"Ambiguously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tried to focus his glassy eyes upon the arcana of spiritualism, rocking ambiguously the while upon the kerb. Mark murmured something more about the need for going ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... witnessed a sufficiently satisfying revolution. "I formerly spoke to very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and never once met with any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some did then believe in evolution, but they were either silent or expressed themselves so ambiguously, that it was not easy to understand their meaning. Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist admits the great principle of evolution" ("Origin," sixth edition, p. 424). At present the sale of the book in this country approaches forty thousand ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... worse starting single-handed than being left single-handed," offered Mis' Winslow somewhat ambiguously. "Lots does that's thrifty." ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... in respect of grammatical purity, speak unexceptionably, and yet speak obscurely and ambiguously; and though we cannot say, that a man may speak properly, and at the same time speak unintelligibly, yet this last case falls more naturally to be considered as an offence against perspicuity, than as a violation ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 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 ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the evidence of his Swift and of the Lives of the Novelists it may be added that he contemplated making a complete edition of Pope, and that he professed to like London and The Vanity of Human Wishes the best of all poems. James Ballantyne said, rather ambiguously, "I think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions."[222] In one of his letters Scott spoke of the "beautiful and feeling verses by Dr. Johnson to the memory of his humble friend ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... felicity of the human race she should occupy. Let us surround her with those ministers who can never deceive, who can never forfeit our confidence—Justice and Practical Knowledge. Let us listen to her eternal voice; she neither speaks ambiguously, nor in an unintelligible language; she may be easily comprehended by the people of all nations; because Reason is her faithful interpreter. She offers nothing to our contemplation but immutable ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... age, it has 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 become unintelligible and ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible—and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 a kind of stage disguise. So we ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... incorrect he will draw across a black stroke with his pen; he will lop off ambitious [and redundant] ornaments; he will make him throw light on the parts that are not perspicuous; he will arraign what is expressed ambiguously; he will mark what should be altered; [in short,] he will be an Aristarchus: he will not say, "Why should I give my friend offense about mere trifles?" These trifles will lead into mischiefs of serious consequence, when once made an object of ridicule, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... are seen, not as the poet sees his people, naked against a great darkness, but clothed and contemporary, from the level of an ironical observer who sits in a corner of the same room. It is the doctor who sits there, watching his patients, and smiling ambiguously as he infers from his knowledge of their bodies what pranks their souls are ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... though it was manifestly without design. But they judge ill of a man who had not the least art. It is doubtful whether he means that there is any being happy and immortal, or that if there is any being happy, he must likewise be immortal. They do not consider that he speaks here, indeed, ambiguously; but in many other places both he and Metrodorus explain themselves as clearly as you have done. But he believed there are Gods; nor have I ever seen any one who was more exceedingly afraid of what he declared ought to be no objects of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the Wag "thought he'd be getting along," and as he moved off the Maluka laughed. "Oh, missus, missus!" and Mac blurted out the whole tale of the edict—concluding rather ambiguously by saying: "Don't you go thinking it's made any difference to any of us, because it hasn't. We're not saints, but we're not pigs, and, besides, it ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... cried the maid ambiguously, in much excitement. 'Oh, ma'am, the gentleman has caught hold of Rangoon. He's got a wire mask on his face, and great thick gloves, not to be scratched. He's got Rangoon: he's putting him in a bag,' but by this time Miss Blowser, brandishing ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... most," he replied ambiguously. Harley showed disappointment. He craved a compliment ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... 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, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... quantity of bloodshed needed, of money, of idle talk and estafettes, not to speak of higher considerations, the saving had been incalculable. For it was England's one Cause of War during the Century we are now upon; and poor England's course, when at last driven into it, went ambiguously circling round the whole Universe, instead of straight to the mark. Had Oliver Cromwell lived ten years longer;—but Oliver Cromwell did not live; and, instead of Heroic Heads, there came in Constitutional Wigs, which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... terms is not of much value in Logic, what importance would else attach to it being absorbed by the more definite distinction of contradictories. For contradictories are positive and negative in essence and, when least ambiguously stated, also in form. And, on the other hand, as we have seen, when positive and negative terms are not contradictory, they are misleading. As with 'wise-unwise,' so with many others, such as 'happy-unhappy'; which ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... dealing with what it calls 'the meaning' of terms, propositions, etc., Formal Logic has always to choose between the meaning of the words and the meaning of the man. For it is clear that words which may be used ambiguously may on occasion leave no doubt as to their meaning, while conversely all may become 'ambiguous' in a context. If, therefore, the occasion is abstracted from, all forms must be treated verbally as ambiguous formulae, which ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... had even more 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 whatever, after due inquiry, he found to be superfluous. He discovered, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... "No?" I retorted ambiguously, enjoying the Inspector's manifest delight in this scene as much as I did my own secret thoughts and the prospect of the surprise I was ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... necessary to assume such a mistake on the part of Apuleius. Ambifariam may mean "ambiguously" in the sense of involving both sides of a contradiction (i.e. both of two contradictory propositions). This would suit the Protagoras passage well, for the argument, as the context shows, involves a contradiction. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... in the tone of his colouring than its arrangement. I have mentioned in the body of the work that Sir Joshua, certainly the greatest master of colour we have yet had in England, frequently speaks ambiguously of many of Rembrandt's pictures. I am therefore bound to quote a remark that he makes to his praise. In his Memoranda he says—"I considered myself as playing a great game; and instead of beginning to save money, ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... in all its wonder and perfection on Laurence Furnival's face. Averted suddenly from Mrs. Viveash, Furnival's face expressed the violence of his shock and his excitement. It was clear that he had never seen anything quite like Philippa Tarrant before, and that he found her incredibly and ambiguously interesting. Ambiguously—no other word did justice to the complexity of his facial expression. He did not know all at once what to make of Philippa, and, from further and more furtive manifestations of Furnival's, Straker gathered that the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... will be taken up later, Sergeant Blaise," said the major. "It will have to wait until after the battle. He might better have been killed in action a dozen times than have this happen," he added rather ambiguously. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... not know 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
... I replied ambiguously, but mayhap my grimness betrayed the truth. "Don't hurry me, Sally. I guarantee you'll ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... means," Henley answered, ambiguously, and he joined Wrinkle on the grass and they walked down the path together to the pigpen in a corner ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... capital city of 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, after all, go to bed fully clothed. One ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... for a quarter of an hour in a bare, dusty, drug-smelling ante-chamber, where also sat a woman who coughed without ceasing, and a boy who had a formidable bandage athwart his face. The practitioner, when he presented himself, failed to inspire her with confidence. He expressed himself so ambiguously about Thyrza's condition and gave on the whole such scanty proof of intelligence that Mrs. Ormonde felt it unsafe to leave him in charge of a case such as this. She easily obtained his permission to summon a doctor ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... eyes are in guiding our bodily movements, that the conscience is in guiding our moral actions. But as the eyes without light and knowledge are helpless as a guide, so conscience without love and truth is a blind monster. There is conscience and conscience. And as long as we use the term ambiguously and fail to discriminate between conscience proper and the term as used in the looser, larger sense, we will have nothing but confusion. Conscience proper is simply the impulse of the soul that urges us to do right as we see ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... the Romans call it, before the Calends of February, the murder was done. On that day, in the morning, Galba sacrificed in the Palatium, in the presence of his friends, when Umbricius, the priest, taking up the entrails, and speaking not ambiguously, but in plain words, said that there were signs of great troubles ensuing, and dangerous snares laid for the life of the emperor. Thus Otho had even been discovered by the finger of the god; being there just behind Galba, hearing all that was said, and seeing what was pointed out to them by ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Steynham in time to be consigned to the pocket-book before Beauchamp arrived there on one of his rare visits. Mr. Romfrey handed him the pocketbook with the frank declaration that he had read Shrapnel's letter. 'All is fair in war, Sir!' Beauchamp quoted him ambiguously. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always sleeping—when he isn't awake or eating," declared Emma ambiguously, causing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... ambiguously, "but I have been thinking of leaving you; you have been already too hospitable and too kind to me. I have given you an infinity of trouble, and I should wish to take a carriage tomorrow, and post in pursuit of her; I know where I shall ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Stavrogin began suddenly, with great earnestness, bending down to the table. Until then he had been talking, as it were, ambiguously, so that Lebyadkin, who had wide experience in playing the part of buffoon, was up to the last moment a trifle uncertain whether his patron were really angry or simply putting it on; whether he really ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the City. On this head Morris had no news. He had not yet dared to visit the family concern; yet he knew he must delay no longer, and if anything had been wanted to sharpen this conviction, Michael's references of the night before rang ambiguously in his ear. Well and good. To visit the city might be indispensable; but what was he to do when he was there? He had no right to sign in his own name; and, with all the will in the world, he seemed to lack the art of signing with his uncle's. Under these circumstances, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beforehand both the future calamities of the Jews, and the events that concerned the Roman emperors. Now Josephus was able to give shrewd conjectures about the interpretation of such dreams as have been ambiguously delivered by God. Moreover, he was not unacquainted with the prophecies contained in the sacred books, as being a priest himself, and of the posterity of priests: and just then was he in an ecstasy; and setting before him the tremendous images of the dreams he had lately had, he put up ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... well, she would have simply taken no notice of what he had written, and would not even have sent an answer; but she had not the heart to repulse him altogether in his present condition. There was a phrase cunningly introduced and ambiguously worded, which seemed to mean that he had come by his wound in her cause. He spoke of having suffered and of still suffering so much for her,—did he mean to refer to pain of body or of mind? It was not certain. Don Giovanni had assured her that she was in no way concerned ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... fling to-night," she said to the hostess. Lady Macquoich smiled ambiguously—so ambiguously that the consul thought it necessary to interfere for his friend. "She seems to say what most of us think, but I am afraid very few of us could voice ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the King of France and the republic of Venice. Louis hoped also to find at Rome in the new pope, Leo X. [Cardinal John de' Medici, elected pope March 11, 1513], favorable inclinations; but they were at first very ambiguously and reservedly manifested. As a Florentine, Leo X. had a leaning towards France; but as pope, he was not disposed to relinquish or disavow the policy of Julius II. as to the independence of Italy in respect of any foreign sovereign, and as to the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intended for cantillation, or some sort of rhythmical utterance addressed to the ear, has given to this word in modern times a special meaning that covers the idea of song or of singing, thus making it overlap ambiguously into the territory that more properly belongs to the word oli. The oli was in strict sense the lyric ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson |
