"Ambiguous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meant to fill in details verbally. It was possible in conversation to impart a jesting turn to an adventure which would be unconvincing and ambiguous in the bald ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... passage, in the English translation mentioned in the preceding note, is incorrectly rendered, "to cross the lake of Batu"—an error probably due to ignorance on the part of the translator, of the location of Polangui, although the language of the author is not at all ambiguous. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... matter of good usage, the verb or any other part of speech should be repeated wherever its omission either makes the sentence ambiguous or gives it an ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... too—well!—theatrical; like characters from the cast of what your American theatre calls a crook melodrama. And then, if their intentions were so blessed pure and praiseworthy, what right had they to make so many ambiguous gestures?" ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... speech was perhaps somewhat ambiguous, but the man, being once released, dived into a narrow passage and disappeared. The crowd of Jews had shrunk into their shops again. Gregorios hastily concluded a bargain with Abraham, and then returned to finish his conversation with Marchetto. He ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... intimate relations with the French Emperor; his ridicule of the volunteer movement in England, with its cry of "Riflemen, form!" was grateful to Mrs Browning's political feelings. French troops were now in Rome; their purpose was somewhat ambiguous; but Pen had fraternised with the officers on the Pincio, had learnedly discussed Chopin and Stephen Heller with them, had been assured that they did not mean to fight for the Holy Father, and had invited "ever so many of them" to come and see mamma—an invitation which they ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Oxenstiern, while he lived, and after his decease, by his son and successor in his office. The Queen of Sweden was equally favourable to Grotius; but she unadvisedly took an adventurer into her confidence, and sent him, in an ambiguous character, to Paris. This disgusted Grotius: and age and infirmities now thickened upon him. He applied to the Queen for his recall. She granted it in the most flattering terms, and desired him to repair immediately to Stockholm, to receive, from her, distinguished ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... of a desperate duel. The occupations which he followed encroached, in their opinion, upon the article of Ellangowan's gentry, and he found it necessary gradually to estrange himself from their society, and sink into what was then a very ambiguous character, a gentleman farmer. In the midst of his schemes death claimed his tribute, and the scanty remains of a large property descended upon Godfrey Bertram, the present possessor, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... from the northern frontier derived increased interest from the ambiguous conduct observed by the inhabitants of that tract of country which now constitutes the state of Vermont. They had settled lands within the chartered limits of New York, under grants from the governor ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... were often obscure and ambiguous. When Croesus asked if he should make war on the Persians, the reply was, "Croesus will destroy a great empire." In fact, a great empire was destroyed, but it was that ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... one other question which Madame Faragon longed to ask; but she was almost too much afraid of her young friend to put it into words. At last she plucked up courage, and did ask her question after an ambiguous way. ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... jealousy of our friends, so much unfairness to our enemies;—such readiness to attribute to others the basest objects,—such willingness to avail ourselves of the poorest stratagems! The ends may be great, but the means are very ambiguous." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sort are almost in all cases of ambiguous interpretation. From the context of this passage it is clear, that by "idle words" we are to understand vicious words, words tending to instil into the mind unauthorised impulses, that shew in the man who speaks "a will most ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty much as she found him—unawakened to the deeps of his own nature—if she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it pleased Fate to give a fresh twist ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... a relation who combines the functions of a lady companion and a housekeeper; but she suffered from none of the humiliations which, for the most part, weigh upon the women who are so unhappy as to be obliged to fill these ambiguous situations. Lisbeth and Valerie offered the touching spectacle of one of those friendships between women, so cordial and so improbable, that men, always too keen-tongued in Paris, forthwith slander them. The contrast between Lisbeth's dry masculine nature and Valerie's creole prettiness ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the mountain Stream Roars in thy hearing; but thy hour of rest Is come, and thou art silent in thy age; Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs. 5 Oh! there is life that breathes not; Powers there are That touch each other to the quick in modes Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, No soul to dream of. What art Thou, from care Cast off—abandoned by thy rugged Sire, 10 Nor by soft Peace ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... to the girl. I respected her brave departure—I rejoiced that it was needless. Willingly I would have quieted her distress with some hopeful, ambiguous word, but that would have been trenching, as no one ever ought to trench, on the lover's sole right. So I held my tongue, watching with an amused pleasure the colour hovering to and fro over that usually impassive face. At last, at the opening of the study-door—we stood in the hall still—those ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... ambiguous words the Stadtholder moved forward, leaving the deputies covered with shame and swelling with indignation, while his countenance had speedily brightened. With more friendly gestures he now accepted the written ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... however, be supposed that in popular use the connotation of any word is invariable. Logicians have attempted to classify terms into Univocal (having only one meaning) and AEquivocal (or ambiguous); and no doubt