"Ambiguously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gathered together, solely in order that the science might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics—that "loquacious science of inability to speak"—whose finished master, for sheer fear of expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to pronounce his own name. The Greek school-terminology is throughout and intentionally avoided. Very earnestly the author points out the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... about it to Mother upstairs that night, but Mother was unsatisfactory, smiled ambiguously ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... recite them. They are seen, not as the poet sees his people, naked against a great darkness, but clothed and contemporary, from the level of an ironical observer who sits in a corner of the same room. It is the doctor who sits there, watching his patients, and smiling ambiguously as he infers from his knowledge of their bodies what pranks their souls are ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... that he was a man of many ideas, and that his works would fill five carts—this, it must be remembered, because they were written on slips of wood tied together by a string run through eyelets. But he adds that Hui Tzu's doctrines are paradoxical, and his terms used ambiguously. Hui Tzu argued, for instance, that such abstractions as hardness and whiteness were separate existences, of which the mind could only be conscious separately, one at a time. He declared that there are feathers in a new-laid egg, because they ultimately appear on the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... fling to-night," she said to the hostess. Lady Macquoich smiled ambiguously—so ambiguously that the consul thought it necessary to interfere for his friend. "She seems to say what most of us think, but I am afraid very few of us could voice as ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... as such a surprise to Amherst that before he had collected himself he found Truscomb ambiguously but unmistakably offering him—with the practised indirection of the man accustomed to cover his share in such transactions—a substantial "consideration" for dropping the matter of the road-house. It was incredible, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... with what it calls 'the meaning' of terms, propositions, etc., Formal Logic has always to choose between the meaning of the words and the meaning of the man. For it is clear that words which may be used ambiguously may on occasion leave no doubt as to their meaning, while conversely all may become 'ambiguous' in a context. If, therefore, the occasion is abstracted from, all forms must be treated verbally as ambiguous formulae, which may be used in different ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some did then believe in evolution, but they were either silent or expressed themselves so ambiguously, that it was not easy to understand their meaning. Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist admits the great principle of evolution" ("Origin," sixth edition, p. 424). At present the sale of the book in this country approaches forty thousand copies. Its sale in America has been ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany |
