"Equivocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the error of not only approving the advice of that equivocal monitor, but the greater error of following it. Experience came very soon to open ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... by Waterland, by Whiston, by Blackburne, and by some of the more ardent Calvinists, was strong, and felt to be so. In appearance, if not in reality, there was clearly something equivocal, some appearance of casuistry and reserve, if not of insincerity, in subscribing to formularies, part of which were no longer accepted in the spirit in which they had been drawn up, and with the meaning they had been originally intended to bear. The Deistical ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the mother of a little girl; while Emma and Mrs. Weston were enabled to take a more lenient view of Frank Churchill's conduct, thanks to a long letter which he wrote to the latter lady in which he apologised for his equivocal conduct to Emma, and expressed his regret that those attentions should have caused such poignant distress to the lady whom he was shortly to make his wife. The much discussed pianoforte had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... insist on, nor reiterate, the decadence of the Palais Royal. It is no longer the "capitol of Paris," and whatever its charms may be they are mostly equivocal. It is more a desert than an oasis or a temple de la volupte, and it was each of these things in other days. Its priestesses and its gambling houses are gone, and who shall say this of itself is not a good thing in spite of the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... prejudices—the Bill for enabling a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. The devoted adversaries of the Contagious Diseases Act will spread through the length and breadth of the land a salutary discussion of this equivocal measure and of all matters connected with it; and will thus, at the same time that they oppose immorality, enable the followers of even the very straitest sects of Puritanism to see life." All these various attempts to break down the "hedge of the law" received in turn their merited condemnation; ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... sea, on the other maps, is, as already observed, an open sea, extending westerly from the isthmus in latitude 40 Degrees, without intervening land, uninterruptedly to India. The intention of the delineation of this portion of the map, is not equivocal. For the first time, on any map, there is found upon it the name of Francisca, which is placed above the parallel of 50 Degrees N. latitude and above that of C. Britonum, designated thus by name, in the proper position of Cape Breton. It is placed between the ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... wearier that we made a detour and went out of our way to seek for Professor Parker's thermometer, which he had left "in a crack on the west side of the last boulder of the northeast ridge." That sounds definite enough, yet in fact it is equivocal. "Which is the last boulder?" we disputed as we went down the slope. A long series of rocks almost in line came to an end, with one rock a little below the others, a little out of the line. This egregious boulder ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... enormities towards which precedents travel." And the people of the United States, as we have seen, appealed to the last argument, rather than acquiesce in their authority. Could it have been the purpose of Washington and his illustrious associates, by the use of ambiguous, equivocal, and expansive words, such as "rules," "regulations," "territory," to re-establish in the Constitution of their country that fort which had been prostrated amid the toils and with the sufferings and sacrifices of ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... gave her, therefore, no satisfaction to find herself included among Madame Adelschein's intimates. It embarrassed her to feel that she was expected to be "queer" and "different," to respond to pass-words and talk in innuendo, to associate with the equivocal and the subterranean and affect to despise the ingenuous daylight joys which really satisfied her soul. But the business shrewdness which was never quite dormant in her suggested that this was not the moment for such scruples. She must make the best of what she could get and wait her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... fine, but led to a different ending from what either anticipated. The "lady" who acted as "alcahuete" soon placed herself en rapport with Rosita; but her success was more equivocal than that of Vizcarra himself; in fact, I should rather say unequivocal, for there ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... expressions of M. Philarete Chasles, "at the moment even of his embarkation men did not believe in his promises, they were suspicious of his exaggerations, and dreaded the results of an expedition directed by a man so fool-hardy, and of a morality so equivocal." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... are not so much logical as economic: what I now wish the reader to attend to—is the blunder involved in the question itself; because that blunder is not economic, but logical. The question is—what is the measure of value? I say then that the phrase—'measure of value' is an equivocal phrase; and, in Mr. Malthus's use of it, means indifferently that which determines value, in relation to the principium essendi, and that which determines value, in relation to the principium cognoscendi. Here, perhaps, the reader will exclaim—'Avoid, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Though at the age of forty, she is, I assure you, very far from being cold and insensible; her fire may be covered with ashes, but it is not extinguished.—Don't be deceived, my dear, by that prudish and sanctified air.—Warm devotions is no equivocal mark of warm passions; besides, I know it is a fact, (of which I have proofs in hand, which I will tell you by word of mouth) that our learned and holy prude is exceedingly disposed to use the means, supposed in the ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... member, he used to appear in a black coat and knee-breeches, with a ruffled shirt, white waistcoat, and white silk stockings. He was the Chairman of the Whig Senatorial caucus, and on the last night of the extra session Mr. Clay had complimented him, in rather equivocal language, on the ability with which he had presided. When the laughter had subsided, Senator Dixon rose, and with inimitable humor thanked the Senator from Kentucky. "I am aware," said he, "that I never had but one equal as a presiding officer, and that was the Senator from ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... take a sentimental interest, as you pass through the village, in the loves of a needy cripple whose utmost industry has but served to save himself from parish relief, and a giddy girl without a sixpence, and you ask me to accept these very equivocal tenants instead of substantial ones, and at a rent one-third less than the market value. Suppose that I yielded to your request, what becomes of my reputation for practical, business-like justice? I shall have made an inroad into the system ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, that the translator felt free to interchange words indiscriminately. Of his treatment of the original Purvey writes: "But in translating of words equivocal, that is, that hath many significations under one letter, may lightly be peril, for Austin saith in the 2nd. book of Christian Teaching, that if equivocal words be not translated into the sense, either understanding, of the author, it is error; as in that ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. Those half-learn'd witlings, numerous in our isle, 40 As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile; Unfinished things, one knows not what to call, Their generation's so equivocal: To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require, Or one vain wit's, that might ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... thought so much about her equivocal position that her future troubled her. If there was just enough money to give her a college education, she wanted to know it. If she must prepare herself for taking some place at the end of her schooldays in the work-a-day world, she ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... young woman of twenty. Such a fresh, strawberry and cream complexion under a plenteous harvest of flaxen hair would not be associated in America with anyone very serious. There she would have been thought arrayed by Nature as a tearing blonde, suitable for the equivocal light stage, or as a frivolous artist's model, or as promenade girl in a suit and cloak house. But in Fraeulein the extraordinary combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness daily worked growing ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... curiously a weak spot in Hooker's character than the odd pride he took in Mr. Lincoln's somewhat equivocal letter to him at the time of his appointment, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... of dancers. In these, as at the New Tivoli, lately opened at Chateau Rouge in the suburbs, a broad space made smooth for the purpose is left between tents, where the young grisettes of Paris, married and unmarried, or in that equivocal state which lies somewhere between, dance on ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... enlightenment and good feeling, and to help the unfortunate. But it is also incumbent upon us to remember carefully, what is so often overlooked in the denunciations of competition, that the end for which we must hope, and the approach to which we must further, is one in which the equivocal virtue of charity shall be suppressed; that is, in which no man shall be dependent upon his neighbour in such a sense as to be able to neglect his own duties; in which there may be normally a reciprocity of good services, and the reciprocity not be (as has been said) all on one side. There ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... about vigorously. Life indeed was loved, and the beauty and pathos of it were felt exquisitely; but its beauty and pathos lay in the divineness of its model and in its own fragility. No one paid it the equivocal compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force. Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself, which life might illustrate ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... not wait for a second glance at that dreadful apparition, but descended from his equivocal position much more rapidly than ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... days, the affair of the Rue de Provence had been the universal topic of conversation; and friends and enemies were alike glad to seize this opportunity of approaching the banker, some to tender their sympathy, and others to offer equivocal condolence, which of all things is ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... quarrel with curiosity; so far from complaining of yours, I am come merely with a design to gratify it, and only expect you will judge of my desire to oblige you by my readiness in obeying your commands; were I myself the subject, the motive for my obedience might be equivocal.' ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... of the immediate and entire destruction of the works. He did not see the advantage of doing the thing by halves; while the destruction of the sea defences only might give rise to erroneous impressions and would be of an equivocal character. The fall of Sebastopol would in fact be the conquest of the Crimea, and the Allies might winter there with perfect security, as, by occupying the lines of Perekop,[53] any access to the Crimea would effectually be prevented by land. Lord Aberdeen thought that with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... include the actors and the observations of the author's vagabond life. To a clear and unprejudiced mind, observation of the life of the common folk and, above all, of the itinerant population and of their equivocal moral code, of necessity and invariably, compels resort to the form and manner of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... join in any unprovoked attack upon Germany. Aggression upon Germany is not the subject and forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which Britain is now a party, nor will she become a party to anything that has such an object." There is nothing ambiguous or equivocal about that. ["Hear, hear!"] ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... not yet unhorsed. The Jewish police-officers, though they allowed coach-gentry to enter and take up their quarters where they pleased, did not fail to pry into their affairs the next day, as well for the protection of the Jewish community against equivocal intruders as in accordance with its responsibility to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... His condemnation of the building restrictions paved the way for the fearless agitation of Dr. William Carson. A distinguished medical graduate of Edinburgh, Carson incurred the dislike of Governor Duckworth, and his successor, Governor Keats, by his outspoken pamphlets. Indeed, there was nothing equivocal in Carson's views: ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... state exists precisely opposed to it. The indications of distention of the liver, clearly perceived in some cases, have been pain, tenderness, and sense of distention, in the right hypochondrium, and, what is less equivocal than these, very considerable swelling and prominence of the liver. The inflammation of its tunic is an effect of this distention and of the consequent ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... provided only that the evidence was relevant to the issue raised by the indictment, and that if an overt act was proved "in the course of the whole evidence," that would be sufficient. The day following the Court read an opinion which is a model of ambiguous and equivocal statement, but the purport was fairly clear: for the moment the Court would not interfere, and the prosecution was free to proceed as it thought best, with the warning that the Damocles sword of "irrelevancy" was suspended over its head by the barest thread and ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... been committed. All engaged in it, including the victim, were foreigners. There was not a redeeming feature, not even the rather equivocal one of passion's frenzy, connected with the deed. It was deliberate, long-concerted, mercenary, atrocious, and bloody. The murderers—there were two—were shortly afterwards arrested; tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, with a dispatch and inexorableness ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... Germany—though, in view of the fact that it was conditional on the abandonment of the greater part of the rest of the Treaty, it could hardly be regarded as a serious one.[143] But the German Delegation would have done better if they had stated in less equivocal language how far they felt ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... of his cold impassivity beginning to lose command of himself, while Lindsay was giving still more noisy and less equivocal signs of impatience, "madam, all these discussions are beside our aim: I beg you to return to it, then, and inform us if, your life and honour guaranteed, you consent to abdicate ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Burgersdicius!—does it follow, because Shakespeare's early life was incompatible with a course of Education—whose Contemporaries, Friends and Foes, nay, and himself likewise, agree in his want of what is usually called Literature—whose mistakes from equivocal Translations, and even typographical Errors, cannot possibly be accounted for otherwise,—that Locke, to whom not one of these circumstances is applicable, understood no Greek?—I suspect, Rollin's Opinion of our Philosopher was not founded on ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... rose, when I concluded. And with a manful brevity he replied that he submitted because it was the will of the Lord, and because he had no right to interpose his selfish love and yearnings between the people of God and their worldly opportunity. The others followed. Not one referred to the equivocal language of the manifesto or questioned it. They accepted it—as it was then and afterwards interpreted—as a revelation from God made through the Prophet of the Church; and they subscribed to it as a solemn covenant, before God, with the people ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... hideous malignity. It was seldom that he saw him either following him in the streets, or entering any house or church after him; he only appeared in his place, George wist not how, or whence; and, having sped so ill in his first friendly approaches, he had never spoken to his equivocal ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... partly from Uncle Johnston's sense of waggery keeping him from telling his friend of the gray's last exploit at Hartree Mill, or her leaping over the "best man" at Thriepland, my father was the last to hear of this equivocal glory of "the minister's meer." Indeed, it was whispered she had once won a whip at Lanark races. They still tell of his feats on this fine creature, one of which he himself never alluded to without a feeling of shame. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... conceived the notion of pulling the irrigation project down in ruins at the moment of Weir's own fall. Judge Gordon a few days later had pieced out the method, which was either to corrupt the workmen to wreck dam and camp or to place them in the equivocal position of having done so apparently though others did it in fact. Vorse and Burkhardt devised the details. Weir should be left free until the blow had fallen on the camp, whereupon he should be immediately clapped into jail on the murder charge, which, coming on top of the "riot," would paralyze ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... shabby fellows with punch and tobacco; Tony at the head of the table, &c., discovered." Never perhaps, in any previous representation, was the mise en scene so perfect. It drew three rounds of applause. A very equivocal compliment to ourselves it may be; but such jolly-looking "shabby fellows" as sat round the table at which our Tony presided, were never furnished by the supernumeraries of Drury or Covent-garden. They were as classical, in their way, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the explanation of the symbolical language of this recipe; though we cannot agree with him in supposing Theophilus to have so understood it. We have no doubt the monk wrote what he had heard in good faith, and with no equivocal meaning; and we are even ourselves much disposed to regret and resist the transformation of toads into nitrates of potash, and of basilisks into ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Rosenberg said to me, as we went down stairs, that Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city library of Prague, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret, 'Is His Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (sic) he will go to Dux, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the intensity of her need, she had made small account of convenances. But she acknowledged that a half truth had nearly compassed destruction of her hopes and the ruin of a man; a liar had taken advantage of an equivocal position. But now the whole truth about her was clear. Her identity was known—her motives were beyond all question. And there were no vindictive liars among those loyal followers who had come storming down the river for the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... lucid as their climate and was a perfect expression of the sharp hard logical outlook fostered by that climate, had but one word for those two things. Nor have their equally acute descendants done what might have been expected of them in this matter. Hate and spite are as mysteriously equivocal as hopes. By weight of all this authority I find myself being dragged to the conclusion that a host and a guest must be the same thing, after all. Yet in a dim and muzzy way, deep down in my breast, I feel sure that they are different. Compromise, you see, as usual. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the "world," which is the essential condition of great things and of great originality. He pardoned a rich man, but only when the rich man, in consequence of some prejudice, was disliked by society.[1] He greatly preferred men of equivocal life and of small consideration in the eyes of the orthodox leaders. "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him."[2] We can understand how galling the reproach ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... exposition—strange as the proceeding appears to us—as short and as clear as the most admirable literary skill could contrive. That eccentric ambition dominates the writings of the times. In a purely literary direction it is illustrated by the famous but curiously rambling and equivocal controversy about the Ancients and Moderns begun in France by Perrault and Boileau. In England the most familiar outcome was Swift's Battle of the Books, in which he struck out the famous phrase about sweetness and light, 'the two noblest of things'; which he illustrated by ridiculing ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... her husband when he knows the truth, and the perfidious meanness with which he makes her the reluctant instrument of her lover's ruin, win back for her much of our alienated sympathy. Yet at the close her position is curiously equivocal. It is at her prayer that Bussy has spared Montsurry when "he hath him down" in the final struggle; but when her lover is mortally wounded by a pistol shot, she implores his pardon for her share in bringing him to his doom. And when the ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... cloudless, unclouded, undimmed; clarion, sonorous, resonant, canorous, audible, piercing; pure, unmixed, unadulterated, unalloyed; in full, net; passable, unimpeded, unobstructed, open; acquitted; unburdened, exempt; clarified. Antonyms: opaque, obscure, indecipherable, ambiguous, equivocal, vague, cryptic, abstruse, inexplicable, roily, turbid, enigmatical, inexplicit, inaudible, adulterated, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... since Miss Gibson has made herself acquainted with this much, we had better let her know the whole truth—that you are engaged to marry me as soon as you are twenty; otherwise your being here with me, and by appointment too, may appear strange, even equivocal to her.