some words (like 'civil,' 'natural,' 'proud,' 'liberal,' 'humorous') are more manifestly liable to ambiguous use than some others. But in truth all general terms are popularly and classically used in somewhat ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the sentence above quoted from the Parki's log, may be deemed somewhat ambiguous. At the time it struck me as singular; for the poor diver's grass bag could not have contained much of any thing valuable unless, peradventure, he had concealed therein some Cleopatra pearls, feloniously abstracted from the shells brought ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... ceased speaking and Violetta returned his bows, she fixed her eyes, filled with apprehension, on the sorrowful features of her companions. The ambiguous language of those employed in such missions was too well known to leave much hope for the future. They all anticipated their separation on the morrow, though neither could penetrate the reason of this sudden change in the policy of the state. Interrogation was useless, for ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deuce was she so provokingly ambiguous? And she had no intention of explaining. She simply waited ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... The Spanish Tragedy, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's Hamlet, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to AEsop's Kidde in the passage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... The ambiguous attitude of Zeus tends to complicate the situation. His Majesty the King narrowly missed being hit ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an enlightened one. But as often as they ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... getting Mr. Harper to sing. After the song had been given, she came up with a smiling face to her guest, and made the ambiguous remark: ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough macaroni or of an ambiguous frittura sufficed to transport me to the Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of one of the little round tables under ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... expenditure of purchase-money that I neither feel nor pretend to. He doesn't want—by what I spell out—the picture he refused at Dedborough; he may possibly want—if one reads it so—the picture on view in Bond Street; and he yet appears to make, with great emphasis, the stupid ambiguous point that these two 'articles' (the greatest of Morettos an 'article'!) haven't been 'by now' proved different: as if I engaged with him that I myself would ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... is both transitive and intransitive. We can say either I dare do such a thing, or I dare (challenge) such a man to do it. This, in the present tense, is unequivocally correct. In the past the double power of the word dare is ambiguous; still it is, to my mind at least, allowable. We can certainly say I dared him to accept my challenge; and we can, perhaps, say I dared venture on the expedition. In this last sentence, however, durst ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... which at first seemed nothing, but afterward was found an enormous privilege, as almost every matter of dispute came before them in this latter capacity. Besides, it is said that he was obscure and ambiguous in the wording of his laws, on purpose to increase the honor of his courts; for since their differences could not be adjusted by the letter, they would have to bring all their causes to the judges, who thus were in a manner masters of the laws. Of this equalization he himself ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... going to the House of God, he left all worry about the world on the outside of it, the moment he entered the porch; the drudgery of every-day life did not go with him into the pew; the prejudices of an ambiguous man troubled him not, while the disposition to "take things easy," while others bore the burden, was never ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... quite altered by the effect of his melancholy thoughts; and his resolution was now finally and irrevocably taken, of which the following ambiguous letter, which he addressed to his friend, may appear ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Sagan Country; and strides forward direct upon Berlin: Lacy, with 15,000, has started from Silesia, we saw how, above a week later (September 29th), but at a still more furious rate of speed. Soltikof,—theoretically Soltikof, but practically Fermor, should the dim German Books be ambiguous to any studious creature,—with the Main Army (which by itself is still a 20,000 odd), moves to Frankfurt, to support the swift Expedition, and be within two marches of it. Here surely is a feasibility! Berlin, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be delivered ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... on experiment to be really inconvenient, the federal government may then forbear the use of it, and have recourse to requisitions in its stead. By way of answer to this, it has been triumphantly asked, Why not in the first instance omit that ambiguous power, and rely upon the latter resource? Two solid answers may be given. The first is, that the exercise of that power, if convenient, will be preferable, because it will be more effectual; and it is impossible to prove in theory, or otherwise than by the experiment, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... this ambiguous speech, Mr. Ralph rose, begged Miss Sallianna to excuse him for a short time, and making her a low and devoted bow, took his way into the garden, and toward the spot where Fanny and Verty ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... the queen's expectations: the sentence against Mary was unanimously ratified by both houses, and an application was voted to obtain Elizabeth's consent to its publication and execution.[**] She gave an answer ambiguous, embarrassed; full of real artifice, and seeming irresolution. She mentioned the extreme danger to which her life was continually exposed; she declared her willingness to die, did she not foresee the great calamities ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... think not," replied Peggy, and it was not her fault if Rosetta Muriel thought the remark ambiguous. "Good night," she added hastily and turned away, fearful that a longer interview would bring her to the point of speaking her mind with a plainness hardly allowable on slight acquaintance. Like many people noted for tact and consideration, Peggy, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... which authentic monument was published by Montfaucon, (t. 2, Collect Patr. p. 55.) If Patavius, Bull, and others, who censure Marcellus, had seen this confession, they would have cleared him of the imputation of Sabellianism, and expounded favorably certain ambiguous expressions which occurred in his book against the Arises, which is now lost, and was compiled against a work of Asterius the Sophist, surnamed the advocate of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... speak of my creation of mankind. And here the terms of your accusation are ambiguous. I have to choose between two distinct possibilities. Do you maintain that I had no right to create men at all, that I ought to have left the senseless clay alone? Or do you only complain of the form in which I designed them? However, I shall have something ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... and had been going through the pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered orbits ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... very much better for geology if so loose and ambiguous a word as "contemporaneous" had been excluded from her terminology, and if, in its stead, some term expressing similarity of serial relation, and excluding the notion of time altogether, had been employed to denote correspondence ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... was not even ambiguous; Pole was desired to wait till an answer could be received from England; and the emperor wrote to Renard (August 3), desiring him to lay the circumstances before the queen and his son. He could believe, he said, that the legate himself meant well, but he had not the same confidence ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... cause of my ruin. How could 'the kingdom to be destroyed' possibly mean mine, the mighty realm of the powerful Croesus, the friend of the gods, the hitherto unconquered leader? Had a friend hinted at this interpretation of the ambiguous oracle, I should have derided, nay, probably caused him to be punished. For a despotic ruler is like a fiery steed; the latter endeavors to kick him who touches his wounds with intent to heal; the former punishes him who lays a hand on the weak or failing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... reserves, but also the erection of "parsonages and rectories according to the establishment of the Church of England," to be endowed out of the lands so allotted. (Sec. 38). But, in Lord Glenelg's opinion, the subject was never submitted for the signification of the King's pleasure thereon. Certain ambiguous words, in Lord Ripon's reply to a private communication from Sir John Colborne, was the authority relied upon for the hasty and unpopular act of the retiring Governor. The legality of the act was frequently questioned, but ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... mindful of the nymph whose wanton eye Transfixed his soul and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis, he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love. Meanwhile, he smokes, and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. But I, whom griping Penury surrounds, And Hunger, sure attendant upon Want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff, (Wretched repast!) my meagre corpse sustain: Then solitary walk, or doze ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... earnest and sincere in the wish for an immediate close of the war. With the hope of soon reducing Gibraltar, or of otherwise depressing England, they put forward at this time either inadmissible pretensions, or vague and ambiguous words. It therefore became an object of great importance to negotiate, if possible, a separate pacification with America. At first sight there appeared almost insuperable difficulties in the way of such a scheme. The treaty of alliance ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... kinds, but have all the same nature; the distinctive qualities of earth, and so on, are due to a modification (parinma) of the atoms. The Jainas further hold that the whole complex of things is of an ambiguous nature in so far as being existent and non-existent, permanent and non-permanent, separate and non-separate. To prove this they apply their so-called sapta-bhang-nyya ('the system of the seven paralogisms')—'May ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the first to express it thus whole-heartedly. There had been, of course, from all time the hymning of maiden purity and innocence, but beneath such celebrations had lurked that predatory instinct which a still more modern poet has epitomised in a haunting and ambiguous phrase— ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... ebullitions of natural anger. They pledged each other in silence, and the baron, having completed a copious draught, continued working his lips and his throat, as if trying to swallow his wrath as he had done his wine. Sir Ralph, not knowing well what to make of these ambiguous signs, looked for instructions to the friar, who by significant looks and gestures seemed to advise him to follow his example and partake of the good cheer before him, without speaking till the baron should be more intelligible in his demeanour. The knight and the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... even when presented to them, and that as a further consequence they are not to be criticised for their hesitancy in accepting the doctrine of the "Personality of God." It must be admitted that if "personality" is to be defined in the various ambiguous and contradictory ways in which we have seen it defined by advocates of Oriental "impersonality" much can be said in defense of their hesitancy. Indeed, no thinking Christian of the Occident for a moment accepts it. But if "personality" ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... to surmise what would have been the result if the action of the Federal Government in reference to the question of secession at the beginning of the rebellion, had been less ambiguous. It is enough to know, what was for many weeks so painfully realized by every Northerner in the South, that had the Southern people, by any means, been brought to understand that Federal laws were protected by sanctions, and that an attempt ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but the Duke of York beginning his attentions at the point where his majesty discontinued them, she was soon consoled for loss of the monarch's affection by the ardour of his brother's love. But a short time after, probably foreseeing the ambiguous position in which she stood, she forsook her lover, and accepted a husband in the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... own safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man understood better how to instigate others to desperate enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem innocent, or, at worst, ambiguous. Such was his cunning that, though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded every danger, and died in his bed, after having seen two generations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... enough to enquire in what way I proposed to employ the treasure when I had secured it; but that question I refused to answer, hinting that, in the present position of affairs, the less they knew about my plans the better it would be for everybody concerned; and with that rather ambiguous assertion they have been obliged to remain content. The outcome of the whole affair, however, is that to-morrow we start for the Sacred Island, accompanied by a gang of thirty labourers provided with the necessary tools; so now I think I may say that, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... disappeared. It must be acknowledged that the prodigies attributed to this period are very indifferently authenticated as compared with those reported by the pen of inspiration. [278:3] In some cases they are described in ambiguous or general terms, such as the narrators might have been expected to employ when detailing vague and uncertain rumours; and not a few of the cures now dignified with the title of miracles are of a commonplace character, such as could have been accomplished without any supernatural ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... {but} half a man, and that he may suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... told me by his lawyer, who looked after the case with interest and zeal. Outside of some ambiguous lines which this youth wrote to a woman before he left for Europe, lines in which the government's attorney saw a plot and a threat against the government, and which he acknowledged to be his, there wasn't anything found to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... in this picture is the fair adornment of the bride. The language is in part ambiguous; and if this were the place for commenting would require a good deal of comment. But we take it as it stands in our Bible, 'The King's daughter is all glorious within'—not within her nature, but within the innermost recesses of the palace—'her clothing is of wrought gold. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in an ambiguous expression, as he threw the sheet aside. He mused before opening the next letter. This proved to be of startling contents: a few lines scribbled informally, undated, without signature. A glance at the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... sense of a single unitary invention, is a synonym of process, method, and operation. The term "art" is ambiguous in popular usage. In the phrase "useful arts" in the Constitution, it denotes the area of endeavor to which the patent laws apply. When the word "art" is used to specify some fragment of the useful arts, it commonly raises different notions in different ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... no Remedy endeavoured. She reads you, and there is a Phrase or two in this Letter which she will know came from me. If we enter into an Explanation which may tend to our future Quiet by your Means, you shall have our joint Thanks: In the mean time I am (as much as I can in this ambiguous Condition be ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... you see, my German oracle; and I consult you with so much faith, that you need not, like the oracles of old, return ambiguous answers; especially as you have this advantage over them, too, that I only consult you about past end present, but not about what ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... may be taken to task for rendering lisiere "fringes," but the actual English equivalent "list" is not only ambiguous, not only too homely in its specific connotation, but wrong in rhythm. And "selvage," escaping the first and last objections, may be thought to incur the middle one. Moreover, while both words signify a well-defined edge, lisiere has a sense—special ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... ambiguous silence. There was an intelligence and alacrity about all the old man's movements, which indicated a person that could not be easily overreached, and yet (for even rogues acknowledge in some degree the spirit of precedence) our adept ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... gods, I tremble to unfold 630 What you intend! great Jove is now displeas'd; And in the breast of this slain bull are crept Th' infernal powers. My fear transcends my words; Yet more will happen than I can unfold: Turn all to good, be augury vain, and Tages, Th' art's master, false!" Thus, in ambiguous terms Involving all, did Arruns darkly sing. But Figulus, more seen in heavenly mysteries, Whose like AEgyptian Memphis never had For skill in stars and tuneful planeting,[645] 640 In this sort spake: "The world's swift course ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... The elements which may become prepotent in the process, the parts of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly turn, the possible bifurcations of suggestion, are so numerous and ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact. But, although we cannot work the laws of association forward, we can always work them backwards. We cannot say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of five minutes hence; but, whatever it may be, we shall then be able to trace it through ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... these vivid pictures, her eyes filled with tears; she thought she could not love him enough, and was tempted to regard her ambiguous position as a sort of tax levied by Fate on her love. Finally, invincible curiosity led her to wonder for the thousandth time what events they could be that led so tender a heart as Roger's to find his pleasure in clandestine and illicit happiness. She invented ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... from your lead, and be yourselves alive! Back to the ball-room speed your spectred host; Fools' Paradise is dull to that you lost. No treacherous powder bids conjecture quake; No stiff-starch'd stays make meddling fingers ache (Transferr'd to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, women in their shape): No damsel faints when rather closely press'd, But more caressing seems when most caress'd; Superfluous hartshorn and reviving salts; Both banished, by the ...
— English Satires • Various
... Vinci, mingling with his own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so wonderful was his memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. Seen through his eyes, the seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damasked chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over the landscapes brooded a wan spirit of evil that was very troubling. He loved the mysterious pictures in which the painter had sought ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... great room which Mr. Juxon had lined with well-filled shelves, they remained for hours absorbed in literary and scholastic talk. But whenever the vicar approached the subject of the squire's past life, the latter became vague and gave ambiguous answers to any direct questions addressed to him. He evidently disliked talking of himself, though he would talk about anything else that occurred to him with a fluency which Mrs. Ambrose declared ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... some members of both houses to wait upon her respecting this matter; when the lord-keeper explained their sentiments in a long speech, to which her majesty was pleased to reply after her darkest and most ambiguous manner. "As to her marriage," she said, "a silent thought might serve. She thought it had been so desired that none other trees blossom should have been minded or ever any hope of fruit had been denied them. But that if any doubted that she ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the presence of such abnormalities. They were almost afraid to pursue the ambiguous adventure. They received the impression of a heavy, stifling, breathless atmosphere, which dimmed the eyes and ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... walks of life, as canon, tradesman, partisan and public teacher, had tried his fortune, and proved himself useful in all; and who, besides dexterity and boldness, was also possessed of a thorough knowledge of the Italian language. Provided with credentials, somewhat ambiguous in their form,[6] he set out from Zurich alone; on the 11th of December, put to flight luckily two robbers, who attacked him on the plain of Brescia, and was introduced to the Doge and Council in ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... was too sincere by nature, and too strongly averse to experimenting in new fields of poetry, to attempt the affected or unique. He purposely avoided all subjects which he feared he could not treat with simplicity and clearness. So, in his shorter poems, there are few obscure or ambiguous passages, little that is not easy of comprehension. His subjects themselves tend to prevent ambiguity or obscurity. For he wrote of men and women as he saw them about him, of their joys and sorrows, their trials, their ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... full of abortive, ambiguous beings, fit for nothing. The average woman always seem to me to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... penances, these self-denying ordinances, I could never learn;[2] they certainly argue no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable waste which comes in maturer years. But in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be mistaken or depreciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785, when Mr. Perry, the steward, died. I must be pardoned for taking my instances from my own times. Indeed, the vividness of my recollections, while I ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... that Marx and Engels, in this early pronunciamento, were purposely ambiguous in their language. For example, they demand "the extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state." This is plainly a conservatively capitalistic or a revolutionary Socialist measure entirely according ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... is wont to rise, he who was noonday Sayer and midnight Snorer should couch below, while the Hearer should circle above,—plainly a wise provision, that the good things of Providence might not be wasted. Both Damon and Pythias agreed, that, for once at least, the oracle was not ambiguous. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and purged from ambiguity; Reason is the Pace; Encrease of Science, the Way; and the Benefit of man-kind, the End. And on the contrary, Metaphors, and senslesse and ambiguous words, are like Ignes Fatui; and reasoning upon them, is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... to be imputed to him, or the weakenesse of the Art, but their owne negligence or ignorance, who haue not exactly obserued such directions, and in that manner they were deliuered: or mistooke his meaning, which is commonly deliuered in[l] ambiguous tearmes, such as will admit a double construction: and herein appeareth the lamentable and woefull blindnesse of man, who is contented to swallow vp, and excuse many of his lies by one truth fore-told; which hath casually come to passe, whereas ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... its previous recognition even by Protestant states. Saxony had actually acknowledged this right of the Emperor; and it now became evident how deeply this court had injured the Protestant cause by its dependence on the House of Austria. But though the meaning of the religious treaty was really ambiguous, as a century of religious disputes sufficiently proved, yet for the Emperor, who must be either a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, and therefore an interested party, to assume the right of deciding between the disputants, was clearly a violation of an essential article of the pacification. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wasn't that she had anything against Miss Thatcher and the rest of them—they just didn't have the same tastes. She thought a person ought to spend some of the time improving their minds. Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers. He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens. She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... of Julian Avenel, engaged in a variety of feuds, and a party to almost every dark and mysterious transaction which was on foot in that wild and military frontier, required all these precautions for his security. His own ambiguous and doubtful course of policy had increased these dangers; for as he made professions to both parties in the state, and occasionally united more actively with either the one or the other, as chanced best to serve his immediate purpose, he could not be said to have either firm allies ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... thing one day and forgot it the next, and instead of that clearness of intellect for which he had credit, nothing could be more puzzled and confused than he was; that nothing could absolve him from the suspicion of duplicity and insincerity but the conviction that his ambiguous conduct on various occasions arose from a confusion of ideas. On the other hand, Lord Bathurst told my father that he thought they (Huskisson and his friends) were too much disposed to act together as a party in the Cabinet; and it is clear that the Duke thought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over the interview; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute nature. . ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks; the swift stag from underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... What then was the best way to induce reluctant or wavering minds, and these, I supposed, were the majority, to give in their adhesion to the new symbol? how had the Arians drawn up their creeds? Was it not on the principle of using vague ambiguous language, which to the subscribers would seem to bear a Catholic sense, but which, when worked out in the long run, would prove to be heterodox? Accordingly, there was great antecedent probability, that, fierce as the Articles might look ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... David, or of Moses, as for instance that "God will circumcise the heart," enables us to judge of their spirit. If all their other expressions were ambiguous, and left us in doubt whether they were philosophers or Christians, one saying of this kind would in fact determine all the rest, as one sentence of Epictetus decides the meaning of all the rest to be the opposite. So far ambiguity exists, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... Certain ambiguous phrases made use of in connection with eclipses of ancient date may perhaps in reality have been allusions to the Red Flames; otherwise the first account of them given with anything like scientific precision seems to be due to a Captain Stannyan, who observed them at Berne during the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... was solemnly burnt in the presence of the king, the queen, the court, and the mob. "What if 'twas my tale to Frei Jose that led to Dom Diego's arrest! But no, that were surely evidence too trivial, and ambiguous at the best." And he put the painful suspicion aside and hastened to shut himself up in his study, sending down an excuse to his mother and brother by Pedro, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... indebted to J.B. for a complete solution of the question respecting this ambiguous book. Bewildered by the frequent reference to it by nearly cotemporaneous writers, I had apprehended it certain, that it had been a printed, if not a published work; and that even a second edition had altered the title of the first. It is now ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... put an antic disposition on,— That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumber'd thus, or this head-shake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As 'Well, well, we know'; or 'We could, an if we would';— Or 'If we list to speak'; or 'There be, an if they might';— Or such ambiguous giving out, to note That you know aught of me:—this is not to do, So grace and mercy at your most need help ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... was that his sympathies, although greatly roused in her favour began to wane. She met the question with a cold stare followed by a few ambiguous words out of which he could make nothing. Had she said wretch? She did not remember. They must not be influenced by anything she might have uttered in her first grief. She was well-nigh insane at the time. But of one thing they might ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... before him in so terribly clear a light! Now that the day for his final demolishment had arrived, the necessity that he should be demolished—finished away at once, out of sight and out of mind—had not been softened, or, as it were, half hidden, by any ambiguous phrase. "You have had your cake, and eaten it—eaten it greedily. Is not that sufficient for you? Would you eat your cake twice? Would you have a succession of cakes? No, my friend; there is no succession ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... in this connection, that the higher the rank of the groups the more definite their limitation, or, in other terms, the fewer the ambiguous or doubtful forms, that genera are more strictly limited than species tribes than genera, orders than tribes, etc. We are not convinced of this Often where it has appeared to be so, advancing discovery has brought intermediate forms to light, perplexing ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... just so; oh, just so, of course." His tone was not in the least ironical, but a little hurried, as though, having put the thing in a way that might sound ambiguous, he hastened to prevent any possible misapprehension. May had looked for a twinkle in his eye, but his eye was guilty of no ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... revealed—a piece of conduct she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Province of Quebec, in 1892, the Municipal and School Franchise was conferred on widows and spinsters on the same terms as on men. The law relating to the right of women to sit on the School Board was ambiguous, so a petition was presented that they be declared eligible. The response to this was an amendment excluding women. In Montreal, under the old charter, only widows and spinsters who owned property had ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... from the bowels of somewhere waving smeared bits of printed paper and triumphantly demanded explanation of ambiguous passages. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... unknown to me. "I may be a stranger to the grounds of your belief. Pleyel loaded me with indecent and virulent invectives, but he withheld from me the facts that generated his suspicions. Events took place last night of which some of the circumstances were of an ambiguous nature. I conceived that these might possibly have fallen under his cognizance, and that, viewed through the mists of prejudice and passion, they supplied a pretense for his conduct, but believed that your more unbiased judgment would estimate them at their just value. Perhaps ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... your duty requires you to do in executing the latter clause of the Seventh Section of "An Act in relation to the payment of the principal and interest of the State debt," approved Feb'y 22, 1859, we reply that said last clause of said section is certainly indefinite, general, and ambiguous in its description of the bonds to be issued by you; giving no time at which the bonds are to be made payable, no place at which either principal or interest are to be paid, and no rate of interest which the bonds are to bear; nor any other description except that they are to be coupon bonds, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... dint of helping one another, of pushing and crowding in, will, in the end, be master of all. You may say that I am not in the crowd. Very true. I willingly shake hands with the workmen who work for me, and who earn their living worthily; but I do not shake hands with these ambiguous personages in yellow kids, who have no title but their impudence, and no means of living but their ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... any qualms about my qualifications to judge, apart from any dread of the consequences to myself, of absolving you, there is my sense of duty to Rome. Here are these cursed ambiguous oracles hinting some harm to Rome, mentioning fire and the Temple of Vesta and the Palladium. Perhaps what they mean is just the possible wrath of Vesta at an unworthy ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the revolt of Eyville or Vescy was the ambiguous attitude of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. Roger Mortimer was once more intriguing against him, and striving to upset the Kenilworth compromise. After a violent scene between the two enemies in the parliament at Bury, Gloucester withdrew to the march of Wales, where he ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... spectacles, while her father was trying, in ambiguous phrases, to explain to her too-practical brother-in-law that it might be as well not to say anything about Bold before her, and then retreated. Nothing had been explained to her about Bold and the hospital; but, with a ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... a sleepless dragon, was to the Greeks the natural apple. Hence we find Aristotle maintaining that the State is a natural product, because it is evolved out of social relations which exist by nature. Nature indeed was a highly ambiguous term to the Greeks no less than to ourselves, but in the sense with which we are now concerned, the nature of anything was defined by the Peripatetics as 'the end of its becoming.' Another definition of theirs puts the matter still more clearly. 'What each thing is when its ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... wouldn't have been restrained from the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case had served as a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguish—a poignant sense of how inconsistently I still depended on him. A delicacy that it was my one compensation to suffer to rule me had left the Alps and the Apennines between ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... are widely different from each other in almost everything else. It is important, therefore, to mark the radical difference between their respective systems, since it is apt to be concealed or disguised by the ambiguous use of the same phraseology by both. The one party may be described as the disciples of a Faith-Philosophy of Reason, the other of a Faith-Philosophy of Revelation: the former resolving all our knowledge ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... stool, her hands crossed over her knees, Jacqueline seemed no longer a creature of indefinite or ambiguous purpose. On the contrary, her profile was rimmed in light, and very matter-of-fact and serious ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... sense is so far from being identical with equality, that many of those who have been foremost in its defense have been members of aristocracies and holders of slaves. To accuse them of inconsistency is to be misled by the ambiguous meaning of a word. They fought for rights which they believed to be their own; they denied that the rights of all men were identical. During the eighteenth century in France, certain bodies, such as the clergy and the Parliament ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred ceremonies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loophole to escape at, and thus they break both their leagues and their faith; and this is done with such impudence, that those very men who value themselves on having suggested these expedients to ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... of exiling the Acadians,] it was agreed that a proclamation should be issued at the different settlements, requiring the attendance of the people at the respective posts on the same day; which proclamation should be so ambiguous in its nature that the object for which they were to assemble could not be discerned, and so peremptory in its terms as to ensure implicit obedience. This instrument, having been drafted and approved, was distributed according to the original plan. That which was addressed to the people ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... course, to certain inequalities in the distribution of wealth; but they fiercely resented the idea that such inequalities should give a group of men any special advantages which were inaccessible to their fellow-countrymen. The full meaning of their complaint against the Bank was left vague and ambiguous, because the Bank itself possessed special legal privileges; and the inference was that when these privileges were withdrawn, the "Money Power" would disappear with them. The Western Democrat devoutly believed that an approximately equal ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... her, to read what he might say, and to answer him. He then gave her various reasons why she should see him, pleading, among other things, in language which she could understand, though the words were purposely as ambiguous as they could be made, that he had possessed and did possess the power of doing her a grievous injury, and that he had abstained, and—hoped that he might be able to abstain for the future. She knew that the words contained no threat—that taken literally ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... of Virginia, and when she returned in the autumn, she found that the character of her home had changed perceptibly during her absence. Brightness had followed gloom; the fog of suspense had dissolved, and the hazy sunshine of an ambiguous optimism flooded the house. What the change implied she could not immediately discover; but before the first day was over she surmised that the financial prospects of her father-in-law had improved since the spring. If she had had any doubt of his rising fortunes, the sight of the diminished ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... ambiguous, but Kate stood up to it. "Luckily for us we may really consider she doesn't. So ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... being so ambiguous," Whitlow protested in a small voice. "Just what is this project? How does it work? Will it help us win ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... have I had what I should call an inside acquaintance with that dusty but attractive class of people who go about on the high-roads drunk but enfamille (so redeeming the minor lapse), in the summertime, with a perambulator, lavender to sell, sun-brown children, a smell, and ambiguous bundles that fire the imagination. Navvies, farm-labourers, sailormen and stokers, all such as sit in 1834 beer-houses, are beyond me also, and I suppose must remain so now for ever. My intercourse with the ducal rank too has been negligible; I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was still undiminished, I was none the nearer to a meal. At no great distance my cabman's eating-house stood, at the tail of a muddy cab-rank, on the shores of a wide thoroughfare of mud, offering (to fancy) a lace of ambiguous invitation. I might be received, I might once more fill my belly there; on the other hand, it was perhaps this day the bolt was destined to fall, and I might be expelled instead, with vulgar hubbub. It was policy to make the attempt, and I knew it was policy; but I had already, in the course of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compiling such a list would at once drag in The Odyssey and The Psalms, and run hastily on to Sir Thomas Browne and Charles Lamb, we are instinctively conscious that when it reaches, with its arbitrary divining rod, our own unlucky age, it will skip quite lightly over Thackeray; wave an ambiguous hand in the direction of Meredith, and sit solemnly down to make elaborate mention of all the published works of Walter Pater, Thomas Hardy and ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... laws also need revision. Those sections relating to persons residing within the limits of the United States in 1795 and 1798 have now only a historical interest. Section 2172, recognizing the citizenship of the children of naturalized parents, is ambiguous in its terms and partly obsolete. There are special provisions of law favoring the naturalization of those who serve in the Army or in merchant vessels, while no similar privileges are granted those who serve in the Navy or the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... This ambiguous position which Erasmus still occupied, also in things of the mind, appears still more clearly from the report which he sent to his new friend, the Frisian John Sixtin, a Latin poet like himself, of another disputation with Colet, at a repast, probably in the hall of Magdalen College, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... principally to this, that when a new Law is agreed to pass, the great Council generally appoint such amongst them as are Lawyers by Profession, to word it, or (as we say) to draw it up, who always, in Order to promote the Business of their own Profession, contrive it in ambiguous Terms; so that there is a double Meaning runs thro' every Sentence. This furnishes eternal Matter of Dispute betwixt Party and Party, and at the same time gives the Caja (for so they call a Judge) a Power of putting what Construction he pleases upon the ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... up, endeavoring to discover through the mysterious mask, and this ambiguous language, the name of her companion, who expressed herself with such familiarity and freedom; then, suddenly, wearied by a curiosity which wounded every feeling of pride in her nature, she said, "You are ignorant, perhaps, that royal personages are never spoken ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... up a handful of the soil and called attention to its goodness; and they also directly connected themselves in a positive manner with the Hochelagans by the dates and circumstances indicated in their remarks as above interpreted. The use of the term "Algonquin" concerning them is very ambiguous and as they were merged among Algonquin tribes they were no doubt accustomed to use that language. Their Huron-Iroquois name, the fact that they were put forward to interpret to the Iroquois in Champlain's first excursion; and that a portion of them had joined ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... hundreds and hundreds of yards long and entirely paved with stone, were a number of Chinese dead—men of some resolution, who had met the charge in the open and died like soldiers. That, indeed, had been our own experience. Even with the ambiguous orders which must have been given in every command ranged against us, there were always men who could not be restrained, but charged right up to our bayonets.... Now as I ran forward firing was going on just as heavily, and the ugly rush and swish of bullets filled the air ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his point of view not ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... was ambiguous, as Madison indicated. Notably, while neutral vessels having on board merchandise neutral in property, but British in origin, were to be seized when voluntarily entering a French port, it was not clear whether they were for the same reason to be arrested when found on the high seas; and there was ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... which the woman suffragist really places confidence in are those which are provided by undefined general principles, apothegms set out in the form of axioms, formulae which are vehicles for fallacies, ambiguous abstract terms, and "question-begging" epithets. Your ordinary unsophisticated man and woman stand almost helpless against arguments ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... shoal. The student may learn what manner of fish it was (the great Eagle-ray) with whose barbed fin-spine—most primitive of spear-heads—Ulysses was slain; and again, he may learn not a little about that ναρκη {narkê}, or torpedo, to which Meno compared his master Socrates, in a somewhat ambiguous compliment. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... pride and lust prepare." He is said to have visited a temple at Heraclea, where he had her spirit called up and implored her pardon. She duly appeared, and told him that "he would soon be delivered from all his troubles after his return to Sparta"—an ambiguous way of prophesying his death, which occurred soon afterwards. She was certainly avenged ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... Klondike had just come to town. Or, perchance, would Wall Street trim him? Wall Street had trimmed many wild men; would this be Burning Daylight's fate? Daylight grinned to himself, and gave out ambiguous interviews. It helped the game, and he grinned again, as he meditated that Wall Street would sure have to go some before it ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the Witch's hut is given in advance of the actual descent of the personally conducted gentleman for the somewhat ambiguous reason that he was to find it not at ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon |
