying, "Where there's a will there's a way," the good people opened the streets in ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... his own camp, Joe Ladue strode in, fresh from Bonanza Creek. At first, non-committal over Carmack's strike, then, later, dubious, he finally offered Daylight a hundred dollars for his share ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... recuperate from his violent entry into Omegan life. Starting from the helpless state of a newborn, he had moved through murder to the ownership of an antidote shop. From a forgotten past on a planet called Earth, he had been catapulted into a dubious present in a world full of criminals. He had gotten a glimpse of a complex class structure, and a hint of an institutionalized program of murder. He had discovered in himself a certain measure of self-reliance, and a surprising quickness with a gun. He knew ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... world and the new shook hands; Christianity and Hellenism kissed each other. And yet they still remained antagonistic—fused externally by art, but severed in the consciousness that, during those strange years of dubious impulse, felt the might of both. Monks leaning from Pisano's pulpit preached the sinfulness of natural pleasure to women whose eyes were fixed on the adolescent beauty of an athlete. Not far off was the time when Filarete should ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... begin by hiring an increased apartment, ma'am," said Sukey, in a dubious voice. "I don't say nothing against this parlour, but it ain't to say large. How will you ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... at his ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping; and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me a generation back to the pashas of the old school." Hussein has since retired from his government, to enjoy the immense fortune which he has accumulated by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father de ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... large proportion of the debts from Indians that he books are not recoverable, will frequently—and I presume there is nothing savoring of dubious dealing in the matter—add, perhaps, thirty or forty per cent. to the usual retail price of the goods sold to them, that the collection of some of the debts may, as it were, offset the loss ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal in a restrained way, and they are apparently genial; but the hard selfishness of all is plain to a cool observer. The habit of self-indigence has grown upon them until it pervades their being, and the corruption of the bar ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... see it definitely emerging in a kind of Official state once more. For the question is symbolical of important political questions. The question means withal, What is to be done in these dreadful Congress-of-Soissons complexities, and mad reelings of the Terrestrial Balance? Shall we hold by a dubious and rather losing Kaiser of this kind, in spite of his dubieties, his highly inexplicit, procedures (for which he may have reasons) about the Promise of Julich and Berg? Or shall we not clutch at England, after all,—and perhaps bring him to terms? The Smoking Parliament ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... shaving next morning, of Mr. Carville proceeding sedately down Van Diemen's Avenue with his children, gave a fresh vagueness to his image in my mind. It was as though a hand had been passed over the picture, smudging the outlines and rendering the whole thing of dubious value. A model father! In my bewilderment I nearly cut myself. And yet, supposing, as I had been supposing, that Mr. Carville had set out with the definite object of contrasting himself vividly with his prodigal brother, would he not eventually ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... no regard whatever to these compliments, nor to the dubious and frightened look into which the lawyer gradually subsided, nor to the shrieks of his wife and mother-in-law, nor to the latter's running from the room, nor to the former's fainting away. Keeping his eye fixed on Sampson Brass, he walked ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... interfere at all in the election now close on us, and that in stating, as bound, what my own clear knowledge of your qualities was, I have strictly held by that, and abstained from more. But the news I now have from Edinburgh is of such a complexion, so dubious, and so surprising to me; and I now find I shall privately have so much regret in a certain event—which seems to be reckoned possible, and to depend on one gentleman of the seven—that, to secure my own conscience in the matter, a few plainer words ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... to take this ground, since the act of the San Jacinto, in which the design of offending England in particular might at first have been suspected, appears to-day under a very different aspect. In proportion as we learn all the exploits of this terrible vessel, its impartiality becomes less dubious. French, Danish, and other vessels were visited by it within a few days; it is certain that if the French instead of the English mail packet had been carrying the commissioners and their papers, the former would have ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... a spicy paragraph, many a stately reflection on contemporary morals hast thou furnished us with. Shall we haste to the slaughter of the rarest bird—golden ovaried? We trow not. Get thee to the wilderness, and repent thee of thy sins. Why should we judge thee? Thou hast, if such dubious donation may avail, an editor's blessing. Depart, and "stick up" ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... not fool enough to think that he had permanently pulled the wool over the eyes of the islanders. Sooner or later they would come to know that he had tricked them, and then—well, he could only shake his head in dubious contemplation of the hundred things that might happen. He smiled as he smoked, however, for he looked down upon a world that thought only of the night ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... cent., even United States bonds from five to ten. There was a run upon savings banks, many of which succumbed. For ten days, beginning September 20th, the New York Stock Exchange had to suspend, so dubious was the value of most stock contracts. Manufactured products were little salable, and the prices of agricultural painfully sank. Factories began to run on short time, many closed entirely, many corporations ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... over this a while, becomes manifestly very dubious as to how far I am an honest man or not. At last ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... exceptions, one of whom was O'Gorman, who, after lighting his pipe, strolled down to the water's edge with a paper in his hand that looked very much like the paper from which he had quoted the instructions for making the island, and which he appeared to be studying most intently, with a dubious air that, even as I watched him, rapidly changed into ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... notes of you," he observed, regarding me with a glance of dubious, sour suspicion, "you-all shore ought to be. An' I'll tell you one thing: If Providence ever gets wearied of the way you acts—an' it ain't none onlikely—you might as well set in your chips ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... past experience, Tony grasped his crutches, and, still expecting some trick, sat dubious, with his eyes fixed as if fascinated upon the coveted dainties, but still more than half inclined to call to the policeman, whom he saw upon ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Elizabeth looked dubious. She did not like to differ from Mother MacAllister, but she could not see how it would be possible to make anything like a minister out of such an uncomfortable, hair-pulling stone-thrower ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... of what had happened during my absence. But I was sort of nervous on my own account-afraid of being caught, and rather dubious about the morning affair. And I had been lying there a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and I became aware of something on the other ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she call it all right? He looked down at his one foot with a dubious frown. She was ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... not a revolutionary. The ideals he held up were not new or strange, but old, well-tried, one might almost say conventional. They represent the ideals which, in the friction and turmoil of ages, have emerged as definite, clear, final. They are not disputed or dubious notions, but accepted truisms forgotten and neglected, waiting for the day when men ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... that dubious malediction he persevered, and his next attack was upon aunt Julia. "You liked ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... writings, which as yet are only found in Marcion and the Gnostics. The canon emerges quite suddenly in an allusion of Melito of Sardis preserved by Eusebius,[84] the meaning of which is, however, still dubious; in the works of Irenaeus and Tertullian; and in the so-called Muratorian Fragment. There is no direct account of its origin and scarcely any indirect; yet it already appears as something to all intents and purposes finished and complete.[85] Moreover, it emerges in the same ecclesiastical ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... happened. It had so long taken its place in that past wherein lurks all the antiquity of the world. No one would know, no one could tell him, precisely what occurred. And who can know whether—if it be indeed a dream—he has dreamt it often, or has dreamt once that he had dreamt it often? That dubious night is entangled in repeated visions during the lonely life a child lives in sleep; it is intricate with illusions. It becomes the most mysterious and the least worldly of all memories, a spiritual past. The word pleasure is too trivial for such a remembrance. A midwinter ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... of dubious import. He was neither merry nor sad, neither talkative nor taciturn. At one moment his face seemed to radiate hope; the next, he appeared to fall under a shadow of solicitude. When his hostess talked of her son, he plainly gave no heed; his replies were mechanical. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... by far most probable, had willingly delivered to his son this paper of notes, to be communicated to Pym, this implied such a breach of oaths and of trust as rendered him totally unworthy of all credit: that the secretary's deposition was at first exceedingly dubious: upon two examinations, he could not remember any such words: even the third time, his testimony was not positive, but imported only, that Strafford had spoken such or suchlike words; and words may be very like in sound, and differ much in sense; nor ought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... have any time to feel bored. She took a keen interest also in her fellow patients, and was the confidante of many tragic stories which made her own lot seem light in comparison. Altogether she was more cheerful and hopeful than for months back, but the nurses looked dubious, and could not be induced to speak of her recovery with ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... moment seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham's book, and did not apparently know their own minds. It says volumes for Hugh Flaxman's general capacities as a human being that at this period he should have had any attention to give to a friend, his position as a lover was so dubious and difficult. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... literary father whose paternity grows dubious on examination. I once printed an article exposing what seemed to me to be a Zolaesque attitude of mind, and even some trace of the actual Zola manner, in "Jennie Gerhardt"; there came from Dreiser the news that he had never ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry could distinctly be heard humming. Then Sarelli said: "What do you say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Her strong point was disguises. In 1839 she ran a matrimonial bureau on rue de Provence, under the name of Mme. de Saint-Esteve. She often borrowed the name of her friend Mme. Nourrisson, who, during the time of Louis Philippe, made a pretence of business more or less dubious on rue Neuve-Saint-Marc. She had some dealings with Victorin Hulot, at whose instance she brought about the overthrow of Mme. Marneffe, mistress, and afterwards wife, of Crevel. Under the name of Asie, Jacqueline Collin ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... he had not known that he had noticed—the tiny arrow-shaped scar near the base of the officer's throat, the way his growing hair curled at the ends, the look of one eyebrow slanting abruptly toward his hairline when he was dubious about something. Shann strove to make a figure as vividly as Logally and Trav had been in the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... awe, Great Bourbon's relics, sad she saw. Truce to these thoughts!—for, as they rise, How gladly I avert mine eyes, Bodings, or true or false, to change, For Fiction's fair romantic range, Or for tradition's dubious light, That hovers 'twixt the day and night: Dazzling alternately and dim, Her wavering lamp I'd rather trim, Knights, squires, and lovely dames, to see Creation of my fantasy, Than gaze abroad on reeky fen, And make of mists invading men. Who love not more the night of June Than ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... it, and began to examine it; he smoothed it between his fingers, and held it up to the light; he turned it over, and upside down, and edgeways. It was new and rather stiff, and that made him dubious. Jurgis was watching him like a cat all ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... owner felt inclined to indulge his tastes as a collector of works of art, or to act as a Marine Agent. I do not believe one word of it, and emphatically decline to associate such kindly people with such dubious proceedings, even if a hundred and fifty ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson—that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... And he had come to depend on her so much. In difficulty of thought he would say: "Is this right, Claire-Anne?" And her answer would come: "Yes, Shane!" Or possibly when some matter of trade or conduct seemed dubious, not quite—whatever it was, her voice would come clear as a bell. "You mustn't, Shane. It isn't right. It isn't like you to be small." It might have been conscience, but it sounded like Claire-Anne. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
