"Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who took Him for their Messiah, were both Christians (which means Messianites): the Jews would never have invented the term to signify Jesuans, nor would the disciples have invented such an ambiguous term for themselves; had they done so, the Jews would have disputed it, as they would have done in later times if they had had fair play. The Jews of our day, I see by their newspapers, speak of Jesus ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... telling Lady Ongar that she owed it to him for the good services he had done her, to read what he might say, and to answer him. He then gave her various reasons why she should see him, pleading, among other things, in language which she could understand, though the words were purposely as ambiguous as they could be made, that he had possessed and did possess the power of doing her a grievous injury, and that he had abstained, and—hoped that he might be able to abstain for the future. She knew that the words contained no threat—that taken literally they were the reverse of a threat, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... without evincing any undue squeamishness. . . . I spoke of AEschylus. I am sorry, Philip, that you are not familiar with ancient Greek life. There is so much I could tell you of, in that event, of the quaint cult of Kore, or Pherephatta, and of the swine of Eubouleus, and of certain ambiguous maidens, whom those old Grecians fabled—oh, very ignorantly fabled, my lad, of course—to rule in a more quietly lit and more tranquil world than we blunder about. I think I could explain much which ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... is tormented by a species of remorse, the cause of which is left half unexplained. He wanders about invoking these Spirits, which appear to him, and are of no use; he at last goes to the very abode of the Evil Principle, in propria persona, to evocate a ghost, which appears, and gives him an ambiguous and disagreeable answer; and in the third act he is found by his attendants dying in a tower where he had studied his art. You may perceive by this outline that I have no great opinion of this piece ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ours in that ambiguous And filmy phrase, why then you lie; And if to yours—we hope to be contiguous To our objective by-and-by, But for the present, though the end is sure, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... says Boggs, 'them outcries of theirs makes me feel a heap ambiguous. I'm drawin' kyards to a pa'r of fours that first howl they emits, an' I smells bad luck an' thinks to myse'f, "Here's where you get killed too dead to skin!" But as I takes in three aces, an' as the harvest tharof is crowdin' hard ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... more words different in origin and signification are pronounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be homophonous, or homophones of each other. Such words if spoken without context are of ambiguous signification. Homophone is strictly a relative term, but it is convenient to use it absolutely, and to call any word ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... limitation which is set to all power by the laws of God; others from thinking that it excluded generally the influence of the secular power on what were properly spiritual matters. When the clause was laid before them, at the morning sitting of Feb. 11, it was received with an ambiguous silence; but on closer consideration, it was so evidently their only possible resource, that in the afternoon, first the Upper House of Convocation, and then the Lower, gave their consent. Then the King accepted the money-bill, and granted them in ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... succession, would soon bring matters to extremities against the present establishment. The queen, weighing all these inconveniences, which were great and urgent, was determined to keep both parties in awe, by maintaining still an ambiguous conduct; and she rather chose that the people should run the hazard of contingent events, than that she herself should visibly endanger her throne, by employing expedients, which, at best, would not bestow entire security on the nation. She gave, therefore, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... people and gentles, and remained in the Bishop of Durham's house till July 11th. And the King, who was then at St. John's house, removed to the Bishop of London's palace, and thence to his house at Rotherhithe."[287] But the Chronicle suggests no reason for these movements and ambiguous proceedings. Thus, too, on the 23rd of September, the mere fact is stated that "Prince Henry came to the council with a huge people," supplying no clue as to the meaning and intention of the concourse. It cannot, moreover, escape observation, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... bear to do it. However, his friends were too hard for him, and pretended that nothing against Jews could be any impiety, and that he ought to prefer what was profitable before what was fit to be done, where both could not be made consistent. So he gave them an ambiguous liberty to do as they advised, and permitted the prisoners to go along no other road than that which led to Tiberias only. So they readily believed what they desired to be true, and went along securely, with their effects, the way which was allowed them, while ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... was scarcely ambiguous; but Mrs. Beale endeavoured to contribute to its clearness. "Your mother will crow, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... attentions to his wife. The struggle was brief, for the vehemence of his enmity, triumphant, the hope of immediate emolument was sacrificed, and the rooking of the young man postponed to some future occasion. Then, subtly concealing his purpose, he nodded an ambiguous acceptance. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Ambiguous looks, that scorn and yet relent, Denials mild, and firm unalter'd truth; Reluctant pride, and amorous faint consent, And meeting ardours, and exulting ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... course of building or equipment) nor purchased unless an appropriation be first made by law therefor." The building of the two cutters under contract can not be said properly to have commenced, although preparations have been made for building; but even if the construction be ambiguous, it is better that all ambiguity should be removed and thus the hazard of violating the pledged faith of the country ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... actually seemed to Hobbes and to the French economists, that the fewer the oppressors the better, and that therefore an absolute monarchy is the best. Experience, he thinks, is 'on the surface' ambiguous. Eastern despots and Roman emperors have been the worst scourges to mankind; yet the Danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are as 'well governed as any people in Europe.' In Greece, democracy, in spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results.[86] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... beginning to end. To every question he gave a prompt reply, showing the clearness of judgment by which every argument had been maintained. In order to explain why such a question should be brought up forty-seven years after the treaty had been signed, he showed that it was founded on some indefinite or ambiguous clauses of the treaty of 1783, but not proposed until 1820. Here was a delicate point for His Majesty to settle without giving offence to either English or Americans. But Sir Howard was resolved to support the claim which contended for the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... we have to do is both clearly to define and understand the meaning of that word "unity." I distinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, but that is the oneness of the unit. There is a difference between the oneness ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... Priestley's objections to the Trinity on the part of Jews, Mahometans, and Infidels, it burst upon me at once as an awful truth, what seven or eight years ago I thought of proving with a 'hollow faith', and for an 'ambiguous purpose', [29] my mind then wavering in its necessary passage from Unitarianism (which, as I have often said, is the religion of a man, whose reason would make him an atheist, but whose heart and common sense will not permit him to be so) through Spinosism into Plato ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... interrogation she gracefully looked up to the gentlemen; and after a glance towards Granville Beauclerc, unluckily unnoticed or unanswered, her eyes expected reply from Horace Churchill. He, well feeling the predicament in which he stood, between a fool and a femme d'esprit, answered, with his ambiguous smile, "that no doubt it was a great misfortune to have 'plus d'esprit qu'on ne ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... advanced in years, his character became fully known in the court, and was no longer ambiguous to either faction. Of the most harmless, inoffensive, simple manners, but of the most slender capacity, he was fitted, both by the softness of his temper and the weakness of his understanding, to be perpetually governed by those who surrounded him; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... kinds of physical courage—the active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations and consequences, of readiness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness, admitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the clouds from human intercourse, I have not known his equal. The great Sir Walter himself, as this book will prove, was not more manfully free from artistic jealousy or irritability under criticism, or more unfeignedly inclined to exaggerate the qualities ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of an English novel, reprinted by A. Hart, Philadelphia, illustrative of German life and character, and in all respects of more interest than would be predicted from its ambiguous designation. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye—the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself—and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.] But we all know, each knows by his own experience, that No. 5 is not forthcoming; and, in the absence of that, what avail for us the others? ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... spectacle! On the one hand, the infinitely ramified division of society into the most varied races, which confront each other with small antipathies, bad consciences, and brutal mediocrity, and precisely because of the ambiguous and suspicious positions which they occupy towards each other, such positions being devoid of all real distinctions although coupled with various formalities, are treated by their lords as existences on sufferance. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... with either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in direct communication ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... one of the gentlemen referred to uses the phrase "eternal death," as many do. I wonder what they mean? It is an ambiguous phrase. It might mean endless torment after death; or it might mean annihilation at death; or it might mean annihilation at some future time. It is surely misleading to use a phrase that may have so many meanings. If some definite idea ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... certainly not the least of the many crimes which stain the memory of Nero, but the circumstances of his death are not exactly described by the mediaeval scribe. Whether the philosopher and former tutor was implicated in the conspiracy of Piso may be doubted, but some ambiguous phrases he had used were reported to the Emeror, whose messenger demanded an explanation of their meaning. The reply of Seneca was either unsatisfactory or the tyrant had decided to be rid of his former guide. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... to the point, and a nice point it is I acknowledge; namely, what religion the Devil is of; my answer will indeed be general, yet not at all ambiguous, for I love to speak ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... and the universality of their influence, will generally serve to distinguish them from those partial efforts of diligence and self-denial, to which mankind are prompted by subordinate motives. All proofs other than this deduced from conduct, are in some degree ambiguous. This, this only, whether we argue from Reason or from Scripture, is a sure infallible criterion. From the daily incidents of conjugal and domestic life, we learn that a heat of affection occasionally vehement, but superficial and transitory, may consist too ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides, who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the jolting of the vehicle, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking "illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a little difficult to avoid the conclusion ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... living soul approaches the place of combat; not a hand gives aid. The boy can see the faces of the virgins who serve the temple. They are pale, but very still. Not a sound of pity escapes their white lips; their ambiguous eyes watch calmly for the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought of making what he looked upon as chance the umpire, and drew out of his pocket a piece of money, and tossing it into the air, it came down on its edge, and stuck in the clay. Though the determination answered not his wish, it was far from ambiguous, as it seemed to forbid both methods of destruction, and would have given unspeakable comfort to a mind less disordered than his was. Being thus interrupted in his purpose, he returned, and mounting his horse, rode on to London, and in a short time after shot himself. He dwelt in a house in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... hand upon a, memorial praying that the city's right to the water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress. I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in. I told you to write a non-committal letter to the aldermen—an ambiguous letter—a letter that should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you—any shame—surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to evoke it, when its words ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... has many times appeared in our pages, and as it may prove ambiguous to a few of our readers and render them liable to confound its meaning with that of a fixed town, we will here stop and explain its signification when applied to Indians. An Indian village, as understood in border parlance, comprises the lodges, the women, children, old men, and such movable ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... quartos). Many who have hardly heard the painter's name will of course not admire it, being done neither by Titian nor Vandyke; but Mr. Beckford's taste is peculiar. He prefers a genuine picture by an inferior painter to those attributed to the more celebrated masters, but where originality is ambiguous, or at least if not ambiguous where picture cleaner, or scavengers, as he calls them, have been at work. In this room, suspended from the ceiling by a silken cord, is the silver gilt lamp that hung in the oratory at Fonthill. Its shape and proportion are very elegant, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... Iconium is mentioned as a station by Xenophon, and by Strabo, with an ambiguous title of KwmopoliV, (Cellarius, tom. ii. p. 121.) Yet St. Paul found in that place a multitude (plhqoV) of Jews and Gentiles. under the corrupt name of Kunijah, it is described as a great city, with a river and garden, three leagues ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Kapchack to try him), and therefore he would go so far as this, he would encourage the weasel without committing himself. "Return," he said to the humble-bee, "return to him who sent you, and say: 'Do you do your part, and Choo Hoo will certainly do his part'." With which ambiguous sentence (which of course the weasel read in his own sense) he dismissed the humble-bee, who had scarce departed from the camp, than the flag of truce arrived from Ki Ki, and the young hawk, bright ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... have done) although it is worded in a manner as little offensive to their feelings as the nature of things would admit of; and that having tried this measure, the mediators will next proceed to another, in which their sentiments in favor of the United States will be less ambiguous. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... after his visit to R——, Philip was settled on his probation at Mr. Plaskwith's, and Mrs. Morton's health was so decidedly worse, that she resolved to know her fate, and consult a physician. The oracle was at first ambiguous in its response. But when Mrs. Morton said firmly, "I have duties to perform; upon your candid answer rest my Plans with respect to my children—left, if I die suddenly, destitute in the world,"—the doctor looked hard in her face, saw its ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the living God. Some eminent Sanscrit scholars tell us that the Vedas teach Pantheism, while others assert that in their most ancient teaching they assert the doctrine of a living, personal God. From this divided opinion it is plain that the teaching of the Vedas on this vital subject is ambiguous. At any rate there cannot be a doubt that the modern Hindus have some notion of God as a living, conscious One apart from His creatures, although it is held with Pantheistic and Polytheistic notions, which are antagonistic to it, and greatly weaken its influence. Its being held ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... Burke's face; it had an enigmatical quality that disquieted her, she could not have said wherefore. "It's rather an ambiguous term, isn't ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... enough. They are not only personal, but universal. Personal is habitually used in a certain contrast with legal, and it is very easy to lapse into the idea that personal relations, because distinct from legal ones, are independent of law; but to say the least of it, that is an ambiguous and misleading way of describing the facts. The relations of God and man are not lawless, they are not capricious, incalculable, incapable of moral meaning; they are personal, but determined by something of universal import; in other words, they are not merely personal ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... replied Peggy, and it was not her fault if Rosetta Muriel thought the remark ambiguous. "Good night," she added hastily and turned away, fearful that a longer interview would bring her to the point of speaking her mind with a plainness hardly allowable on slight acquaintance. Like many people noted ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... conference with some of his rabbis upon the prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the Messiah, which the other promised, but not having interest enough to obtain it he was poisoned." This rather ambiguous sentence means that Ainsworth was poisoned, not the Jew. Brooks's account of the story is that the conference took place, the Jews were vanquished, and in revenge poisoned the champion of Christianity afterwards. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... I dreamed I know not what, It seemed that certain apparitions were, Which sang uncanny words, significant And yet ambiguous—half-understood— Portending evil; and an awful spook, Even as I stood with my accomplices, Counted me out, as children do in play. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... strong accent, although he had been in the country forty years, and was a churchwarden. When the rector complained that a certain parishioner had called him a perfect ass, and asked advice, the reply, though well intentioned, sounded ambiguous: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... on iii., 23 (p. 184, Trans.), that "there are many passages in these dissertations which are ambiguous or rather confused on account of the small questions, and because the matter is not expanded by oratorical copiousness, not to mention other causes." The discourses of Epictetus, it is supposed, were spoken extempore, and so one thing after another would come into the thoughts of ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... these ambiguous remarks and to the great discretion of such conduct, it was generally averred in the neighborhood that Christophe had seen the error of his ways; everybody thought it natural that the old syndic should wish to get his son appointed to the Parliament, and the rector's visits no ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... caring about truth, is by no means singular, either in philosophy or life. The singularity of this, as of some other (so-called) sophistical doctrines, is the frankness with which they are avowed, instead of being veiled, as in modern times, under ambiguous and ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... ambiguous," said he, pulling up the blind. "Look at this—a sheet from a note-book, with 'For God's sake come at once—P. T.,' scrawled upon it in pencil. Our friend, the doctor, was hard put to it when he wrote this. Come along, my dear fellow, for ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ambiguous silence. There was an intelligence and alacrity about all the old man's movements, which indicated a person that could not be easily overreached, and yet (for even rogues acknowledge in some degree the spirit of precedence) our adept felt the disgrace of playing a secondary part, and dividing ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... question of Hugh's time was certainly the Eucharistic one. Eucharistic doctrine grew, as the power of the Church grew; as the one took a bolder tone so did the other. The word Transubstantiation (an ambiguous term to the disputants who do not define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's tentative terms had given way ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Inasmuch as it canceled both the former limitation to the twenty-one doctrinal articles and the phrase "in a manner substantially correct," the York Amendment was an improvement on the General Synod's basis. Yet the formula was left ambiguous, because the question was not decided whether all of the articles of the Augsburg Confession were to be regarded as fundamental doctrines of the Bible. The facts are: 1. While, indeed, all doctrines ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... words of distrust and indifference, but it was plain that the ambiguous language of the juggler, as usual, had succeeded in awakening interest. With the affectation of a mind secretly conscious of its own infirmity, he pretended to be indifferent to what the other professed a readiness to reveal, while with ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was "so glad to get the books back." I, however, sobered and wavered (by degrees) from seeing nothing of her, day after day; and in less than a week I was devoted to the Infernal Gods. I could hold out no longer than the Monday evening following. I sent a message to her; she returned an ambiguous answer; but she came up. Pity me, my friend, for the shame of this recital. Pity me for the pain of having ever had to make it! If the spirits of mortal creatures, purified by faith and hope, can (according to the highest assurances) ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... and commercial air, whose speech was brief and plain as that of a man who knows the value of minutes. He desired to know what I had to say to him. I stammered for some time, and became embarrassed in one of those labyrinths of ambiguous phrases under which one conceals thoughts that will and will not come to the point. I thought to gain courage by gaining time; at last I unbuttoned my coat, drew out the little volume, and presented it humbly with a trembling hand to M. Didot. I told him that I had ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, the 'Franciscans,' a long satire, compared to which the 'Somnium' was bland and merciful. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... matter of good usage, the verb or any other part of speech should be repeated wherever its omission either makes the sentence ambiguous or gives it ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... drew in a sibilant breath of delight. Her movement had been as towards an impertinence; but as she caught Valmond's eye, something in it, so really boylike, earnest, and free from insolence, met hers, that, with a little way she had, she laid back her head slowly, her lips parted in a sweet, ambiguous smile, her eyes dwelt on him with a humorous interest, or flash of purpose, and she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... doctrines which he had taught were incompatible, at that particular time, with an effective repression of the spirit which had caused the explosion. It is equally certain that he had brought discredit on his nobler efforts by ambiguous language on a subject of the utmost difficulty, and had taught the wiser and better portion of the people to confound heterodoxy of opinion with sedition, anarchy, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... care should be taken to avoid ambiguity in the use of pronouns. It is very easy to multiply and combine pronouns in such a way that while grammatical rules may not be broken the reader may be left hopelessly confused. Such ambiguous sentences should be cleared up, either by a rearrangement of the words or by substitution of nouns ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... northern frontier derived increased interest from the ambiguous conduct observed by the inhabitants of that tract of country which now constitutes the state of Vermont. They had settled lands within the chartered limits of New York, under grants from the governor of New Hampshire; and had, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Austria looked up, endeavoring to discover through the mysterious mask, and this ambiguous language, the name of her companion, who expressed herself with such familiarity and freedom; then, suddenly, wearied by a curiosity which wounded every feeling of pride in her nature, she said, "You are ignorant, perhaps, that royal personages are never ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... science asks, Are absolute principles attainable? What are the limits of knowledge? The answer he receives from science itself is not ambiguous. What the moralist asks is, Shall we gain or lose by surrendering human life to the relative spirit? Experience answers that the dominant tendency of life is to turn ascertained truth into a dead letter, to make us all the phlegmatic servants of routine. The ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... of his books, printed on vellum and suitably bound, to the libraries at Blois and Fontainebleau, and such others as the King should appoint. About eight hundred volumes in the national collection represent the immediate results of this copy-tax; they are all marked with the ambiguous cypher, which might either represent the initials of the King and Queen or might indicate the names of Henri and Diane. Queen Catherine de Medici was an enthusiastic collector. When she arrived in France as a girl she brought with her from Urbino a number of MSS. that had belonged ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... a vagabond, because you are out here in the country and play the fiddle; but I am influenced by no such superficial considerations; I form my judgment on your delicately chiseled nose; I take you for a strolling genius." His ambiguous phrases irritated me; I was about to retort sharply. But he gave me no chance to speak. "Observe," he said, "how you are puffed up by a modicum of praise. Retire within yourself and ponder upon your perilous vocation. We geniuses—for ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... order to be projected, a retinal image has to be localized with reference to some point, generally the fixation-point of the eyes; and it is therefore clear that when two such fixation-points are involved, the localization will be ambiguous if for any reason the central apparatus does not clearly determine which shall be the point of reference. With regard to the oppositely moving streak Mach says:[9] "The streak is, of course, an after-image, which ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the rest of them—they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable substitute for the ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... pounds lent out (without interest or security) though his pay is only fifteen shillings a week—with ten, ten, two, and a quarter—and he is anything but a miser. Many people would like a leaf out of his book. It is my privilege to be able to furnish this, though in a sort of ambiguous way, having received the information in confidence. Here ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Marshal St Arnaud were appointed to command the respective armies, Vice-Admiral Sir James Dundas and Sir Charles Napier having command of the Mediterranean and Baltic Fleets respectively. The attitude of Austria was ambiguous, and, after England and France were committed to war, she contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia, each country engaging to make limited preparations for war. At home, with a view to greater efficiency, the duties of the Secretary of State for War ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... satisfactory, the whole thing," replied the old lawyer. "Didn't you notice that the man avoided any direct reply? He said 'of course' about a hundred times, and was as ambiguous, and non-committal, and vague, as he could be. My dear Tertius, the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape at, and thus they break both their leagues and their faith; and this is done with such impudence, that those very men who ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... diseased. Cinna's republicanism is merely the cloak of another passion: he is a tool in the hands of Emilia, who, on her part, constantly sacrifices her pretended love to her passion of revenge. The magnanimity of Augustus is ambiguous: it appears rather the caution of a tyrant grown timid through age. The conspiracy is, with a splendid narration, thrust into the background; it does not excite in us that gloomy apprehension which so theatrical an object ought to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the Bahamas." There was no way by which accurate metes and bounds could be described. This fact disturbed the upright and conscientious Marbois, who thought that "treaties of territorial cession should contain a guaranty from the grantor." He was especially anxious, moreover, that no ambiguous clauses should be introduced in the treaty. He communicated his troubles on this point to the First Consul, advising him that it seemed impossible to construct the treaty so as to free it from obscurity on the important matter of boundaries. Far ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... had been the sort of man his accusers say he was, he would have betrayed himself in his plays. Consider merely the fact that young boys then played the girls' parts on the stage. Surely if Shakespeare had had any leaning that way, we should have found again and again ambiguous or suggestive expressions given to some of these boys when aping girls; but not one. The temptation was there; the provocation was there, incessant and prolonged for twenty-five years, and yet, to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent, And kept his ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... danger was by no means over. The Duke of Longueville had during the troubles held a very ambiguous attitude, and it was evident that he and other nobles were not loyal to the court. The troops had shown signs of mutiny; the days of the League seemed likely to return. On August 29th Mazarin made certain suggestions to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... singular spectacle of a punter at variance with himself because the cards fell favourable for him; and notwithstanding that the explanation of his behaviour was pretty patent, yet people looked at each other significantly and gave utterance in no ambiguous terms to the opinion that the Baron, carried along by his penchant for the marvellous, might eventually become insane, for any player who could be dismayed at his run of luck must ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the preceding note, is incorrectly rendered, "to cross the lake of Batu"—an error probably due to ignorance on the part of the translator, of the location of Polangui, although the language of the author is not at all ambiguous. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... look of inexpressible contempt, and then turning with ambiguous courtesy to the strange miner, said: "You are a man of experience and knowledge, as it seems; nevertheless your well-meant advice will hardly meet with acceptance here. For first the old man of the mountain will never have anything to do with sorcery and witchcraft, because he ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... ambiguous; Pole was desired to wait till an answer could be received from England; and the emperor wrote to Renard (August 3), desiring him to lay the circumstances before the queen and his son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... time longer Lucretia's spouse remained in Rome, where the Pope had taken him into his pay in accordance with an agreement with Ludovico il Moro under whom Sforza served. His position at Alexander's court, however, soon became ambiguous. His uncles had married him to Lucretia to make the Pope a confederate and accomplice in their schemes which were directed toward the overthrow of the reigning family of Naples. Alexander, however, clung closely to the Aragonese dynasty; he invested King Alfonso with ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... been, his death affected Adams strangely. The magnetism of the man's character had taken a strong hold upon him, fascinating him with the fascination that strength alone can exercise. And the man he regretted was not the ambiguous being, the amended Berselius, so obviously a failure, but the real Berselius who had returned to ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... is signified the use of good English. It precludes the use of all slang words, vulgar phrases, obsolete terms, foreign idioms, ambiguous expressions or any ungrammatical language whatsoever. Neither does it sanction the use of any newly coined word until such word is adopted by the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Bouille came to the rescue; and it is that which made the queen odious to the expatriated nobles. But it was not the policy of Breteuil. He refused to contemplate anything but the restoration of the unbroken crown. The position was ambiguous. Contrary forces were acting for the moment in combination. Between the reactionary statesman and the constitutional general, there was no security in ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... from quite a different sphere, is not Shakspeare's Julius Caesar, as respects the action, constructed on the same principle? Brutus is the hero of the piece; the completion of his great resolve does not consist in the mere assassination of Caesar (an action ambiguous in itself, and of which the motives might have been ambition and jealousy), but in this, that he proves himself the pure champion of Roman liberty, by the calm sacrifice ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... accompanied by a sneer and a chuckle, which the ambiguous old sinner could not for the blood of him suppress. "And now," he added, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... by courtiers who had most of their stocks in these loans, made the King go on horseback to the Parliament House in great pomp, and carry a wheedling declaration with him, which contained some articles very advantageous to the public, and a great many others very ambiguous. But the people were so jealous of the Court that he went without the usual acclamations. The declaration was soon after censured by the Parliament and the other bodies, though the Duc d'Orleans exhorted and prayed that they would not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of Value". 2. Gold and Silver, why fitted for those purposes. 3. Money a mere contrivance for facilitating exchanges, which does not affect the laws of value. Chapter V. Of The Value Of Money, As Dependent On Demand And Supply. 1. Value of Money, an ambiguous expression. 2. The Value of Money depends on its quantity. 3. —Together with the Rapidity of Circulation. 4. Explanations and Limitations of this Principle. Chapter VI. Of The Value Of Money, As Dependent On Cost Of Production. 1. The value of Money, in a state of Freedom, conforms to the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... into the ambiguous word "missing." Applied to a wife or an actress's jewellery it can mean anything. Applied to a man on active service it can mean one of three things. He may be dead, he may be a prisoner, he may be wounded and a prisoner. If he be dead he enters Valhalla. If he ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... was old enough I wouldn't be gittin' married," said fourteen-year-old Hiram, in a somewhat ambiguous burst of patriotism. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... to let justice take its course; and entreating that he would not endeavour to influence the sovereign on so serious an occasion, where his generous self-abnegation might involve his future safety; but Richelieu only replied with one of his ambiguous smiles that he could not, in order to save his own life, consent to sacrifice that of a Prince of the Blood; while at the same time he induced the King to exile the Duchesse de Vendome and her two sons, MM. de Mercoeur and de Besancon, from the capital. The members of the Court ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... so. A great deal has been entrusted to you. You hadn't the right to break off simply. Besides, you made no clear statement about it, so that you put them in an ambiguous position." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bring to bear upon a matter vital to the State one-half the intelligence, zeal and sense of responsibility you will throw this evening into some ambiguous question of fleeting policy of speculative finance. Here are one hundred and eighty souls to whose correction, cure and protection the State is pledged. No one of all these lives is safe a single day. In six weeks ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... sound, sure enough; though not what he supposed he had heard just before. That was like a human voice—some one laughing a long way off. It might be the "too-who-ha" of the owl, or the bark of a prairie wolf. The noise now reaching his ears is less ambiguous, and he has no difficulty in determining its character. It is that of water violently agitated—churned, as by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... confesses that ambition led him to do this; but in any case it was very close to a deed of downright treachery, unless the fact was that Tristan did not suspect Isolda's love for him, or thought his station too humble. Wagner's language is ambiguous, and probably he intended his meaning to be the same. Isolda has no two opinions about his conduct. It had been her duty to kill him in the first place, and her love, her destiny, Frau Minna—call it what you will—betrayed her; and now she is betrayed by the man whose life ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... in grasping it even when presented to them, and that as a further consequence they are not to be criticised for their hesitancy in accepting the doctrine of the "Personality of God." It must be admitted that if "personality" is to be defined in the various ambiguous and contradictory ways in which we have seen it defined by advocates of Oriental "impersonality" much can be said in defense of their hesitancy. Indeed, no thinking Christian of the Occident for a moment accepts it. But if "personality" is defined ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... had tried during my visit to the Fox family. The spirits of our deceased relatives and friends announced themselves, and generally gave a correct account of their earthly lives. I must confess, however, that, whenever we attempted to pry into the future, we usually received answers as ambiguous as those of the Grecian oracles, or predictions which failed to be realized. Violent knocks or other unruly demonstrations would sometimes interrupt an intelligent communication which promised us some light on the other life: these, we were told, were occasioned by evil or mischievous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... told Fouche that he was the only man who had talked with him about the past without using ambiguous language; that he was surprised at this, and compelled to recognize as true what formerly had been fettered on his tongue. He told him that he had promised his rescuer, with a solemn oath, never ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... mean to say I think he's got any idee of sich a thing, Bildad," replied Bildad himself, who took great delight in mystifying people, and who sometimes, in order to express the most unqualified negation, was accustomed to employ this apparently ambiguous form of speech. "I said for my part, Miss Prouty,—for my part. As for the Doctor, he'll prob'bly have his own notions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... right? Yes, I see that I am, by your bow. Very well, you may suppose what pain it gave me to have the privilege of intercourse with a perfect gentleman and an eloquent divine, and yet feel myself in an ambiguous position. In a few words I will clear myself, being now at liberty to indulge that pleasure. I have been here, as agent for Sir Duncan Yordas, to follow up the long-lost clew to his son, and only child, who for very many years was believed to be out of all human pursuit. My sanguine ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... historian, thoroughly appreciating its importance, have repeatedly come to the conclusion that the Declaration had no small part in the anarchy with which France was visited soon after the storming of the Bastille. They point to its abstract phrases as ambiguous and therefore dangerous, and as void of all political reality and practical statesmanship. Its empty pathos, they say, confused the mind, disturbed calm judgment, aroused passions, and stifled the sense of duty,—for of duty there is not a word.[1] Others, on the contrary, and especially ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... of grace in different characters—were deduced from three considerations. Each of these, in her view, was a decisive evidence against his suggestion, and a consoling reflection in this extraordinary and ambiguous moment. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... threatening fresh outrages, visibly spitting upon my faultless country's colors. Somebody had hoisted a British flag on the right bank of some tropical river I had never heard of before, and a drunken German officer under ambiguous instructions had torn it down. Then one of the convenient abundant natives of the country, a British subject indisputably, had been shot in the leg. But the facts were by no means clear. Nothing was clear except that we were not going to stand any nonsense from Germany. Whatever had or had not ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... was hundreds and hundreds of yards long and entirely paved with stone, were a number of Chinese dead—men of some resolution, who had met the charge in the open and died like soldiers. That, indeed, had been our own experience. Even with the ambiguous orders which must have been given in every command ranged against us, there were always men who could not be restrained, but charged right up to our bayonets.... Now as I ran forward firing was going on just as heavily, and the ugly rush and swish ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Which ambiguous remark may have been meant to apply to the Captain's mental outfit more than his moral one. When Rawson-Clew knew Julia better he came to the conclusion it probably did, at the time he thought it wise not to ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... was a quiet, inoffensive creature, without any principle or opinion whatsoever at variance with those of her husband, rose upon hearing this announcement; but so ambiguous were her motions, that we question whether the most sagacious prophet of all antiquity could anticipate from them the slightest possible clue to her opinion. The husband, in fact, had not yet spoken, and until he had, the poor woman did not know her own mind. Under any circumstances, it was difficult ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the stool, her hands crossed over her knees, Jacqueline seemed no longer a creature of indefinite or ambiguous purpose. On the contrary, her profile was rimmed in light, and very matter-of-fact and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... from what he said that it was born lifeless; still his words were somewhat ambiguous—even if she had lived several months, she might not have lived long ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon |