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is the basal element in the laughable? What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? The greatest ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... history, and it resulted in cumbrous ineffectiveness. Interminable inquiry and discussion ended frequently only in suspension of judgment or a divided report. Points of policy of imminent importance had to await a dilatory investigation and equivocal conclusions. This impotence of the central organs of government did not come in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate successors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils was ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... definite ideas, as an essential of proper study, and of understanding what is read, cannot be exaggerated. Without it one cannot acquire more than a partial knowledge, and one is always liable to those errors of reasoning which arise from the use of equivocal language, which may lead us unconsciously from one meaning of a word to another—a logical error which is perhaps the most fruitful cause of ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... that referred to business matters in Prince Edward Island; and becoming annoyed at Plaisted's equivocal answers, Mr. Sherwood took the copy of the letter Dexie had brought home with her, and laid it before his eyes. Plaisted read it with a ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... portrait, and with the image present to their minds of painter and sitter hasting on their way to be wed, saw this equivocal masterpiece with a difference. Not Aurora alone looked forth from the canvas,—throat of lily, cheek of rose, heaven-blue eyes, smile and ringlets of immitigable sunniness. Gerald, self-depicted in every subtle brush-stroke, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... behind me said in a nasty equivocal tone: "I hope you are satisfied with her, Captain." I did not even turn my head. It was the master of the steamer, and whatever he meant, whatever he thought of her, I knew that, like some rare women, she was one of those creatures whose ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... fact of the adventure was flagrant between them; they had looked at each other, on gaining the street, as people look who have just rounded together a dangerous corner, and there was therefore already enough unanimity sketched out to have lighted, for her companion, anything equivocal in her action. But the amount of light men did need!—Kate could have been eloquent at this moment about that. What, however, on his seeing more, struck him as most distinct in her was her sense that, reunited after his absence ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Celio Malespini a spy and reporter was no more in the thought of the Prince than it could have been in Celio's performance. He was young, and as chivalric an admirer of the Princess as he was loyal in his devotion to her husband. Had he discovered anything equivocal in her conduct, wild horses could not have torn her secret from him, and it is possible that the Prince counted upon this when ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... tried; but though strongly recommended by the commodore of the beachcombers, in the end they were invariably told by the captains to whom they applied that they bore an equivocal character ashore, and would not answer. So often were they repulsed that we pretty nearly gave up all thoughts of leaving the island in this way; and growing domestic again, settled ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... he, then, prepared to make himself responsible for this young creature's future? Of course she could not remain longer in a position so dangerous and equivocal. But why should she not be reasonable? It was true that Nanna was quite capable of managing the boat; he had only to assist them to get away and give the word to Ulick that he might follow. Ulick would go to the end of the world to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... fundamental facts of morphological science, biological and psychological, Semon proves that Hering's idea is more than an analogy, and that there is a fundamental identity in the mechanism of organic life. In order to avoid the terminology of psychology which tends to be equivocal, Semon employs some new terms to designate his new ideas, based on the fundamental conception of irritation in ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... thing that is beginning help being revolutionary? Those who are the first to cry out are alone, and therefore ignored or despised. You yourself just said so. But posterity will remember the vanguard of martyrs. It will hail those who have cast a doubt on the equivocal word 'fatherland,' and will gather them into the fold of all the innovators who went before them and who are now ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... Market, and Socrates Market, and Solomon Market, but for the patriotism of the town, which has forbidden it from going out of the hemisphere, in quest of names to illustrate. Bacon Market would doubtless have been too equivocal to be tolerated, under any circumstances. Then Bacon was a rogue, though a philosopher, and markets are always appropriated to honest people. At all events, I am rejoiced the reproach of having a market called "The Bear" ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... countess did not exactly receive people notoriously tainted. She was too clever to commit such a blunder; but she bestowed her sweetest smiles upon all those equivocal Bohemians who represent all races, and whose revenues come much less from good acres in the broad sunlight than from the credulity and stupidity ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... 'I cannot deny that I have seen him often and with pleasure; but I have always treated him as a child, and my affection for him was truly that of a sister. In many cases I have given him good advice; and, instead of instigating him to any equivocal action, I have hindered him from taking part in wanton tricks, which might ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... different personal paste of the two ladies, and that the usual feminine hypocrisies would cost them on either side much more than the usual effort. Mrs. Ambient, smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh, must have regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor as an equivocal joke; she herself so the opposite of a Rossetti, she herself a Reynolds or a Lawrence, with no more far-fetched note in her composition than a cold ladylike candour and ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... who made remarks in French in Molly's presence which that young lady could not understand, and felt that it was not intended she should. She even regarded with a certain veneration the cap itself, which she had once met in equivocal circumstances, journeying with a plait of white hair towards ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Witt, a descendant of the Grand Pensionary of Holland, who was governor of the place, received his noble visiter with every mark of attention. The Count, however, no sooner beheld Sophia, than he became deeply enamoured of her; and on learning the equivocal situation in which she stood, being neither a slave nor a mistress, but, as it were, a piece of merchandize purchased for 1,500 piastres, he wound up his declaration of love by an offer of marriage. The Count was a handsome ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... "devil-may-careism" as prime badges of genius, and he proceeded accordingly to astonish the natives, many of whom, in their turn, set themselves to copy his faults. But when we subtract some half-dozen pieces, either coarse in language or equivocal in purpose, the influence of his poetry may be considered good. (We of course say nothing here of the volume called the "Merry Muses," still extant to disgrace his memory.) It is doubtful if his "Willie brew'd a peck o' Maut" ever made a drunkard, but it ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... who had been enjoying this cross-examination of my equivocal friend, now laughed outright, and heartily did I join in the guffaw: they were to "the manner born," and it was my puzzled expression that so tickled them; to me, after the first surprise was over, the whole thing was indescribably ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... somewhat equivocal form of expression, that flagellation was threatened, Taddy obeyed, still feeling ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placed themselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on the impossibility of governing a country against its will. The Tories tried ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Jean-Jacques signed the transfer of the income, which henceforth became Philippe's. The exhausted old man and the Rabouilleuse were now plunged by their nephew into the excessive dissipations of the dangerous and restless society of actresses, journalists, artists, and the equivocal women among whom Philippe had already wasted his youth; where old Rouget found excitements that soon after killed him. Instigated by Giroudeau, Lolotte, one of the handsomest of the Opera ballet-girls, was the amiable assassin of the old man. Rouget died after a splendid supper at ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... judicious beliefs, as scales and roundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, where- in, as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some real substance in ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... drawn from the assemblage around me. With some difficulty I was permitted to reach my much admired steed, and with a cheer, which was sustained and caught up by every denizen of the village as I passed through, I rode on my way, not a little amused at my equivocal popularity. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... early opportunity of questioning him concerning his intentions towards my child: he gave an equivocal answer, and I forbade ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... mixture has resulted a character equivocal and ambiguous, but peculiarly Porto Rican. The heat of the climate has made them lazy, to which end also the fertility of the soil has conduced; the solitary life of the country residents has rendered them morose ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... believe most of my readers would be long in conjecturing what possible advantage could ever fall to our share. However, it is certain, that all the regular seeds of party and faction among us are entirely rooted out, and if any new ones shall spring up, they must be of equivocal generation, without any seed at all; and will justly be imputed to a degree of stupidity beyond even what we have been ever charged with upon the score of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... being devoid of sense, or from being common, or contrary, or unnecessary, and a corrupt style consists principally in impropriety of words, in their redundancy, in their obscure import, in a weak composition, and in a puerile hunting after synonymous or equivocal words. But every perverse affectation is false in consequence of its idea, tho not everything that is false is an affectation, the latter saying a thing otherwise than as nature will have it, and than it ought to be, and ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... insinuation, and above all, his readiness of pen, were deemed of no small utility, in promoting the union of the two kingdoms; of which he wrote an able history, in 1709, with two dedications, one to the Queen, and another to the Duke of Queensbury. Soon afterwards he unhappily, by some equivocal writings, rendered himself suspected by both parties, so that he once more retired to Newington in hopes of spending the remainder of his days in peace. His pension being withdrawn, and wearied with politics, he began to compose works of a different kind.—The ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... furnished with a mattress and bedding, and hooked to the ceiling by a very suspiciously slender cord. Direful are the ruminations and exclamations of inexperienced travellers, particularly young ones, as they eye these very equivocal accommodations. "What, sleep up there! I won't sleep on one of those top shelves, I know. The cords will certainly break." The chambermaid here takes up the conversation, and solemnly assures them that such an accident is not to be thought of at all; that it is a natural impossibility—a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the queen were assembled. I will not attempt to describe what took place, after the interesting account given by Captain Fitz Roy. The money, it appeared, had not been paid; perhaps the alleged reasons were rather equivocal; but otherwise I cannot sufficiently express our general surprise at the extreme good sense, the reasoning powers, moderation, candour, and prompt resolution, which were displayed on all sides. I believe we all left the meeting with a very different opinion of the Tahitians, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... parents who think her taste for worldly pleasures is greater than it should be. She is expected by her cousin Lescaut, a Garde du Corps, and while he is looking for her luggage, the young beauty is accosted by Guillot-Marfontaine, an old roue, and rich farmer, who annoys her with his equivocal speeches, and offers her a seat in his carriage. He is quickly driven away by Lescaut on his return; the young man is however enticed away by his comrades to play a game of cards, for which purpose he leaves his cousin a second time. Before long another cavalier approaches Manon; this time it is ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... blithely, "as you are a stranger, a man of high and irreproachable honor, sans peur et sans reproche—and one, I know, who will not place me in an equivocal position here in my home by divulging my true position—I don't mind telling you, in all confidence, the truth. I am not, my dear sir, an ass. (What I say, remember, goes no farther.) I am, sir, a theoretical ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... students, and had arrived in the town only a few days before. He, too, had been recommended to Yulia Mihailovna, and she had received him with reverence. I know now that he had only spent one evening in her company before the reading; he had not spoken all that evening, had listened with an equivocal smile to the jests and the general tone of the company surrounding Yulia Mihailovna, and had made an unpleasant impression on every one by his air of haughtiness, and at the same time almost timorous readiness to take offence. It was Yulia Mihailovna herself who had ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for it, that nothing Mr. John Effingham can do will be thought mal a propos by Mrs. Jared Jarvis. His position in society is too well established, and hers is too equivocal, to leave ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of her attitude flashed over him, all doubt vanished, all the comedy of their encounter was gone in an instant. Over him swept a startled sequence of emotions—bitter contempt for Dysart, scorn of the wretchedly equivocal situation and of the society that bred it, a miserable desire to spare her, vexation at himself for what he had unwittingly stumbled upon. The last thought persisted, dominated; succeeded by a disgusted determination that she must be spared the shame ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... all that passed with an almost breathless anxiety, a little ceremonial that now took place caused her much pain. Hitherto the manner of Captain Ducie, as respected his companion, had struck her as equivocal. At times it was haughty and distant, while at others it had appeared more conciliatory and kind. All these little changes she had noted with a jealous interest, and the slightest appearance of respect or of disrespect was remarked, as if it could ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... him "le savant le plus universel de l'Europe," but characterized his metaphysical labors with the somewhat equivocal compliment of "metaphysicien assez dli pour vouloir rconcilier la thologie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... I dare say She'd make more work than the devil in the play. Heard you not never how an actor's wife, Whom he (fond fool) lov'd dearly as his life, Coming in's way did chance to get a jape,[421] As he was 'tired in his devil's shape; And how equivocal a generation Was then begot, and brought forth thereupon? Let it not fright you; this I dare to say, Here is no lecherous devil in our play. He will not rumple Peg, nor Joan, nor Nan, But has enough at home to do with Marian, Whom he so little pleases, she in scorn Does teach ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to their origin is ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... all the time. She was privately married. For certain family reasons the Count had conditioned that their union should for a while be kept secret. Seeing that her equivocal position and her mother's displeasure preyed upon her health and spirits, he declared his marriage. She left the stage to become a reigning beauty in the best society of Austria, lady of half a dozen castles, and sovereign mistress of as many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... out the views just laid down, and admitting you to be a nominative, or quasi-nominative case, we may extend the reasoning to the word me, and call it also a secondary or equivocal nominative; inasmuch as such phrases as it is me it is I ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... is supposed that he will very shortly have one of the great Embassies. Then what will become of the Duchess? To leave Paris and follow him would be a serious thing for a leader of society. And then abroad the world might refuse to accept their equivocal relations, which here are looked upon almost as marriage, in consideration of the propriety of their conduct and their respect for appearances, and considering also the sad state of the Duke, half paralysed and twenty-years older than his wife, who ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to present my billet on a respectable looking house, the door was opened by the lady of it, wearing a most gingerly aspect. She told me, with an equivocal sort of look, that she had two spare beds in the house, and that either of them were at my service; and, by way of illustration, shewed me into a sort of servant's room, off the kitchen, half full of apples, onions, potatoes, and various kinds of lumber, with a dirty looking bed in one corner; ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... At least such were the ancient names, which I give for the benefit of antiquarian readers. Since the then Princess Victoria visited B——, the loyalty of the Glyndewi people had changed "Herring" into "Victoria;" and her royal consort has since had the equivocal compliment paid him of transmuting "Goose Street" into "Albert Buildings." I trust it will not be considered disloyal to say, that the original sponsors—the geese and the herrings—seen to me to have been somewhat hardly used; having done more for their namesakes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... at Dervock, 1853, as being inadequate, defective, and unfaithful—part of the document couched in abstract, evasive, and equivocal language. Also, we condemn and reject the Pittsburgh Bond, as ambiguous, self-contradictory and treacherous—"a snare on Mizpah." We abjure and testify against Popery, as delineated by our ancestors in the National Covenant, together with the fictitious dogma of the Immaculate ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... the infusion will be destroyed by its pernicious qualities. Nothing is more prejudicial to the health, or the intellectual faculties of mankind, than adulterated liquors. Articles which in their purest state are of an equivocal character, and never to be trusted without caution, are thus converted into decided poisons.—Another way of making wormwood ale. Take a quantity of the herb, according to the intended strength of the liquor, and infuse it for half an hour in the boiling wort. Then strain ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... yet doubtless full of meaning; for the singer takes to the very tip of a tree, and throws his head back in the most approved style. He does his best, at any rate, and so far ranks with the angels; while, if my testimony can be of any service to him, I am glad to say ('t is too bad the praise is so equivocal) that I have heard many human singers who gave me less pleasure; and further, that he took an indispensable though subordinate part in what was one of the most memorable concerts at which I was ever happy enough to be a listener. This was ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... An equivocal smile touched the pale lips of Chaleck. It might be the weird inhabitant of the little house in Cite Frochot was not so sure as the porter was of the astuteness of the police. Perhaps he was thinking that a few hours before a certain Doctor Chaleck, ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... am wholly opposed to that prurient intermeddling policy which finds so much favour with certain classes of Indian officials. It is constantly thrusting us into equivocal situations, in which our acts and our professions of respect for the independence of other nations are in contradiction, and in which our proceedings become tainted with the double reproach of inconsistency and selfishness. Nothing, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of a very old friend?" said he, with another smile, as that lady moved off to take a more particular view of what she had come to see. "To judge by the specimen before me, I should consider it very equivocal." ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Let there be a fair discussion; remember we fight only with foils, and the point of mine shall be covered with velvet. In your attack upon chemistry, Philalethes, you limited the use of it to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen. The first is an equivocal use; by introducing it into the kitchen you make it an art fundamental to all others. But if what you had stated had really meant to be serious, it would not have deserved a reply; as it is in mere ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... most equivocal and repulsive sides. It has deservedly fared ill in the esteem of the saner and more rational of those who have judged him, and there is none in the history of famous men and our spiritual fathers ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... defence of lies. Nor does there seem to me other difference when I consider their respective grounds, except that the ancients frankly called those modes of speech lies, and the more recent writers, not a few of them, call them amphibological, equivocal, and material." ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... plum- cake, so called from the number of large raisins that were showing their black heads in a substance of suspiciously similar color. At each corner of the table stood saucers, filled with a thick fluid of some what equivocal color and consistence, variegated with small dark lumps of a substance that resembled nothing but itself, which Remarkable termed her sweetmeats. At the side of each plate, which was placed bottom upward, with its knife and fork most accurately crossed above it, stood another, of ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the mendicant deserved a coin, who, knowing the love of wit in Louis XIV., complained sadly to him, Ton image est partout—excepte dans ma poche. In such cases the pun is sometimes transformed, for it only invariably exists where the words are equivocal and where the allusion is peculiarly applicable to the double meaning the falsity vanishes, and the verbal coincidence becomes an effective ornament of style. It has been so used by the most successful writers, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... as it were, underlined the uttered words, that I was at a loss whether to return the smile in kind or acknowledge the words with a grave little bow. Of course I did neither and there fell on us an odd, equivocal silence. It marked our final abandonment of the French language. I was the one to speak first, proposing that my companions should sup with me, not across the way, which would be riotous with more than one "infernal" supper, but in another much more select establishment in ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... no evil—is not suspicious—does not lay up slight expressions or equivocal conduct, and reason out evil from them, and suffer it to corrode and sour the mind against an individual; but puts the best construction upon the words and conduct of others that they will bear, not yielding ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... native products of Hungarian cookery to the masterly creations of French gastronomic art, and of wines every sort imaginable. The dinner lasted far into the night, and towards the end of it the company began to grow uproarious. The great patriot, as usual, related his lubricous, equivocal anecdotes without troubling himself very much as to whether ladies were present or not. He was wont to say Castis sunt omnia casta, "To the pure all things are pure," and whoever blushed had, no doubt, a good reason for blushing, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... etc., to the talk of S.T.C. (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly) [more] than to that of all the men living. This from him—The great dandled and petted Sectarian—to a religious character so equivocal in the world's Eye as that of S.T.C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate!—Can this man be a Quack? The language is as affecting as the Spirit of the Dedication. Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no Good," i.e. not in the world's repute, or with your own ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sure of it," she continued, "although your behaviour is somewhat equivocal, but you may have reasons which I do not know; and you must now confide them to me. You have protected my daughter from slander, you have fought a duel on her behalf—consequently you have risked your life... Do not answer. I know that you will not acknowledge it because ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... achieve independence—his treaty with the Indians, his sensational plan to incorporate the Cherokees into the new state, his constancy to an ideal of revolt against others in face of the reality of revolt against himself, his struggle, equivocal and half-hearted, with the North Carolina authorities under Tipton—despite all these heroic efforts, the star of Franklin swiftly declined. The vigorous measures pursued by General Joseph Martin, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... drought, arms all nature against man, sets man against man, and finishes by causing him to expire in pain. Is this what you call preserving a universe? If we attempted to consider without prejudice the equivocal conduct of Providence relative to mankind and to all sentient beings, we should find that very far from resembling a tender and careful mother, it rather resembles those unnatural mothers who, forgetting the unfortunate fruits of their illicit amours, abandon their children ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... suave and tender, with its gentle haze and autumn premonitions. Mr. Leicester said a few equivocal words, while Mrs. Edwards gazed helplessly into the grave. The others fell back behind the minister. Between her and her uncle down there something remained unexplained, and her ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... which a world that goes by evolution can very well dispense. Men easily come to consider clearness and positiveness in their opinions, staunchness in holding and defending them, and fervour in carrying them into action, as equivocal virtues of very doubtful perfection, in a state of things where every abuse has after all had a defensible origin; where every error has, we must confess, once been true relatively to other parts of belief in ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... knew that some men can satisfy their consciences by calling a certain sort of treachery by the soft name of gallantry. He was aware that he could, like many others in similar circumstances, deceive by equivocal looks and expressions, and then throw the blame from themselves, by asking why the woman was such a fool as to believe, protesting that they never had a thought of her, and swearing that they had not the least idea she had ever understood ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... in case of forfeiture stimulated their natural and irregular vivacity to enforce laws which had become obsolete, and they pounced upon American property as they would have gone to war in quest of prize-money. Even at first their acts were equivocal, and they soon came to be as illegal as they were oppressive. There was no redress. An appeal to the Privy Council was costly and difficult; and besides, when it so happened, before the end of the year, that an officer had to defend himself on an appeal, the suffering colonists were exhausted ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... repeated messages to beg that she would see him, if it was only for a moment, but the answers made up by Mrs. Harris were invariably in the negative. The chaplain afterward laughed heartily at the equivocal position he had ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... either invented or allegorized from the names of Egyptian places. Diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead—were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains; and according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue. But previous to the embarkation, appointed judges on the MARGIN of the ACHERON listened ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... for any individual exponent of the equivocal art: mark the guilty conscience, mark the rising blush, mark the confusion of mind! I mean the old sign one knew you best by; your permanent stall at the Francais, your inveterate attendance at premieres, the way you 'follow' the young ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... example, Lady Emily remained as insupportably natural and sincere as she was beautiful and piquante. At six years old she had declared her intention of marrying her cousin Edward Douglas, and at eighteen her words were little less equivocal. Lord Courtland, who never disturbed himself about anything, was rather diverted with this juvenile attachment; and Lady Juliana, who cared little for her son, and still less for her niece, only wondered how people could be such fools as to think of marrying for love, after she had told them how ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... male creature, whose part it now was to do for me a thousand things that hitherto I had been forced to do for myself, was almost naive. I could not hide it. I was at last a man's woman. I had a protector. Yes; I must not shrink from the equivocal significance of that word—I had ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... side, Shakspeare was an authentic gentleman. By his father's he would have stood in a more dubious position; but the effect of municipal honors to raise and illustrate an equivocal rank, has always been acknowledged under the popular tendencies of our English political system. From the sort of lead, therefore, which John Shakspeare took at one time amongst his fellow-townsmen, and from his rank of first magistrate, we may presume that, about the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... discussions ended. It had come up for him then that she "knew" something and that what she knew was bad—too bad to tell him. When he had spoken of it as visibly so bad that she was afraid he might find it out, her reply had left the matter too equivocal to be let alone and yet, for Marcher's special sensibility, almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distance that alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasn't much affected by the consciousness ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... of delirious enchantment, to all her elevated and eloquent admirer uttered; and in return for his praises of her charms, and his equivocal replies in respect to his designs towards her, she gave to him her most undisguised thoughts, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... meal, gritting his teeth, and crushing down the rage that bade fair to suffocate him. He disdained to challenge Jack's equivocal tale. The laughter of one's friends is hard enough to bear sometimes, still, it may be borne with a grin; but when it rings with scarcely concealed hate it stings ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope the identity of this island as described or alluded to by writers is often equivocal, or to be inferred only ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... an hour, he started again the same farce and repeated it often during the evening; he mimicked as if he were calling a person on the second floor and giving her equivocal advices drawn from his imagination of a commercial traveler. At times he assumed a dismal air and sighed:—"Poor girl!"—or he muttered in his teeth, with a peevish air:—"Rascal of a Prussian!"—Several times, when the others did not think of it, he called out repeatedly in a vibrating voice: ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... incapable of diverting any but babies, or men who, by a kind of intellectual privation, contrive to perpetuate babyhood, in the vain hope of preferring innocence: nor could I shelter myself by saying how little I understood of the dialect it was written in, as the action was nothing less than equivocal; and in the burletta which was tacked to it by way of farce, I saw the soprano fingers who played the women's parts, and who see more of the world than these friars, blush for shame, two or three times, while the company, most of them grave ecclesiastics, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... true,' demanded in infantile tones an equivocal-looking woman whose pale-rose tunic, painted cheeks, and locks shining with essences betrayed wretched pretensions to a youth long passed away—' is it true that Nyssia has two pupils in each eye? It ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... the upright man; and this exclamation, however equivocal it may sound, was intended, on his part, to ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Sagas is not dulness or want of sensibility; it is a consistent mode of procedure, to allow things to make their own impression; and the result is attained by following the order of impressions in the mind of one of the actors, or of a looker-on. "To see things as they are" is an equivocal formula, which may be claimed as their own privilege by many schools and many different degrees of intelligence. "To see things as they become," the rule of Lessing's Laocoon, has not found so many adherents, but ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... but struck off the rolls, and now a chevalier d'industrie, and agent of equivocal affairs, served as a spy for the Baron de Grauen (Rudolph's friend), and gave the diplomatist a great deal of information concerning several characters ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... summer; but, above all, the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the English church) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was that? That was the day of peace which masked another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. "Palms!" what were they? That was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice; it was not merely by the peace ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... another voyage, then ships will cease to trade; or, if he undertakes to blockade her, and thus collect it, she has not gained her independence by secession. What must she do? If she is contented to live in this equivocal state, all would be well perhaps; but she could not live there. No people in the world could live in that condition. What will they do? They must take the initiative and declare war upon the United States; and the moment that ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... year 1708, the term Fellows of the House was applied, at Harvard College, both to the members of the Corporation, and to the instructors who did not belong to the Corporation. The equivocal meaning of this title was noticed by President Leverett, for, in his duplicate record of the proceedings of the Corporation and the Overseers, he designated certain persons to whom he refers as "Fellows of the House, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... lines to record their visit. They pray the Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da ogni equivoco li possa accadere). Oh, farewell! We reverently salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler |
