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Questionable   /kwˈɛstʃənəbəl/   Listen
Questionable

adjective
1.
Subject to question.  "A questionable reputation" , "A fire of questionable origin"
2.
Able to be refuted.  Synonyms: confutable, confutative, refutable.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books



... pouring out vital heat to a like number of inhabited planetary systems, the sheer quantity of life, of struggle, of suffering implied, seems a thought at which to shudder. We are inclined to say to the inventor of sentience: "Since this ingenious combination of yours was at best such a questionable boon, surely you might have been content with ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... Shrove Tuesday, which in that year came about the middle of March. But as to that, it was generally conceded that they would. Youth, beauty, wealth and the shadow of an old family name could cover a multitude of such sins as rapid manners, desperate flirtations and a questionable origin; and notwithstanding her fastness, and, worse still, her ci-devant governess-ship, Mrs. Clement Rutherford was a ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... this translation,[1] it is very unlikely that, in the northern kingdom at any rate, with its frequent revolutions, court annals were continuously kept; the annalist could hardly have recorded the questionable steps by which his monarch often succeeded to the throne, though doubtless official documents were extant, capable of forming material for the subsequent historian. But in any case, the chronicles to which the book of Kings refers ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... this be a character appropriate to a lofty didactick poem, is perhaps questionable. It presents a fair subject for controversy; and the question is to be determined by the congruity or incongruity of such a character with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents of poetry. But ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... companions are the convives. We had some difficulty about stowing away the legs of a tall philosopher, and to each knife three individuals were told off; but the birds were not badly cooked, and the plum-pudding arrived in time to convert a questionable success into ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... some importance locally, for he is the channel of communication between the Kaipara settlers and the outside world. He is a man of ferocious aspect, black-bearded to the eyes, taciturn, and rough in demeanour. In his hot youth, he is credited with having borne his part in certain questionable proceedings in the South Sea, and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... The pathos of our Gamester may reach the heart; but the French pieces command no such appeal to our sympathies. On the contrary, the vice is emblazoned in such romantic and fitful fancies, that their effect is questionable, especially on the majority of those who flock to such exhibitions. The extasies of the gamester are too seductive to be heightened by dramatic effect; neither are they counterbalanced by their consesequent misery, when the aim of these representations should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... often ill-gotten robes and jewelry, is little known in Italy, Such persons would be scarcely tolerated either by their comrades or by the public. Indeed, although within the past few years, owing to the unsettled state of affairs, a great many plays of questionable morality have been acted, especially in Rome, still the tone of the performances usually witnessed in an Italian theatre is greatly above the average of what even Americans applaud; and a French play has to go through more careful pruning for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... of even the shadow of a lie that he used to attemper what he said with words of caution whenever he repeated what he had done or heard: "that is only as far as I recollect." He would not clap his seal to any letter which contained any questionable statement. "We remember to have cited you elsewhere," a common legal phrase, would damn a document if he did not remember, literally and personally, to have done so. His influence, too, can be discerned in the candid Adam, whose honest ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot of followers but it was plain to be seen that he was the leader of the gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical street ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... tremor. A certain religious weekly lost a hundred thousand dollars for refusing to take patent-medicine advertisements—probably ten times what the paper was worth. "Everybody's Magazine," and many others of its class, refuse every kind of questionable advertising. ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to carry out our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Frequent observation has convinced me that, when such researches are concluded, that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable, considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when I left this doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business in hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found to agree perfectly with what had been ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... me. I may be doing wrong; but I'm doing it in a proper and customary manner. You may be doing right; but you're doing it in an unusual and questionable manner. I am not prepared to put up with that. I can stand being badly treated: I'm no baby, and can take care of myself with anybody. And of course I can stand being well treated. But the thing I can't stand is being unexpectedly treated, It's outside my scheme of life. So come now! ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... young woman to wave adieu or a recognition with her handkerchief, or see others doing this, denotes that she will soon make a questionable pleasure trip, or she may knowingly run the gauntlet of disgrace to secure some ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... And now we leave Mr Sprint, who hath not only conformed to the controverted ceremonies, even upon presupposal of their inconveniency, but hath also made it very questionable,(278) whether in the case of deprivation he ought to conform to sundry other popish ceremonies, such as shaven crown, holy water, cream, spittle, salt, and I know not how many more which he comprehendeth ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... own part—but we confess we are sometimes apt to look too soberly at things—we think her Majesty (may all good angels make her caudle!) is, inadvertently no doubt, treated in a questionable spirit of compliment by these uproarious rejoicings at the sex of the illustrious little boy, who has cast, if possible, a new dignity upon Lord Mayor's day, and made the very giants of Guildhall shoot up an inch taller at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... profoundly deplore. Enough, and more than enough, debate has been already held on the complicated motives which have blended in your war, as in all other human concerns, and on the occasional acts of questionable spirit which must inevitably attend the public policy and sentiments of a nation engaged in deadliest conflict and bleeding at every pore. Somewhat you may perhaps forgive to those who have withheld their full sympathies, jealous that a most righteous cause should be maintained with any save ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... she "turned their dwelling into a club-house for young men"; but she followed her conscience with such a quiet, unswerving dignity that he found no pretext for interference. The money she gave away was her own, and fortunately, the house to which it was her delight to draw young men from questionable and disreputable places of resort had been left to her by her father. Though she did not continually remind her husband of these facts, as an under-bred woman might have done, her manner was so assured and unhesitating that he was compelled to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... but the immediate destruction of the animal is advised. A burn of the third degree, where there is a destruction of the vitality of large areas of tissue, even on parts not subject to much motion, is extremely tedious to treat; in fact, it is questionable whether the treatment and keep of the animal will ever be compensated for, even though recovery does take place; this, in any event, will require at least six or eight weeks. Burns caused by lightning stroke and trolley wires are liable to occur in irregular ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... perplexing; since he is the only young man in the world, from whom a woman has no dishonour to fear.—Ah, Lucy!—It would be vanity in me, would it not? to suppose that he had more to fear from Harriet, than she has from him; as the virtue of either, I hope, is not questionable? But the event of his Italian visit will explain and reconcile ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... At his first arrival he made no scruple of acquainting her with the unfortunate accident; which he made appear very unfortunate indeed, for he totally extracted every particle of what could be called fault, at least in a court of honour, though he left some circumstances which might be questionable in a court ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... difficulty I have been enabled to collect these biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers of them so questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... of money were successively voted and expended, in endeavouring to penetrate through the Arctic sea; and such is the persevering enterprise of our mariners, that in all likelihood this gigantic task eventually will be accomplished: but, even if it should, it is questionable whether a navigable opening in that direction would prove beneficial to commerce. The floating ice with which those high latitudes are encumbered; the intricacy of the navigation; the cold and tempestuous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... for a swiss-muslin curtain, though of course there are many rooms that would welcome no curtains whatever wherein the windows are their own excuse for being. Lace curtains, even if they may have cost a king's ransom, are in questionable taste, to put it mildly. Use all the lace you wish on your bed linen and table linen, but do not hang it up at your windows for ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... so fast that we have never had a breathing-spell, and we need, more than any other people on the globe, immunity from disturbing experiments on novel questions of doubtful expediency. We can not afford to risk our future prosperity and happiness in making an innovation so questionable. We want peace, and must have it. Let Massachusetts or New York, or some older State, therefore, try this nauseating dose. If it does not kill them, or if it proves healthful and beneficial, we guarantee that Kansas will not be long in swallowing it. But ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... for himself. Campbell refused his; but there appeared no help for me, after my groundless suspicion of poison, and so I swallowed the pill with the best grace I could. But in truth, it was not poison I dreaded in its contents, so much as being compounded of some very questionable materials, such as the Rimbochay Lama blesses and dispenses far and wide. To swallow such is a sanctifying work, according to Boodhist superstition, and I believe there was nothing in the world, save his ponies, to which the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... work, and indicate another period of experimentation; this time not to test his own powers but to catch the fickle humor of the public. As is usually the case with a theater-going people, they soon turned from serious drama to sentimental or more questionable spectacles; and with Fletcher, who worked with Shakespeare and succeeded him as the first playwright of London, the decline of the drama had already begun. In 1609, however, occurred an event which gave Shakespeare his chance for a farewell to the public. An English ship disappeared, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Brocq affair is not clear! It's no use my trying to persuade myself to the contrary! There is some mystery about it! Those officers! This diplomat! And then this questionable person, neither servant, nor lady accustomed to good society, who has to me all the appearance of playing not merely a double role, but at the least a triple, perhaps a quadruple!... Good old Fandor, there's nothing ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... discontinued, but which has been long going on at Oxford, entitled Tracts for the Times, and generally called the Oxford Tracts. The Professorship of Poetry is now vacant at Oxford, and two candidates have been put forward, the one Mr Williams, who is the author of one or two of the most questionable of the Oxford Tracts, and the other Mr Garbett, who is a representative of the opposite party. Of course the result of this election, which is made by the Masters of Arts of the University, is looked to with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the "Girl in the Pie Dinner," was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, the statuary was Pompeian, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... on account of the menacing appearance of the approaching passage. The Scud was now heading directly for the fore-foot of the Frenchman; and, the distance between the two vessels having diminished to a hundred yards, it was momentarily questionable if there ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... Britain respecting trading rights at that important outlet; and they were by no means settled by an Anglo-Portuguese Convention of February 26 (1884), in which Lord Granville, Foreign Minister in the Gladstone Cabinet, was thought to display too much deference to questionable claims. Protests were urged against this Convention, by the United States, France, and Germany, with the result that the Lisbon Government proposed to refer all these matters to a Conference of the Powers; and arrangements were soon made for the summoning of their representatives ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... kept government officers from actually occupying ministries and discharging government responsibilities; the government's authority to remove cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, following the expiration of their term is questionable ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... cream, according to the manner in which it has been prepared, from the other ingredients of the milk. It is an article, which, although possessing a large proportion, of nutritive material, is very difficult of digestion, and the use of which is very questionable, not only for this reason, but because it is very liable to contain a poison called tyrotoxicon, capable of producing most violent and indeed fatal results, according to the remarkable researches of Prof. Vaughan of Michigan University. This poison is sometimes found in ice cream and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... elm?—Why, size, in the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty- three feet of girth and a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... Rifleman had more than one twinge of conscience, for he could but consider it of questionable propriety in acting his part. Beyond a doubt, Sego and Edith were accepted lovers, who had been separated for months, and it seemed cruel, to say the least, thus to take advantage of their separation. The more he reflected upon it, the more guilty did he feel, until he formed ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis

... forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable morality of the received narrative of his career, and its unquestionable untruth. The emergence of the Swiss from slavery to freedom, as in the case of all other nations, was undoubtedly a gradual process, and there is now ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... love with an Assinniboin girl and gone off in pursuit of her. The French were now without any means of communicating with the Mandans, from whom, however, before the disappearance of the interpreter, they had already received a variety of questionable information, chiefly touching white men cased in iron who were said to live on the river below at the distance of a whole summer's journey. As they were impervious to arrows,—so the story ran,—it was necessary ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... money on these herds in Dodge demands a word of explanation. The original contract calls for five million pounds of beef on foot to be delivered at Fort Buford. My client is a sub-contractor under that award. There are times, your honor, when it becomes necessary to resort to questionable means to attain an end. This is one of them. Within a week after my client had given bonds for the fulfillment of his contract, he made the discovery that he was dealing with a double-faced set of scoundrels. From that day until the present moment, secret-service ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... calculated to advance and consolidate the moral and material welfare of the nation around them. Of the remaining two, it is true that one was an eminent politician and legislator, and the other a natural philosopher of the first order; but it is questionable if either of them would have been considered entitled to their prominent place in the Grecian Pleiades of Wise Men had they not been proverb-makers and utterers of brief but pregnant "wisdom-words" as well. Even Solomon, the wisest of men, was less celebrated ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... rumoured that another more questionable method of replenishing his exchequer was by laying odds on the School games, which (as in the case of the second Rendlesham match) did not always turn out in the way he expected. This, however, was only rumour, and was not to ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... necessity, of a moral nature, which made it on the whole advantageous to arouse the nation to this gigantic strife, and thus to exchange its ordinary struggle for wealth into a combat for a momentous principle. Is it questionable whether, in every case, the establishment of such a principle is not the most important of all objects, and whether every other pursuit and occupation ought not to be made secondary to it? In the sacrifices and sufferings which a nation undergoes for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of Petra, mercy is due to the lady Ayisha, seeing that the end in view was good, although the means were questionable." ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... to wonder in her heart if she ought not to have told somebody else and taken Thomas along to help. It was rather a questionable thing for her to do, in the dusk of the evening—to women all alone. But then, she had Mrs. Cameron along and that made it perfectly respectable. But if she failed now, what else could she do? Her blood boiled hotly at the thought of letting Harry Wainwright succeed in his miserable plot. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... community. The suffering of a leader calls out passionate sympathy and loyalty, sometimes in a dangerous degree. In the labor movement almost any fault is forgiven to a man who has been in prison for the cause of labor, and death for a popular cause will idealize the memory of very ordinary or questionable characters. But if the character of a leader is pure, suffering accredits him and gives him power. The cross had an incomparable value in putting the cause of Christianity before the world. It placed Jesus where mankind could never forget him, and it lit up the whole problem of sin ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... proceedings of their own Legislature. It is a grave question, whether the Imperial Parliament will place itself in an attitude of hostility to the Legislative Assembly and people of Canada for the sake of conferring questionable pecuniary distinctions upon the clergy of the two most wealthy denominations in that country? Should any members of Parliament be disposed to pursue this course, and hazard this experiment, I beg them to pause and consider ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... English countryside of my boyhood every human being had a "place." It belonged to you from your birth like the colour of your eyes, it was inextricably your destiny. Above you were your betters, below you were your inferiors, and there were even an unstable questionable few, cases so disputable that you might for the rough purposes of every day at least, regard them as your equals. Head and centre of our system was Lady Drew, her "leddyship," shrivelled, garrulous, with a wonderful memory for genealogies and very, very old, and beside ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... long past when the copulative in that title might have suggested to some minds an antithesis,—as acid and alkali, or heat and cold. That religion could have affiliation with anything so worldly as poetry would have seemed to some pious people a questionable proposition. There were the Psalms, in the Old Testament, to be sure; and the minister had been heard to allude to them as poetry: might not that indicate some heretical taint in him, caught, perchance, from the "German neologists" whose influence ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... afterwards presbyter (386) at Antioch. On the death of Nectarius he was appointed archbishop of Constantinople by Eutropius, the favourite minister of the emperor Arcadius. He had, ten years before this, only escaped promotion to the episcopate by a very questionable stratagem—which, however, he defends in his instructive and eloquent treatise De Sacerdotio. As a presbyter, he won high reputation by his preaching at Antioch, more especially by his homilies on The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... words; Vieira only 107, and Bory de Saint-Vincent [Footnote: Essai sur les Iles fortunees. Humboldt has only five.] 148. Webb and Berthelot give 909. Of these 200 are nouns, including 22 names of plants; 467 are placenames, and 242 are proper names. Many are questionable. For instance, sabor (council-place) is derived from cabocer, 'expression par laquelle les negres de la Senegambie denotent la reunion de leurs chefs.' [Footnote: Vol. i. part i. p. 223.] As all know, it is the corrupted ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... the conversation happened to strike upon Christian names. I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that their historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment forgotten, their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and William no longer carried the thoughts back to the English kings—Joseph and Reuben were powerless to remind us of the mighty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... confusion between the terms packs and equipment led us to take off equipment, and we then formed up as a Battalion in Brigade. We saluted again, this time we had no bayonets, and then marched past by Companies and back in close column several times. Then, by a questionable, though not questioned, manoeuvre, we came back again and advanced in review order. The Brigade Band was in attendance and played the Brigade March in place of the Regimental March, because it did not know the latter. While still in Ceremonial order, we finished by doing Battalion ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... Lord Gambara supped with us, and he was light and trivial as ever, an incarnation of frivolity and questionable jests, apparently entirely unconscious of Fifanti's chill reserve and frequent sneers. Indeed, I greatly marvelled that a man of my Lord Gambara's eminence and Governor of Piacenza should so very amiably endure the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... cross a hired horse with a view to ten shillings worth of Sunday display in the Parks, the turnout being always detected; nor shall be permitted to drive a gig, in a fierce scarf, under similar circumstances. Nor shall any Gent imagine that an acquaintance with all the questionable resorts of London is "knowing life"; or that trousers of large check pattern ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... martyrdom of St. Helena. Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale must not blind us to the flaccid eccentricities that made British statesmanship the laughing stock of Europe in 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napoleon in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or to the contempt which he felt for the Addington Cabinet. When one also remembers our extraordinary blunders in the war of the Third Coalition, it seems a miracle that the British Empire ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... eager desire to comply, but his nerves had not yet been excited by the usual potations, and his hands shook in a way to render it questionable whether he could perform even this simple service. But for his daughter, indeed, he would hardly have set about it intelligently. Mildred, accustomed to using the signal-halyards, procured the old line, and handed it to her father, who discovered some of his professional ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the light of a sputtering candle before a small mirror the veracity of which was more than questionable. It presented him to himself as a person with a broad, flat face, the nose of which appeared directly between his eyes, and the mouth on a line with the top of his ears. But he made allowances for these idiosyncrasies on the part of the ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... the individual can respond with spontaneous and instinctive loyalty is questionable. The small child throws out his arms and exclaims passionately, "I love the whole world." Auguste Comte could be imbued with a fervor for "humanity" in the abstract. The idea of a League of Nations arouses in some minds a passionate devotion to a world order that to those ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... same way, he had been guilty of some very questionable, and one or two actually unsavory, appointments. Whenever his conscience pricked him too keenly he would endeavor to hearten himself with his pet phrase, "All in a lifetime." Thinking over things quite alone in his easy-chair, he would sometimes rise up with these words on his ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... marriage is being arranged—a marriage between a questionable woman and a young fellow who might be a flunkey. They wish to bring this woman into the house where my wife and daughter reside, but while I live and breathe she shall never enter my doors. I shall lie at the threshold, and she shall trample me underfoot if she does. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... do, and neglecting to do that which they know ought to be done—may be found in the fact that so few are trained to regard, in every thing, the sacred rights of conscience. They are referred to other and more questionable standards of authority. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... farther; when their reason is taxed, they fail, and consequently appear to be destitute of those finer qualifications and principles on which both moral feeling and social order are based. It is however questionable with me whether this is not too severe a construction to put on their intellect, and whether, if the effect of ancient habits were counteracted, we should find the ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... receive much encouragement from his own class. Bill Kirby, indeed, undertook to support him and even volunteered to go round with him on his canvassing expeditions, but this was considered by Larry's Committee as being of questionable advantage, even, possibly, affording to the enemy an occasion to blaspheme, and the offer (made, it may be said, at ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... services had been such trouble, and whose answer to a summons from the parlour had been, 'Did yer holler, Avy? I thort I heerd a scritch,' each, from Cleopatra Betsy to Hetta Mary, were constantly rushing in to inquire, or to present questionable dainties and nostrums from their respective 'Mas'; the charwomen, whom Minna had coaxed in her blandest manner to save trouble to Averil and disgust to Henry, were officious in volunteers of nursing and sitting up, the black cook at the hotel ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the manoeuvres now centre round Black's endeavours to force his P-Q4, and White's attempt to prevent it. Black ultimately gains his point, as will be seen, but at the expense of such disadvantages in the pawn position that it is questionable whether the whole variation (called the Rio de Janeiro ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker

... harm in that girl! Impossible for eyes like hers to lie!... And yet ... And yet!... Oh, what's the matter with me? Am I losing my grip? Why stick at ordinary precaution against treachery on the part of a woman who's nothing to me and of whom I know nothing that isn't conspicuously questionable?... All because of a pretty face and ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation. Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for him, watched ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... whose conceptions are usually so clear, definite, and consistent, it is as unsatisfactory as it is surprising to meet with so much questionable and obscure phraseology in a small space. One and the same thing, for example, resemblance, is first called a "quality of an idea," and secondly a "complex idea." Surely it cannot be both. Ideas which have the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... the abdomen immediately after delivery as a means of strengthening the abdominal muscles is questionable; though physicians agree to the advantages of a supporter after patients are out of bed. We constantly see perfect restoration of these muscles without the early use of a binder; in fact, women who have employed it throughout the lying-in period do not secure an efficient abdominal wall ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... Most questionable as was this proposition in all its constitutional relations, nevertheless it received the sanction of Congress, with some slight modifications of line, to save the existing rights of the intended new State. It was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... instrument with all the deliberation of a proprietor of the premises. He is pretty sure to begin his performance in the middle of a tune, with a hiccoughing kind of sound, as though the pipes were gasping for breath. He puts a sudden period to his questionable harmony the very instant he gets his penny, having a notion, which is tolerably correct, that you pay him for his silence and not for his sounds. In spite of his discordant gurglings and squealings, he is welcomed by the nursery-maids and their infant ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... opposed to him, either by reward or punishment; and could all have come into his notions, and bowed the knee to his image, I suppose it might have done very well, so far as he was concerned. Whether it would have been a fair reading of his famous letter to Mr. Monroe, is rather questionable. He was to reform the Government. Now, if reformation consists in turning out and putting in, he did it with ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... half-concealed under its shrubberies which were his property. As an investment, these possessions were extremely unremunerative. Indeed, if one added the cost of the improvements which ought to be made, to the expenditure already laid out in renovations, it was questionable if for the next twenty years they would not represent a deficit on the income-sheet. But, now that he had laid hold of the local character, it pleased him that it should be so. He would not for the world have his gentle, woolly-minded, unprofitable cottagers ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... order is the acme of mercy: it is neither questionable nor assailable: it is not evil producing good, [15] nor good ultimating in evil. Such an inference were impious. Holy Writ denounces him that declares, "Let us do evil, that good may come! whose ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... of upper-class syndicalism, that despairs of Parliaments, deplores the bungling work of politics, and ridicules the general incompetence of democratic institutions. At the same time, however, they exercise stupendous efforts, in the most devious and questionable ways, to retain their political power. Facing the inevitable, and realizing that potentially at least the suffrages of the immense majority stand over them as a menace, they are beginning to seek other methods of action. Of course, in all the more democratic countries ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... has charge of the department for male minors: "Ranging from fourteen to nineteen years of age, of all nationalities and beliefs, fresh from the influence of questionable home environment, boisterous and brimful of animation, without ideas and thoughtless to a marked degree—this is the picture of the ordinary boy who is in search of employment. He is without a care and his only thought, if he has one, is to obtain as high a wage ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... soul's altar-piece. Lost, lost! and, with her, lost the uncompromising zeal of his earliest manhood. Only too consciously he had descended to a lower level; politics tempted him because they offered a field in which he could exercise his most questionable faculty, and earn with it a speedy return of the praise to which he was so susceptible. It marks his position to state that, when politics began seriously to hold his thoughts, he was with difficulty able to decide to which party he should attach himself. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... of the Boers. It has been asserted by a few Progressive members of the Raad that many of the Boers were themselves opposed to the policy adopted towards the newcomers; but, whilst this may be to some extent true, it is more than questionable whether any of the burghers were willing to concede a share in the power of government, although it is certain that great numbers would not have taken active steps against the Uitlanders but for the invasion by a foreign force. Any extending of the franchise means to the great majority ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... addressed to the Republican members of Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title, "Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church." The recipe is simple and efficacious—cease ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... be questionable, because as in all cases the styles and stigmata are more permanent than ovaries, there should be as many styles, etc. as ovaries. 2nd, because according to this view the placental suture of the carpella would be turned from the axis, (look at Pomaceae,) although his view of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... in reply to her inquiries, which left no doubt in Phyllis's mind of the feasibility of the undertaking. But its magnitude almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would ever have gone further in the wild adventure if, on entering the house that night, her father had not accosted her ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... with the infinitive) has been objected to by stylists," says the New English Dictionary (see art. "Commence"). Its use is sanctioned by the authority of Pope, Landor, Helps, and Lytton; but even so, it is questionable, if not objectionable.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... the volume in question! And yet, although I could not refrain from doing, what a score of admiring votaries had probably done before me—namely, bestowing a sort of oscular benediction upon the first leaf of the text—yet, I say, it may be questionable whether this copy be as large and fair as that in our Royal Collection!? Doubtless, however, this is a very fine and almost invaluable copy of the FIRST BOOK printed with metal types, with a date subjoined. You will give me credit for having asked for a sight of it, the very first ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... that Alexis, Bishop of Kazan, has turned your enemy, and has written to the Holy Synod regarding your questionable monastery at Pokrovsky," remarked Theophanus. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... It is questionable if we would have turned this stampede before daybreak, had not the nature of the country come to our assistance. Something over two miles below the camp of the last herd was a deep creek, the banks of which were steep ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... wife of Justinian, is certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he wrote, "in painting ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... than auriferously, and at the same time lightly, on Mr Dorrit's mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupendous character looked at him, in the course of his official looking at the dinners, in a manner that Mr Dorrit considered questionable. He looked at him, as he passed through the hall and up the staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed fixedness that Mr Dorrit did not like. Seated at table in the act of drinking, Mr Dorrit still saw him through his wine-glass, regarding him with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him that ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... his patron at the tavern long before this period arrived. He was on the search for Mistress Salisbury and knowing her haunts pretty well, he ran her to earth at a house of questionable repute in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Sally had had more to drink than the bottle of Mountain port her soul had craved for and was inclined to be boisterous, but her temper was apt to be uncertain. It was a toss up whether she laughed, cried or ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... deeply admired by all the young men of Lost Chief. Not only was he of the ultra-sophisticated type, dear to adolescence, not only was he by far the cleverest hunter in the valley, but, most important of all, his name was whispered in connection with horse and cattle deals, never called questionable by Lost Chief but always mentioned with a wink and a chuckle for their adroitness. To have been asked by Charleton to go as a partner on one of his mysterious trips was intoxicating enough to take the sting out of the fact that Scott met Judith that evening at the post-office ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... have any vivid remembrance of possessing it, of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious receivers, but surely this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very certain that we have it in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... de Xagua.) The streets of Trinidad have all a rapid descent: there, as in most parts of Spanish America, it is complained that the Couquistadores chose very injudiciously the sites for new towns.* (* It is questionable whether the town founded by Velasquez was not situated in the plain and nearer the ports of Casilda and Guaurabo. It has been suggested that the fear of the French, Portuguese and English freebooters led to the selection, even in inland places, of sites on the declivity of mountains, whence, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... his wife; her head had fallen; he could see that she was so rooted in her old remorse for that questionable act of his, amply and more than fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, now in the crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. He had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had thought it was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... occasions, at various times, there is in them no sequence of treatment, or even of conception. Except the last, however, they all have had a common origin in the war with Spain. This may seem somewhat questionable as regards the one on the Peace Conference; but, without assuming to divine all the motives which led to the call for that assembly, the writer is persuaded that between it and the war there was the direct sequence of a corollary to its proposition. The hostilities with Spain brought doubtless ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... early years of this century, such a linen-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The questionable sound of Silas's loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds'-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... "Even in this most questionable part of Tom Jones [i.e. the Lady Bellaston episode, chap. ix. Book xv.], I cannot but think after frequent reflection on it, that an additional paragraph, more fully & forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation on the discovery of the true character of the relation, in which he had ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... heartily to this end, he had almost accomplished it, when he received the suggestion for an experiment on a much larger scale. Embedded at the corner of a grassplot across the street was a whitewashed stone, the size of a small watermelon and serving no purpose whatever save the questionable one of decoration. It was easily pried up with a stick; though getting it to the caldron tested the full strength of the ardent labourer. Instructed to perform such a task, he would have sincerely maintained its impossibility but now, as it was unbidden, and promised ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... these suggestions, some of them certainly excellent, the only questionable one was at once adopted. Such is the irony of life. If we may imagine superior beings looking on at the affairs of men, and bearing some unperceived part of the great contest in the world, this was a thing to have gladdened all the hosts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... though unessential, changes. These alterations became much more extensive in the Latin octavo edition of 1531 and in the German revision of 1533. The Variata of 1540 and 1542, however, capped the climax as far as changes are concerned, some of them being very questionable also doctrinally. In their "Approbation" of the Concordia Germanico-Latina, edited by Reineccius, 1708, the Leipzig theologians remark pertinently: Melanchthon found it "impossible to leave a book as it once was." ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... questionable method of arguing that the high profits distributed by a Trust are themselves proof that prices have not fallen as they would have fallen under free competition, it is not possible to build a very convincing condemnation of the Trust from statistics of price. And even when profits are high ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... reputation of being susceptible to disease and hence being short lived as a tree. Whether or not this is actually the case is perhaps questionable. Many butternut trees, particularly those in favorable situations of soil and moisture, live to be of large size and old age. Trees on poorer, thinner soils apparently die off earlier than those under ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... September 28, 1793. Simcoe had discovered that there was much resistance to the slave law. There were many plausible arguments of the demand for labor and the difficulty of obtaining "Servants to cultivate Lands." "Some possessed of Negroes," said he, "knowing that it was very questionable whether any subsisting Law did authorize Slavery and having purchased several taken in war by the Indians at small prices wished to reject the Bill entirely; others were desirous to supply themselves by allowing the importation for two years. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... nations, a ray of clear light reveals the shams and shortcomings of what is hastily styled success. The pushing, elbowing fellow gets ahead in the struggle of life, but his success is a questionable one. The bargaining man, who, partly by instinct and partly by practice, judges everything from the point of view, "How is that going to affect me?" will no doubt make money. Even his most disinterested ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... the Sherman campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... programme came in a questionable shape to a suspicious time. It was not received with universal favour, and, to avert dissension, it was represented as a mere ballon d'essai and was abandoned. O'Connell died, and Repeal and Federation alike were swallowed up in ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... accustomed for so long a period to regard every other people as an enemy, and consequently absolutely removed from any possibility of friendship, that it was questionable whether the messengers could persuade the Chief to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... advanced as entitled to the hereditary honors of once noble families, and thus we still hear of pretensions to title of "the O'Brien," "the O'Donaghue," and a few others. That such pretensions are acknowledged by the generality of the nation, it would be questionable ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... le plus d'amour'—works as strongly marked by talent as by misapplied taste. The dramatic ability, the deep vein of poetry, the earnest thought, faith, and humanity of these dramas or drama, are beyond question—but very questionable to our mind is the extreme love of over-adorning truth which can induce a writer to represent plantation negroes as speaking elegant language and using lofty, tender, and poetic sentiments on almost all occasions, or at least to a degree which is exceptional ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Something of a suspicious, questionable, and uncertain nature. This is, I think, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... always healthy again,—it would seem as if, in recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that nothing will now ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Muker to the upper part of Wensleydale is by a mountain road that can claim a grandeur which, to those who have never explored the dales, might almost seem impossible. I have called it a road, but it is, perhaps, questionable whether this is not too high-sounding a term for a track so invariably covered with large loose stones and furrowed with water-courses. At its highest point the road goes through the Buttertubs Pass, taking the traveller to the edge of the pot-holes that have given their ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... cannot help fancying that his whole object was to get them to go. Sometimes I think that he must have a peculiar sense of humour, which it gives him great gratification to indulge, as others do good, by stealth. He makes questionable jests for himself only, and enjoys them alone. But apart from this eccentricity, he is a kind and generous man, always ready to help with time and money when there is any good to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... waiting to aid the flight of some one. The captain of the Guard, thinking so to catch the person for whom the boatman waited, had sent two bodies of men out, one to occupy the spot near which the boy had been found, the other to patrol the river bank in search of questionable persons. I had arrived on the quay in the interval between the boy's capture and ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of labor well achieved, some pastoral savage, more reflective and less practical than his brethren, took to star-gazing and noting in his memory certain strange coincidences. Doubtless he was chidden by his tribal leaders who were hard-headed men of affairs, skilled in the questionable art of imposing conventional behavior upon unruly tribesmen. But he was an inveterate dreamer, this prehistoric Newton and the fascination of the thing had gripped his mind. In due time he was gathered to his fathers, but not before he had ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... Secure from personal harm she might be, and was, no doubt; but who could say what moral consequences might follow her proceeding. What if her mother knew it? what if Mr. Carlisle? Eleanor felt she was doing a very questionable thing; but the desire to do it on her part amounted to a necessity. She must hear these words that would be spoken in the barn to-night. They would be on the subject that of all others interested her, and spoken by the lips that of all others could alone speak ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... With his enormous hat still on his head, even further on than usual, for the questionable castor, pushed down, no doubt, by violence, if we may judge by a transverse gap, covered Pipelet's eyes, who was on his back on the floor, at the foot ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... a modern sage, "is the dream of the wise, war is the history of man." To indulge in such dreams is but questionable wisdom. It was not a "peace-policy" which gave the Portuguese a seaboard extending from Cape Non to Macao. By no peace policy the Osmanlis of a past age pushed their victorious arms from the deserts of Tartary to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... perfectly transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice, lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure, got up in a style that would have done credit to Madame Pompadour, or any of the most questionable characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate devices; they wore on their hair flowers, gems, streamers, tinklers, humming-birds, butterflies, South American ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... life. And the full force of the tragedy of it all found a deep echo of pitying admiration in his heart. It seemed to him that the hand of Providence had fallen hard, and, in his human understanding, with more than questionable justice. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... gentleman was not unaccustomed to give private audiences to fishermen, and, as has been already hinted at the beginning of this tale, was reported to have private dealings with them also—of a very questionable nature. He received the two men, however, with the hearty air of a man who knows that the suspicions entertained of him by the calumnious world ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... with the questionable ambition of becoming rich. As foreman on a ranch at five dollars a day and found, he was reasonably contented with simple addition. On the sudden death of his employer he was left in full charge, with no one to call him to account, and addition ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... your interest in his genius (as I see not how you can avoid, having understood it and cooperated with it so truly), you will be glad to know that he values his American readers very highly; that he does not defend this offensive style of his, but calls it questionable tentative; that he is trying other modes, and is about publishing a historical piece called "The Diamond Necklace," as a part of a great work which he meditates on the subject of the French Revolution. He says it is part of his creed that history is poetry, could we tell it right. He adds, moreover, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... (B. 1824, Anhang 2.) Indeed, in their aversion to any and every form of synodical dominion over the congregations Tennessee frequently went so far as to create the impression that they viewed with suspicion and as questionable, if indeed not as directly objectionable and sinful, every form of organization of synods into a general body. On this point, also in her criticism of the General Synod, Tennessee frequently ran ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... and P'u-sa who are involved, it should be enough simply to pray. Why, then, must the women also go and pass the night in the temple? There must be some questionable artifice in that." ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli

... Book, and just set the Printer to it; one solid volume (rather bigger than one of the French Revolution Volumes, as I compute); it is a somewhat fiery and questionable "Tract for the Times," not by a Puseyite, which the terrible aspect of things here has forced from me,—I know not whether as preliminary to Oliver or not; but it had gradually grown to be the preliminary of anything possible for me: so there it is written; and I am ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... another difficulty, happily easy to reform, which somewhat interfered with the success of the performance. At the end of the incantation scene the Italian translator has made Macbeth fall insensible upon the stage. This is a change of questionable propriety from a psychological point of view; while in point of view of effect it leaves the stage for some moments empty of all business. To remedy this, a bevy of green ballet-girls came forth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... [1] The questionable morality of Gen. Washington's motto might suggest that it was not originally adopted by him. The sentiment, that "the end justifies the means," has been charged, as a reproach, upon the Jesuits. It was the motto of the Northamptonshire ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... is given as the correct reading in the 'Errata' (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately' in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but it is questionable if ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... fleeing at the gallop; the assassins loose-reined in pursuit, Burley Balfour, pistol in hand, among the first. No scene of history has ever written itself so deeply on my mind; not because Balfour, that questionable zealot, was an ancestral cousin of my own; not because of the pleadings of the victim and his daughter; not even because of the live bum-bee that flew out of Sharpe's 'bacco-box, thus clearly indicating his complicity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of man. He looks before and after. The outlook of the brute, if the questionable account which I have given of him is correct, is different. He looks to the present exclusively. The momentary experience takes all his attention. If it does not, he too in his little degree is a person. Could we determine this simple ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... orator, Csar's merit was so eminent, that, according to the general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Csar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due to him. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... and Lucinda Bowlsby can hardly be imagined. Lucinda was nineteen years of age. She was pretty, and, for a girl of her class and station in life, tolerably well educated. But she was notwithstanding a light, giddy creature—and, I fear, something worse, at that time. At all events, she had a very questionable sort of reputation among the boarders in the house, and was regarded with suspicion by everyone who knew anything about her poor Gagtooth ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent



Words linked to "Questionable" :   dubious, self-styled, dubitable, so-called, equivocal, funny, soi-disant, alleged, debatable, in question, supposed, deniable, suspicious, problematic, confutative, doubtful, contestable, unquestionable, problematical, shady, apocryphal, suspect, fishy, impugnable



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