"Ambiguously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... object in the history of the times: but that enormous engine was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude: [38] the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls; fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places; and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed, that it was mounted with one hundred and thirty guns, or that it discharged one hundred and thirty bullets. Yet in the power and activity of the sultan, we may discern the infancy of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and I believe I may say ambiguously, expressed; but it mattered little, for in three days from that time I took my trunk, Halicarnassus his cane, and we started on our travels. An evil omen met us at the beginning. Just as I was stepping into the car, I observed a violent smoke ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... said Uncle Chad, ambiguously. "But what I wish to impress upon you is, that neither of you comes before the other: you come together." He paused again, and from this time on never removed his eyes from his nephew's face, but watched ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... concealed the truth behind hypocritical camouflage by using the term, "the people," ambiguously. For our people might go on as now, conducting constitutional government by representatives in all their legislatures elected by "an overwhelming majority upon one side," while at the same time the underground ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... its degenerating. It is obvious that a speaker cannot express himself with precision without a correct knowledge of grammar. When he is conscious of his ignorance in this respect, he must deliver himself sometimes ambiguously or erroneously, always with diffidence and hesitation, whereas one who has an accurate knowledge of the structure and phraseology of the language he speaks, will seldom fail to utter his thoughts with superior confidence, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... that," Mr. Wharton returned ambiguously. "And one thing more before you go. You needn't worry about staying on. We can use you one way or another all summer. There'll always be work for a boy who knows how to do a ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... comprehend the situation. He regarded the Asiatic machine. The habits of Bun Hill returned to him. "It's a foreign make," he said ambiguously. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Beyond a small memoir on Lichens, written in conjunction with Dawson Turner, he left no book. Another illustrious son of Henfield was Dr. Thomas Stapleton, once Canon of Chichester and one of the founders of the Catholic College of Douay, of whom it was written, somewhat ambiguously, that he "was a man of mild demeanour and unsuspected integrity." Fuller has him characteristically touched off in the Worthies:—"He was bred in New Colledge in Oxford, and then by the Bishop (Christopherson, as I take it) made Cannon of Chichester, which he quickly quitted in the first ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... reason than that which precedent would sanction. He found that the land specified in the firman granted to the holder but rarely corresponded in extent to the land which he actually held. Sometimes it happened that the language of the firman was so ambiguously worded as to allow the holder to take all that he could get by bribing the Kazis and the provincial Sadr. Hence, in the interests of justice and the interests of the crown and the people, he had a perfect right to resume ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... is one paper in the city that is always eager for sensations, and unfortunately it is not very particular concerning the use of them. This paper published a "story," as a newspaper would call it, which was told so ambiguously and with such skill as to preclude any possibility of a libelous action, while the suggestions it contained were so strongly made that the article was entertaining, at least, and it supplied, in many quarters, an opportunity for discussion ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... his Ami du Peuple, wrote thus ambiguously of Brissot:—"Brissot," says the Friend of the People, "was never, in my eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy? ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... it, Lucian was suffering from a sharp attack of detective fever, and the only means of curing such a disease is to learn the secret which haunts the imagination. Rhoda, as she stated—rather ambiguously, it must be confessed—could reveal this especial secret touching the murder of Vrain; but, for some hidden reason, chose to delay her confession for twenty-four hours. Lucian, all on fire with curiosity, found himself unable to bear ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... say habitually when we talk of our teacher in The Republic, the Phaedrus, cutting a knot; for Plato speaks to us indirectly only, in his Dialogues, by the voice of the Platonic Socrates, a figure most ambiguously compacted of the real Socrates and Plato himself; a purely dramatic invention, it might perhaps have been fancied, or, so to speak, an idolon theatri—Plato's self, but presented, with the reserve appropriate to his fastidious genius, in ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... couldn't indeed. Why, I give a pound for it myself at Christie's, as sure as I'm standin' 'ere in the presence o' my Maker, and you a sinner!" he declared impressively, if rather ambiguously. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... skins," cried another ambiguously,—then, conscious of this, he sought to amend the matter,—"Not the hides we wear,"—this was no better, for they were all arrayed in hides, save Richard Mivane. "Not the hides that we were born in, but our deerhides, our peltry,—they'll seize ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to hear the news," evenly. Roberts smiled suddenly at the look on his companion's face. "I understand about that other matter," he digressed, ambiguously but nevertheless adequately; "let it go at that. Mrs. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... been dangerous to depart from prejudices. Discoveries of every kind have been prohibited. All that enlightened men could do, was to speak ambiguously, hence they often confounded falsehood with truth. Several had a double doctrine, one public and the other secret; the key of the latter being lost, their true sentiments, have often ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... out with her niece, Caroline's eye had fallen on an envelope among the cards on the hall table, ambiguously addressed to "J. Brownlow, Esq., M.B.," and on her return home she was met at the door by Jock with a ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall see, a greater reach of negation than need be included in the Positive creed. Instead of the Theological we should prefer to speak of the Personal, or Volitional explanation of nature; instead of Metaphysical, the Abstractional or Ontological: and the meaning of Positive would be less ambiguously expressed in the objective aspect by Phaenomenal, in the subjective by Experiential. But M. Comte's opinions are best stated in his own phraseology; several of them, indeed, can scarcely be presented in some of their bearings ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... youth in five shillings for riding a bicycle without a light, charged a navvy ten shillings and costs for use of indelicate language (total, seventeen and sixpence), and threatened, but did not punish, a farmer with imprisonment for working a horse 'when,' as the charge put it ambiguously, 'in an unfit state.' He wound up by transferring an alehouse licence, still in his stride, beamed around and observed 'That concludes our business, I ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... messages you'll catch by wireless," Bob returned ambiguously. "Besides, Mr. Crowninshield intends to have some of his business relayed to ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... so ambiguously frightful in this last threat that Dr. Stanhope determined to spend two or three summer months at his residence in Barchester. His rectories were inhabited by his curates, and he felt himself from disuse to be unfit for parochial duty; but his prebendal home was kept empty ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... despotism. The great cannon of MAHOMET was flanked by two fellows almost of equal magnitude: the long order of the Turkish artillery was pointed against the walls: fourteen batteries thundered at once on the most accessible places, and of one of these it is ambiguously expressed that it was mounted with one hundred and thirty guns, or that it discharged ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... suppression. Contemporary anecdote, however, has reported that the defamation of the Tudors in the Preface to the History of the World might have passed without reproof, if the King had not discovered in the very body of the book several passages so ambiguously worded that he could not but suspect the writer of intentional satire. According to this story, he was startled at Raleigh's account of Naboth's Vineyard, and scandalised at the description of the impeachment of the Admiral of France; but what finally drew him up, and made him decide that the ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... he cares not what he puts into the press] Press is used ambiguously, for a press to print, and a ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... broke down, and consented to "go agin the Kellys," as he somewhat ambiguously styled his apostasy, provided the agency was absolutely promised to him; and he went away with the understanding that he was to come on the following day and ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... have, moreover, been the first to introduce and naturalize amongst us a measure which, though common enough in the Argotic minstrelsy of France, has been hitherto utterly unknown to our pedestrian poetry." How mistaken Ainsworth was in his claim, thus ambiguously preferred, the present volume shows. Some years after the song alluded to, better known under the title of 'Nix my dolly, pals,—fake away!' sprang into extra-ordinary popularity, being set to music by Rodwell, and chanted by glorious Paul Bedford ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... also it will be of the greatest advantage to the man who is speaking in opposition to the letter of the law, to convert something of the exact letter of the law to his own side of the argument, or else to show that something has been expressed ambiguously. And afterwards, to take that portion of the doubtful expression which may serve his own purpose, and defend it; or else to introduce some definition of a word, and to bring over the meaning of that word which seems ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... provisionings and detrainments, and the long, bustling caterpillars of cavalry and infantry, the maggot-like wagons, the huge beetles of great guns, crawling under the poplars along the dykes and roads northward, along ways lined by the neutral, unmolested, ambiguously observant Dutch. All the barges and shipping upon the canals had been requisitioned for transport. In that clear, bright, warm weather, it would all have looked from above like some extravagant ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... British propriety, and in a music-hall patronised by Royalty, this delicate task is surrounded and safeguarded by infinite precautions. One seems to detect that the scene has been rehearsed before a committee of ambiguously mixed composition. One sees the care with which they determined the precise moment at which the electric light should be switched off in the dressing-room; one realises their firm decision that the lady must, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... are used somewhat ambiguously and interchangeably. Using the former term in a broad sense—as meaning any substance containing available plant food applied to the soil, we may say that manure is of two kinds: organic, such as stable manure, or decayed vegetable matter; and inorganic, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... is worth the most," he replied ambiguously. Harley showed disappointment. He craved a compliment ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... so," Harboro was thinking, ambiguously enough, certainly, as Runyon was brought before him and Sylvia. Runyon acknowledged the introduction with a cheerful urbanity which was quite without discrimination as between Harboro and Sylvia. Quite impartially he bestowed a flashing smile upon both the man and the woman. And ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge |
