"Dubious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gravity of the evil which the recent Indian Press law has at last, though very tardily, done something to repress that many Englishmen are still apparently disposed to regard that measure as an oppressive, or at least dubious, concession to bureaucratic impatience of criticism none the less healthy for being sometimes excessive.[1] The following quotations, taken from vernacular papers before the new Press law was enacted, will serve to show what Lord Morley meant ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... and Tuesday I paid my usual visits to the fountain, and likewise rode about the neighbourhood for the purpose of circulating tracts. I dropped a great many in the favourite walks of the people of Evora, as I felt rather dubious of their accepting them had I proffered them with my own hands; whereas if they found them on the ground, I thought that curiosity might induce them to pick them up and examine them. I likewise on the Tuesday evening paid a farewell visit to my friend Don Azveto, as it was my intention to leave ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and in modern times this view has been held by so many distinguished writers that it deserves a brief examination. If we enquire on what evidence Osiris has been identified with the sun or the sun-god, it will be found on analysis to be minute in quantity and dubious, where it is not absolutely worthless, in quality. The diligent Jablonski, the first modern scholar to collect and sift the testimony of classical writers on Egyptian religion, says that it can be shown in many ways that Osiris is the sun, and that he could produce a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Doubt, question and speculation, mystery and anomaly, the illusions of sense, the instability of natures, all that was irrational in life, with its certainties of logic and hazards of chance, all that was unproven in religion, dubious in received opinion, obscure in the destiny of man, were but glimpses of a larger unity, vistas ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... my dear old chap! As I said at the beginning of my letter, the very thought of you is good for me, and never more so than at this moment, when I am alone in a strange city, with very dubious prospects, and an uncertain future. We differ as widely as the poles, you and I, and have done ever since I have known you. You are true to your faith, I to my reason—you to your family belief, I to my own ideas; but our friendship shows that the real essentials ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... them, at least, will not forget you, my lord," replied the minstrel, with his usual dubious ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of poor ridiculous well-intentioned Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency for so great a task being conceded—no small supposition, by the way,) much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fearful example made of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rather dubious at first, but eventually returned with a miscellaneous collection of bathing togs from which the boys finally evolved three pairs of trunks and two suits. Meanwhile Mr. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Gustavus pass'd the hours away. From earliest morn, ere day's third glass was run, } The chief had mused, nor mark'd the rising son; } And the retiring day appear'd as just begun. } Each flattering argument his mind revolved, Each gleam of patriot hope yet undissolved, Traced to its dubious source each meteor-light, 'Till the last spark went out, and all was night. Convinced at length, he spoke: the woods around With solemn awe return'd the mournful sound; And souls of patriots listen'd from on high, Uncertain yet of ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... especially that of a lady barbarian, was a curiously complex affair, and had been known to impel her to trample on a man one minute and the next to fall at his feet. Now the worm she had trampled on had turned; stood erect as a properly authenticated hero. I felt dubious as ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... thou pore in vain For dubious doorways! May revengeful moths Thy ledgers eat! May chronologic spouts Retain no cipher legible! May crypts Lurk undiscovered! Nor may'st thou spell the names Of saints in storied windows, nor the dates Of bells discover, nor the genuine site Of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... express, we have the miseries of the hotel; of some great hotel full of people, and yet so empty; the strange room, and the dubious bed! I am most particular about my bed; it is the sanctuary of life. We intrust our almost naked and fatigued bodies to it so that they may be reanimated by reposing between ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... his style are beyond praise. And its perfection is all the more notable that it stands in such contrast with the curious drop and uncertainty of his skill, so soon as there is something more, something different to be done. For Becky's dubious adventure has its climax, it tends towards a conclusion, and the final scene cannot be recalled and summarized in his indirect, reminiscential manner. It must be placed immediately before us, the collapse of Becky's plotting and scheming must ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... sometimes takes to dacoity. Unfortunately he is often given to strong drink, and, when his passions or his greed are aroused, can be exceedingly brutal. Jat in the Western Panjab is applied to a large number of tribes, whose ethnical affinities are somewhat dubious. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... part of the weather, when about the middle of January the wind begins to bluster and to abuse good-natured trees, shaking off twigs and whirling branches like a tipsy bully striving to dislocate a weak man's arm at the shoulder. We remember dubious events all too vividly when the recitation of them does not make for ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... of men differing but little from ourselves, save in the direction of their energies and in their outward surroundings, there is surely some clue to the secret of their success or failure, some light to be thrown by their experience upon our own dubious and ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... head, as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he continued:— "Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Sejour, nor Port Royal, Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:— "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... take a look through the glasses, and the consensus of opinion seemed to trend that way; though at first some of the more dubious were inclined to fear that it might only be another poaching boat, that was coming straight to the island to land a catch ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... was also a little dubious about it, but youthful enthusiasm and love of new adventures conquered. While the first sleds were descending the boys and the rest of the party not immediately occupied watched the operation with a good ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... whom it was hazardous to quarrel. She was the daughter-in-law of a Prince utterly incapable of popularity, yet singularly jealous of power. She was surrounded by a court, half Jacobite, and wholly unprincipled; and exposed to the constant observation of a people still dubious of the German title to the throne, contemptuous by nature of all foreign alliances, disgusted with the manners of the court, and still disturbed by the struggles of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... disabilities, indeed, under which she has been so long groaning, grounded as they are in no motives of policy, but averse to them all, ought rather to be ascribed to inadvertence than design. Engaged as this country has been in a tremendous conflict, on the dubious issue of which her very existence as a nation was staked, she has had little or no leisure for attending to the internal economy of her colonies: in the midst of her own unparalleled sufferings and sacrifices, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... it is an article of fixed belief among the stricter Presbyterians that Catholics are outside any scheme of salvation. Episcopalians, too, are regarded as being in an extremely dubious position. Any stick, however, is good enough to beat the partisans of the Pope. "Brethren," said a minister near Stornoway, "I have forgotten my sermon to-day: but I'll just say a word or two against the Catholics." Such a philippic, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... would be to write of peace in the Capital, where the old highways have been decorated for many kings, marshals, and admirals, and the flags have been hung for victories since England first bore arms. So why should one be dubious of a few unimportant suburban byways, where the truth is plain, and is not charged with many emotions through the presence of an emperor and his statesmen and soldiers, all of them great, all of them ready for our superlatives to add ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... {66} Translation very dubious. I suppose the [Greek] here to be the covered sheds that ran round the outer courtyard. See illustrations at the end ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... and return with a quatrain, flat as a pancake, wherein rhyme did duty for reason. M. du Chatelet had besides a very pretty talent for filling in the ground of the Princess' worsted work after the flowers had been begun; he held her skeins of silk with infinite grace, entertained her with dubious nothings more or less transparently veiled. He was ignorant of painting, but he could copy a landscape, sketch a head in profile, or design a costume and color it. He had, in short, all the little talents that a ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... have them, because they don't exist. If flesh and blood is not good enough for you you must go without: that's all. Women have to put up with flesh-and-blood husbands—and little enough of that too, sometimes; and you will have to put up with flesh-and-blood wives. The Devil looks dubious. The Statue makes a wry face. I see you don't like that, any of you; but it's true, for all that; so if you don't like it ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... certain subtle change," was the rather dubious reply of the old gentleman; "it is ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... a wealthy, witty, and learned divine, a doctor of laws, personally known to the Monk), and whether these people would ever be delivered from Purgatory was a matter of doubt; of the salvation of no other sinners does the Monk of Evesham seem so dubious. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... taken for granted by Biblical scholars that there were no codices extant in the world but these five, which contained data of a nature to enable us to reconstruct the text of the Septuagint. And the assistance given by these manuscripts was dubious at best, for they included the misleading additions incorporated in the text by Origen, merely marking them with asterisks, which were not only insufficient in number, but oftentimes wrongly distributed. No one ventured to hope that there was still extant a version from ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... seated himself on a chair that was beside the bed; he wore a dubious look, and, before speaking again, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the individual and the race. Corresponding to this is a mental difference; in many branches of study, though not all, the girl of fourteen is superior to the boy, quicker, more intelligent, gifted with a better memory. Precocity, however, is a quality of dubious virtue. It is frequently found, indeed, in men of the highest genius; but, on the other hand, it is found among animals and among savages, and is here of no good augury. Many observers of the lower races have noted how the child is ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a dubious smile, and a glance from one to the other. "Oh, I had hoped better things. But he still may? He still may. I am sure he may. In which case, Mademoiselle, your modesty must pardon me if I plead urgency, and fix the hour after supper ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... time in carrying out her plans. When she mentioned the operation to Phares Eby he looked dubious. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... got through mousing among the small scattered troups of foreigners (variegated they were) who had lately been coming in pell-mell, bringing their household knick-knacks with them. There was a Ghetto, there was a Little Italy, there were bits of Bulgaria, Bohemia, Armenia, if one had tired of dubious Louis Quinze and Empire. In an atmosphere of general newness a thing did not need to be very old ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... plank between me and all the sins was so very thin. I do not indeed intend in these notes to give a history of the inner life, which I think has been with me extraordinarily dubious, vacillating, and above all complex. I reserve them, perhaps, for a more private and personal document; and I may in this way relieve myself from some at least of the risks of falling into an odious Pharisaism. I cannot in truth have been an interesting child, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... instant Mr. Smivvle was astride the sill, but paused there to glance about him and twist a whisker in dubious fingers. ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... day, Although it's a little cloudy,— Or rather, as one might say, Smoky, perhaps,— A little hazy, a little dubious, A little too sulphury to be salubrious. D' ye mind those thunder-claps? Do you feel now and then the least little bit Of an incipient earthquake fit, Accompanied with awful raps? But give 'em gowdy, give 'em gowdy, And it'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... head to-day, and so let you off easily. Well, you ask me about it, that head, and I am not justified in being positive when my Doctor is dubious; as for the causes, they are neither superfluity of study, nor fancy, nor care, nor any special naughtiness that I know how to amend. So if I bring you 'nothing to signify' on Wednesday ... though I hope to do more ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the "set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the next ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... as would always redound to her honour and advantage. "With that permission, then," said Leonisa, "I beg it may not be taken amiss if I choose rather to seem overbold than ungrateful; and so, worthy Ricardo, my inclination, hitherto coy, perplexed, and dubious, declares in your favour, that the world may know that women are not all ungrateful. I am yours, Ricardo, and yours I will be till death, unless better knowledge move you ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nineteen shillings, holland shirts to the value of twenty pounds, and other goods of the said Mr. Fenwick, on the 8th day of September, 1730. This indictment being fully proved, the jury found Thomas Rivers guilty thereof. But being dubious whether Joshua Cornwall, as a servant within the house of Mr. Fenwick, could be properly convicted of burglariously breaking into his said master's house, they found their verdict as to him special; which the judges having considered, they were unanimously of opinion that the ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... brief impromptu play full of witty nonsense, caricaturing several of the distinguished company, whose appreciation was somewhat dubious, and Miss Dwight led the way down to supper. Clavering watched Madame Zattiany go out with the good-looking young editor of one of the staid old fiction magazines which he had recently levered out of its rut by the wayside, cranked up and driven with a magnificent gesture into ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... which are to be found in Dr. Mead's work on this subject. The solar influence also appears daily in several diseases; but as darkness, silence, sleep, and our periodical meals mark the parts of the solar circle of actions, it is sometimes dubious to which of these the periodical returns of these ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... "Mexico" grunted a dubious affirmative. But "Peachy" was disappointed, for in a voice reverent, but unimpassioned, the preacher for the day led the people's devotions, using the great words taught those men long ago who knew not how to pray, "Our Father who art ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... this tragedy filled in so well with the phenomena they had witnessed, the Gordons could not help regarding the story as a very probable explanation of the hauntings. But, remember, its authenticity is dubious. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and to my no small disparagement and discomfort," said the knight, verily believing that he had not whistled; for deep and dubious were ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... shipper stands alone, he might have been provided with the necessary funds from the pious and charitable establishments, possibly without risking a dollar of his own in the whole operation. Under circumstances so dubious, far from presuming to give a decided opinion on the subject, I am compelled to judge from mere conjectures, and guided only by the knowledge and experience I have been able to acquire during my long residence there. In conformity ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... a certain Commander Bowen, aboard the Albemarle, alleged that rubble from shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coast of New Georgia. But d'Entrecasteaux was unaware of this news—which seemed a bit dubious anyhow—and headed toward the Admiralty Islands, which had been named in a report by one Captain Hunter as the site of the Count de ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... took on a more dubious look, if that were possible. He humbly suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road, and the rain ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... this merely pained me, but a strange incident unexpectedly occurred which converted me to the general opinion about him. Flachs was a man of some means, and had fallen into the toils of a young lady of dubious character who he believed was deeply in love with him. One day, without warning, I found his house closed to me, and discovered, to my astonishment, that jealousy was the cause. The unexpected discovery of this liaison, which was my first experience of such a case, filled me with ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... state: President Laurent GBAGBO (since 26 October 2000); note - seized power following a popular overthrow of the interim leader Gen. Robert GUEI who had claimed a dubious victory in presidential elections; Gen. GUEI himself had assumed power on 25 December 1999, following a military coup against the government of former President Henri Konan BEDIE head of government: Prime Minister Seydou DIARRA (since 25 January 2003); note - appointed as transitional ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... magnificent trip on toward the peak. Without, the rain falls softly and maliciously, slackening at times in order to taunt us with glimpses of fugitive blue overhead. We wait and conjecture; plans and anecdotes and a good fire help wonderfully to hurry the time. The landlord offers but dubious prophecies; and the window-panes prophesy as dubiously, as we peer out into the grey mist and the dripping, shivering park. Nature's resentments are strong, and when she gives battle she fights to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... their low and unmentionable customs. The young Gregory, known by the diminutive of Gricha, began his exploits at a very tender age, and earned the sobriquet of Rasputin, which means "debauched." He was mixed up in all kinds of dubious affairs—for instance, thefts of horses, the bearing of false witness, and many acts of brigandage. He was even sentenced more than once to be flogged—a penalty of which the local law-courts made generous use in ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... openly telegraphed to Escobedo at Queretaro, was known at once in San Luis, and caused a fury of excitement. For none doubted but that it meant eventual pardon. The tender hearted rejoiced. The rabid ones muttered. The wise shook dubious heads. And even as Jacqueline and Berthe were hurrying back to Queretaro in the canvas-covered coach, another caller was admitted roundly on the president's privacy, without so much as being announced. Juarez wondered if his orderly had gone crazy, for the newcomer thus obsequiously ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... wire obstruct the passage of those careless or adventurous persons who may desire to explore the forbidden side of the house. The front door is bolted and barred: visitors, after approaching stealthily along the lee of a hedge, like travellers of dubious bona fides on a Sunday afternoon, enter unobtrusively by the back door, which is situated on the blind side of the chateau. Their path thereto is beset by ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... with Jacob Meyer? The knowledge of his own folly, understood too late, filled him with shame. How could he have been so wicked as to bring a girl upon such a quest in the company of an unprincipled Jew, of whose past he knew nothing except that it was murky and dubious? He had committed a great crime, led on by a love of lucre, and the weight of it pressed upon his tongue and closed his lips; he knew ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... himself an unhappy pride at the lasting force of this infatuation. It interested him as a phenomenon; it amazed and enlightened him. Such a thing had not visited him before. It confirmed so much that he had found dubious in ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... a middle-aged Scotch half-breed with a house full of sons and daughters ranging from the age of four to twenty. How could they all be housed in three small rooms was almost the first dubious query which presented itself to Thompson. His mind, to his great perplexity, seemed to turn more upon incongruities than upon his real mission there. That is, to Thompson they seemed incongruities. The little things that go to make up a whole were each impinging upon him with a force he could ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with Doris had certainly not been helpful to either. Doris, while almost assured as to her father's freedom, was at least dubious about her own, so much so that she gently but firmly refused to consider herself in any way engaged to Alan, and Alan, as any other honourable young man would have done in the circumstances, pleaded ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... unto them I turned me, and I spake, And I began: 'Thine agonies, Francesca, Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, By what and in what manner Love conceded That you should know your dubious desires?' And she to me: 'There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. But if to recognize the earliest root Of love in us thou hast so great desire, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... After all the dubious stumblings he had come to the end of the road, to find awaiting him the great accusation and the great reward. By the unanswerable logic of results, in its effect upon others and upon himself, his deed had proved itself ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... as near and grasping as ever, but I saw even this side of him in a new light now, for he had been near and grasping for Jack. He was rather uncertain when we met; glad enough, of course, to see an old friend back again safe and sound, but dubious on ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... up and down the great Salles des Pas Perdus of the Palace of Justice. This man, carefully buttoned up in an overcoat, appeared to be attended at a distance by several possible supporters—for certain police enterprises employ assistants whose dubious appearance renders the passers-by uneasy, so much so that they wonder whether they are magistrates or thieves. The man in the buttoned-up overcoat loitered from door to door, from lobby to lobby, exchanging signs of intelligence with the myrmidons who followed him; then came back to the great Hall, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... a coldness in our national character, have caught the inspiration and enthusiasm for the works and the celebrity of genius; the symptoms indeed were long dubious. REYNOLDS wished to have one of his own pictures, "Contemplation in the figure of an Angel," carried at his funeral; a custom not unusual with foreign painters; but it was not deemed prudent to comply with this last wish of the great ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... element had been introduced into the horror of the little tableau. All eyes were fixed upon Quest, who had listened to the Inspector's dubious words with a supercilious smile ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... things, Louis XIV agreed, and a general call was sent out to all French architects to enter the lists. Confusion reigned, and Levau was about to be recalled when Colbert spied an unrolled parchment in the corner and pounced upon it eagerly as the means of saving him from the dubious efforts of the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... changes can only be inaugurated by those who feel the unrighteousness of contemporary conditions, and the expression of their scruples may be the one opportunity for pushing forward moral tests into that dubious area ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... is this," said Orne. "Government is a dubious glory. You pay for your power and wealth by balancing on the sharp edge of the blade. That great amorphous thing out there—the people—has turned and swallowed many governments. The only way you ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... pleasant to Pons to find all his old enjoyments restored to him without any loss of self-respect. The world had come to Pons, he had risen in the esteem of his circle; but Schmucke looked so downcast and dubious when he heard the story of the triumph, that Pons felt hurt. When, however, the kind-hearted German saw the sudden change wrought in Pons' face, he ended by rejoicing with his friend, and made a sacrifice of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved in the jambs—initials of by-gone generations of householders who had ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... hostile—to interest itself benignantly in so small and neutral a personality as stared back at her from the large, dim mirror of Cousin Maria Van Deuser's third-story back bedroom. Not that Miss Philura ever admitted such dubious thoughts to the select circle of her conscious reflections; more years ago than she cared to count she had grappled with her discontent, had thrust it resolutely out of sight, and on the top of it she had planted a big stone marked Resignation. Nevertheless, at times the stone heaved ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... chief command in perilous expeditions against the Danes, and the whole defence of all the coast of England. North and south along the coast he sailed with all his warships, and the Danes and Englishmen long remembered the dashing but dubious ways of this young sea-rover, who swept the English coast and claimed his dues from friend and foe alike. For those were days of insecurity for merchant and trader and farmer, and no man's wealth or life was safe except as he paid ready tribute ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... inviting him to dine with the editor alone, at Hampstead. Jewdwine, whose health required pure air, had settled very comfortably in that high suburb. And, as his marriage seemed likely to remain long a matter for dubious reflection, he had arranged that his sister Edith should keep house for him. In inviting Rickman to dine at Hampstead his intention was distinctly friendly; at the same time he was careful to fix an evening when Miss Jewdwine would not be there. He was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... chief was quite dubious as to the sail, for he had never seen such a contrivance used. His country lay far up the broad Ugambi River, and this was the first occasion that any of his people had found their way to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... resulting verse. Take such a phrase as "the madded land"; there, indeed, is a word coined by the noble rage as the last century evoked it. "The madded land" is a phrase intended to prove that the law-giver of taste, Johnson himself, could lodge the fury in his breast when opportunity occurred. "And dubious title shakes the madded land." It would be hard to find anything, even in Addison, more ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... artificial teeth and insertible eyes, served only as a shield, screening his real activity—to wit, the traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... sleepy. Upon expostulating with him for keeping the caravan so long waiting when there was a march on hand, in a most peculiar voice—which he always assumed when disposed to be ugly-tempered—he said he had done the best he could; but as I had seen the solemn pace at which he rode, I felt dubious about his best endeavours; and of course there was a little scene, but the young European mtongi of an East African expedition must needs sup with the fellows ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... once more appeared dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of those ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... of a sufficient space for the accommodation of the hut was no light task for unaccustomed hands, for the bloodwood trees were mighty and tough, and the dubious work of burning up the trunks and branches while yet green, in our eagerness for free air and tidiness, was ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... to find words which would fully express his feeling. He had come a long way these last hours in his ideas of life; he saw things naked and clear cut, without dubious shades. But he had to realize now that what his soul accepted as incontrovertible ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... princess of the blood who led a pure life at a court that was renowned for its depravity. Once assured that her accomplices would be prudent and obedient, Catherine began to spread abroad certain vague and dubious but terribly serious rumours, only needing proof, and soon after the cruel accusation was started it was repeated again and again in confidence, until it reached ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... weather-washed swing-sign, on which is depicted an Indian in full war-paint, is known as the "Choctaw Chief," and is kept by a man supposed to be a Mexican, but who may be anything else; having for his bar-keeper the afore-mentioned "Johnny," a personage supposed to be an Irishman, though of like dubious nationality as ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... after a minute, getting on to his feet and thrusting both hands into his pockets with an energetic air. "I'm rather dubious about the books and the translation business; but anyway we can have a ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... emancipation was accomplished not by deliberate legislation; only through agonized violence could so mighty a result be effected. In our natural solicitude to confirm the benefit of liberty to the blacks, let us forbear from measures of dubious constitutional rightfulness toward our white countrymen —measures of a nature to provoke, among other of the last evils, exterminating hatred of race toward race. In imagination let us place ourselves in the unprecedented position of the Southerners—their position as regards the millions ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... editor of a moneylosing art magazine in the interior, it was my duty occasionally to visit his galleries. After such visits the remnant of my New England conscience usually forced me to diminish or actually to spoil many a sale of the dubious or merely fashionable antiquities in which he dealt. But in the main my power to harm him was slight. He held in a knowing grip the strings of his patrons' vanity and taste. So he regarded me with ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... which one would have thought too bloody and dangerous to afford their sex much pleasure. The lower and interior space was soon filled by substantial yeomen and burghers, and such of the lesser gentry, as, from modesty, poverty, or dubious title, durst not assume any higher place. It was of course amongst these that the most frequent disputes ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Adelaide showed me her camel's-hair scarfs which Desmond had brought, and her dresses. Ann tried them all on, walking up and down, and standing tiptoe before the glass, while I trimmed a handkerchief with the lace I had purchased. I unfolded my dress after they were gone, with a dubious mind. It was a heavy white silk, with a blue satin stripe. It might be too old-fashioned, for it belonged to mother, who would never wear it. The sleeves were puffed with bands of blue velvet, and the waist was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... permission To intimate to 'John' The dubious condition Of the ground he's standing on"; And, dropping the suggestion To "mind what he's about," It stuns him with the question: "Does his ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... I was joking at first; and when I'd made them understand that I was in dead earnest, they shook their heads and looked dubious, fearing it ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dubious about my setting off without some prepared food, popoi or canned fish or biscuits, and without sleeping-mats. "You ketchee hungery by an' soon," he protested. "No ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... agents,'' including ambassadors. With the evolution of the diplomatic hierarchy, however, the term gradually sank until it was technically applied only to the lowest class of "diplomatic agents,'' without a representative character and of a status and character so dubious that, by the regulation of the congress of Vienna, they were wholly excluded from the immunities of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for their respective characters than if they had been patterns of good behavior. Some of the others were not so fortunate. One young man, whose name is properly withheld from us, was expelled from the institution. He was supposed to have been the ringleader in this dubious business, but Hawthorne manfully resented the supposition that any one could have influenced him, or did influence him, in this matter. It is more likely that he was influenced by the spirit of investigation, and wished ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... me to remark his deportment towards his family, his neighbors, his domestics, his very dogs and cats; everything that comes within his influence seems to catch a beam of that sunshine that plays round his heart." Now, while the prospects of the "Sketch Book" were still dubious, Scott offered him the editorship of an Anti-Jacobin magazine. Irving declined it, first on the ground of his dislike for politics, and second on account of his irregular habits of mind. "My whole course of life has been desultory, and I am unfitted for any periodically recurring task, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... She seemed dubious about this. Our wives instinctively disapprove of people we used to know prior to that happy meeting which led to marriage. This prejudice, for some reason, is stronger against our feminine acquaintances than the others. I am not analytical enough to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... whom the careless glance of Helen's cousin took for a casual tourist about to view the ruins. Helen herself, and in the same moment, Irene, recognised Piers Otway. It seemed as though Mrs. Borisoff would not rise to welcome him; her smile was dubious, half surprised. She cast a glance at Irene, whose face was set in the austerest self-control, and thereupon not only stood up, but ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... long and bad. Doyle wanted to attempt the old army road along the rim made by General Crook when he moved the captured Apaches to the reservation assigned to them. No travel over this road for many years! Haught looked dubious, but finally said we could chop our way through thickets, and haul the wagon empty up bad hills. The matter of decision was left to me. Decisions of such nature were not easy to make. The responsibility was great, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... life; whereas six months ago real life was the bad dream, and the life of opium held love and bliss, important affairs and political interests. Alas! To my grief, I see the dawn over my tomb, where truth and falsehood mingle in a dubious light, which is neither day nor darkness, but partakes ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... references may be cautious of reply. A selfish desire to retain the customer for themselves, or the higher motive of a desire to be true to the interests of both the inquirer and the customer may produce dubious or very incomplete reports. If a bank be among the references one does not place too much stress upon a very favourable reply from it, because a merchant usually learns the lesson of expediency in making a friend of his banker. And, moreover, one endeavours to ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... girl, I went occasionally to a country house, the show place of the neighbourhood, where there were copies of this series of Rubens' pictures. I can remember yet looking at them with utter bewilderment, caused by the dubious taste that impelled Rubens to indulge in the oddest mixture of royal personages, high church dignitaries, patron saints, and gods and goddesses.) In 1628 Rubens was in Spain on a mission from his sovereign to her kinsman, Philip IV.; in the following ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... separating the creator from the thousand men and women of his creation, have driven many to seek answers to these questions in the sonnets. There he speaks in the first person, and there are revealed not merely some dubious hints of actual incidents, but the surer indications of emotional conflicts that went to the heart of the man's nature. At their worst, the sonnets may have been only literary exercises on conventional themes, but at their best they are surely both superb poetry and the result of genuine emotion. ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... of July, 1500, and did not make his appearance in Hispaniola till the 23rd of August of the same year. Their Highnesses, therefore, must have taken time before carrying their resolve into execution; and what they meant by it is dubious. Certainly, not that the matter should have been transacted in the coarse way which Bobadilla adopted. It is a great pity, and a sad instance of mistaken judgment, that they fixed upon him for their agent. I imagine him to have been such ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... medical man should be asked to be in attendance at a banquet such as this was natural, and when I looked over the list of toasts and found that the clergymen had been omitted, I took it as an intended though perhaps rather dubious compliment to my profession, the supposition being that the services of the clergy would not of course be required. When I was asked to respond to this toast, in an unguarded moment of good nature, which is remarkable even in me, I was beguiled into consenting ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... feminine touches that are so often best applied by the hand of man. There is nothing in the room inimical to the ladies, unless it be the cut flowers which are from the garden and possibly in collusion with it. The fireplace may also be a little dubious. It has been hacked out of a thick wall which may have been there when the other walls were not, and is presumably the cavern where Lob, when alone, sits chatting to himself among the blue smoke. He is as much at home by this fire as any gnome ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... then, with equal lustre bright, Great Dryden rose, and steer'd by Nature's light. Two glimmering Orbs he just observ'd from far, The Ocean wide, and dubious either Star, Donne teem'd with Wit, but all was maim'd and bruis'd, The periods endless, and the sense confus'd: Oldham rush'd on, impetuous, and sublime, But lame in Language, Harmony, and Rhyme; These ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... all in the election now close on us, and that in stating, as bound, what my own clear knowledge of your qualities was, I have strictly held by that, and abstained from more. But the news I now have from Edinburgh is of such a complexion, so dubious, and so surprising to me; and I now find I shall privately have so much regret in a certain event—which seems to be reckoned possible, and to depend on one gentleman of the seven—that, to secure my own conscience in the matter, a few plainer words seem needful. To whatever I have ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... great majority of Sunday school teachers have no desire to try any auxiliary organization in combination with their classes. They are somewhat dubious of the machinery, ritual, etc., which are concomitants of these schemes. Again and again they have voiced a demand, not for new organizations, but for activities to deepen interest in the organization that the teacher understands—the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... in common will bankrupt us. That's what worries me. You see, Bones and Ralph haven't worked with the rest, to any extent, at least. How can they fill their parts in the machine? I'm dubious, that's all, even while hoping for the ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... way, and speedily in full sail. Ere long an evident indecision of purpose manifested itself, the motive or subject failing to elicit other than dubious answers to its calls; it was emphasised with loudness, not without signs of impatience, but to no purpose; all became hopelessly involved and incoherent, until at length, like the ice ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... out, and reflected that his chances of success were dwindling. His recent conversation had left upon his mind, for some reason which he hardly stopped now to explain, a disagreeable impression; and he felt a trifle wearied of this very dubious enterprise. What likelihood was there, if his aunt had lived here a long time past, as he assumed in his calculations, that she would have failed to make herself known in some way to Doctor Chocker? since the vision which he had of this worthy lady was that of a kind-hearted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... even the writer of an anti-Semitic novel unheard. But then it was an open secret in the family that Raphael was mad. They did their best to hush it up, but among themselves they pitied him behind his back. Even Sidney considered his cousin Raphael pushed a dubious virtue too far in treating people's very prejudices with the deference due to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... as Simon's, was a gaming-house of the second class: frequented, as the shabby finery of some and the tarnished arms of others seemed to prove, by the poorer courtiers and the dubious adventurers who live upon the great. It was used in particular by the Guise faction, at this time in power; for though Henry of Valois was legal and nominal King of France, Henry of Guise, the head of the League, and the darling of Paris, imposed ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... vow indeed is ratified: Yet faithful ears have heard this offer made, And weighty was the conference that ensued, And long, not dubious; for what mortal e'er Refused alliance with illustrious power? Though some have given its enjoyments up, Tired and enfeebled by satiety. His friends and partisans, 'twas his pretence, Should pass uninterrupted; ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... State was not compatible with his office and resigned; and, though others, including the Secretary for War, hung on to their position, it does not appear that they influenced Buchanan much, or that their somewhat dubious conduct while they remained was of great importance. Black, the Attorney-General, and Cass, the Secretary of State, who, however, resigned when his advice was disregarded, were not only loyal to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... went on railing for a quarter of an hour, and was very reluctantly appeased by Mrs. Riccabocca's repeated and tearful assurances that she would never even whisper to herself that her husband had ever held any other rank than that of Doctor.—Riccabocca, with a dubious shake of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... think about us? You believe that some great, nameless crime has banished us to this island outside the world? that we drive some dubious trade, of which one can not speak? or that we are the homeless heirs of some dishonored name, who must hide from the sight of the authorities? Say, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... being made, King Ferdinand closed the dubious campaign of this year, not, as usual, by returning in triumph at the head of his army to some important city of his dominions, but by disbanding the troops and repairing to pray at ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Stamfordham surrounded by a bevy of attractive ladies beseeching him to give them an autograph, to buy a buttonhole, to drink their tea, to put into their raffles, and to have his fortune told, he felt still more dubious as to the mission he was engaged upon. Fortunately Rachel realised none ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... it means to Constance and Janet to find two girls of their own sort so near," declared Donald Ferry, bringing his cup to take it with Josephine close beside the doorway. "I think they've been feeling a little dubious over finding us out here in a place which had neither lake, seashore, nor ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... boots, and with his high and mighty dragoon manners. For a time his talk about shares after dinner was perfectly intolerable; and I for one was always glad to leave him in the company of sundry very dubious capitalists who frequented his house, and walk up to hear Mrs. Fanny warbling at the piano with her little children about ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the temptation to save the friend she absolutely worships by giving evidence before the judges, be it what it may, only her grandparents can decide. Her tender years would at any rate detract from the validity of her evidence, and I am averse to involving a child of this house in this dubious affair. With regard to Katharina, it is, on the contrary, the duty of this court to request her presence, and I offer myself to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the construction of a canal from Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River, and on July 4, 1828, President Adams dug the first spadeful of earth to signalize the beginning of the undertaking. Some financiers of Baltimore, dubious of the success of an effort to build a waterway over the difficult route adopted by the promoters of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, withdrew their support from that enterprise, and putting their confidence in a new and almost untried transportation device, ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... to me was not particularly interesting in himself. My interest was aroused by his dependent position, his strange, dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked, worn-out European living on the reluctant toleration of that Settlement hidden in the heart of the forest-land, up that sombre stream which our ship was the only white men's ship to visit. With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... responded to all questions with a stare and the statement that he did not know, and seemed anxious to leave everything in doubt until the latest moment possible. His daughter, who was brighter and less dubious in her responses than her father, was a slight girl with lustrous black eyes, wistful lips, a perfect form, and black hair covered with a linen cloth that the dust might not come near its glossy threads. When she made her appearance, flashing out of a huge dark ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... to palliate a single inconsistency or to deny one dubious act. Anticipating surprise at numerous apparently weak performances, he neither minimized nor evaded, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... thought this sounded like a doxology, and some crossed themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father de ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Plato that their quest was sure to end in finding what they sought. Many a man then, and many a man since, and many a man to-day, has 'followed knowledge, like a sinking star,' and has only caught a glimmer of a far-off and dubious light. There is only one search which is certain always to find what it seeks, and that is the search which knows where the object of it is, and seeks not as for something the locality of which is unknown, but as for that which the place ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... descend upon his follower. But Christ, though, as we have said, He left no legacy of falling mantle to any, left His Spirit to His people. What Elisha gained, Elijah lost. What Elisha desired, Elijah could not give nor guarantee. How firm and assured beside Elijah's dubious 'Thou hast asked a hard thing,' and his 'If thou see me, it shall be so,' is Christ's 'It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away the Comforter will not come, but if I depart, I will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise, and as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... save by himself until 1828, when his son re-observed them with a 20-foot reflector, similar to that with which they had been originally discovered. Thenceforward they were kept fairly within view, but their four questionable companions, in spite of some false alarms of detection, remained in the dubious condition in which Herschel had left them. At last, on October 24, 1851,[237] after some years of fruitless watching, Lassell espied "Ariel" and "Umbriel," two Uranian attendants, interior to Oberon and Titania, and of about half their ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... feet, a white spot on his nose, and a mane that swept to his knees. "His name's Nack-yal," Withers had said. "It means two bits, or twenty-five cents. He ain't worth more." To look at Nack-yal had pleased Shefford very much indeed, but, once upon his back, he grew dubious. The mustang acted queer. He actually looked back at Shefford, and it was a look of speculation and disdain. Shefford took exception to Nack-yal's manner and to his reluctance to go, and especially to a habit the mustang had of turning off the trail to the left. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... much to be said for the preaching at St Andrew's.) The Established folk went on calling the minister of Knox Church "Mr" Drummond long after he was "Doctor" to his own congregation, on account of what they chose to consider the dubious source of the dignity; but the Knox Church people had their own theory to explain this hypercriticism, and would promptly turn the conversation to ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Mr. Hackit, in a modest and dubious tone, as if throwing out a hypothesis which might be considered bold, 'I should say that's a bad sort of eddication as ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... of the village, who made an audience. In the front row sat the strange spinster, Miss Nairn, a thin, sharp nosed woman of fifty, in rusty black clothes, holding her head high; not far from her the dubious publican who had been Maurice Barron's companion on a certain walk some days before. There too were Hugh and Rose Flaxman. And just as the proceedings were about to begin, Henry Barron opened the heavy door, hat in hand, came in with a firm ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the idol that still persistently rose up lofty and enigmatic before his imagination, do what he would to abase it. With cynical cruelty, he set himself to insult, to undermine, to mutilate it. The destructive analysis he had already employed upon himself, he now turned upon Elena. To those dubious problems which, at one time, he had resolutely put away from him, he now sought the answer; of all the suspicions which had formerly presented themselves to him only to disappear without leaving a trace, he now studied the origin, found them justified and obtained ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... relieved, and so doubtless do our readers, in passing from the dark tragic story of Swift, and his dubious and unhappy character, to contemplate the useful career of a much smaller, but a much better man, Isaac Watts. This admirable person was born at Southampton on the 17th of July 1674. His father, of the same name, kept a boarding-school for young gentlemen, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... country, people, or our Lord were of any great importance in the world. They are expositors of how very low the position to which He, the Lord of lords, descended. You can realise the fact as well in England as here, by substituting a Scripture-reader of dubious birth and humble parents, exposing the fallacy of a ceremonial church-going religion, and pointing out how impossible it is to please God by ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... reflections in the rippling clearness of the green water. A wooden bridge crosses the river at the narrow end of the funnel-shaped harbour, connecting it with the town in the steaming valley, the usual medley of open tokos and atap huts, supplemented by two dubious hotels, a green aloon-aloon, and a few stone houses denoting the presence of the European element. The original inhabitants of Gorontalo are of Alfoer race—dark, glum, and forbidding. How this ancient stock, indigenous to some of the southern islands in the Malay Archipelago, wandered from thence ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... so, but for the time to come I shall put little trust in him. Going such a dubious way, he might well have stopped for a God ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... weeping soon had good cause. Ferd rushed away, rushed into another marriage, with an heiress and a beauty, as it happened, and Mary Lou had only the dubious consolation of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... upper one; and right over the head of it was a bull's- eye, or circular piece of thick ground glass, inserted into the deck to give light. It was a dull, dubious light, though; and I often found myself looking up anxiously to see whether the bull's-eye had not suddenly been put out; for whenever any one trod on it, in walking the deck, it was momentarily ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... with which our story is concerned, there was in Moscow a certain widow, a Georgian princess, a person of somewhat dubious, almost suspicious character. She was close upon forty; in her youth she had probably bloomed with that peculiar Oriental beauty, which fades so quickly; now she powdered, rouged, and dyed her hair yellow. Various reports, not altogether ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... infinitely better is the attitude of trust that what is our own will gravitate to us in obedience to eternal laws. But I there learned that he had written the poem when a young man, life all before him, his prospects in a dubious and chaotic condition, his aspirations seeming ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... my companions; where you will have to live, with rum-and-water—drinking gentlemen—farmers, and drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, who, if she doesn't quarrel with your mother, will at least cost that lady her position in society, and drag her down into that dubious caste into which you must inevitably fall. It is no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your downfall will not hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its place in the world. It is only your mother and yourself that ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... orders to keep out everyone except those scheduled for appointment, and to announce the names and businesses of dubious cases for his deciding, but Kesby must have overridden her decision. He ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... thine innocent hands. Troy bore me; not alien to thee am I, nor this blood that oozes from the stem. Ah, fly the cruel land, fly the greedy shore! For I am Polydorus; here the iron harvest of weapons hath covered my pierced body, and shot up in sharp javelins." Then indeed, borne down with dubious terror, I was motionless, my hair stood up, and the accents faltered ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... showing the transcriber of the MS. considered its authorship dubious. Supposing that the author was Dionysius, which of the many writers of that name was he? Again, if he was Longinus, how far does his work tally with the characteristics ascribed to that late critic, and peculiar ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... concerned. Yea, may not the king after all leave this person, with others under the same transgression, to sue for, and obtain this pardon with great expense and difficulty, with many tears and heart-achings, with many fears, and dubious cogitations. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... collar: its import, whether in the shape of punishment or decoration, is at this time doubtful. A visage of more than ordinary size projected from between a pair of shoulders that nearly overlooked the lower rim of his cap. A sort of dubious leer was its predominant expression, heightened ever and anon by a broad laugh, the eldritch shout of which first announced itself to the ear of the pilgrim. Matted and shaggy, the twisted locks hung wildly about his brow, whilst a short and frizzled ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the old man, with a dubious shake of the head. "It's nigh about the easiest thing in the world to git into trouble with Dud Peakslow. I gener'ly go my way, and let Peakslow go hisn, and waste few words on him. But I don't mind gwine with ye, if ye say so. How did Peakslow ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... be fourteen years old; and the judge's decision six months later that future holidays should be passed with Lady Gould, away from the influence of the second Mrs Fielding, doubtless severed the lad's connection with his dubious stepmother for the next six years. His home life, then, during the latter part of his Eton schooling would be under Lady Gould's care; and was probably ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... lovely rosy shield, with much posturing and many sharp "clicks," essayed to find out what manner of irreverent intruder this might be. Later his modest gray-clad spouse joined him. They circled around to view the wonder on all sides. They exchanged dubious-sounding opinions. They were as little "used to seeing a lady" as the oxen. They slipped away, and in a moment I heard ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... members representing manufacturing districts of Lancashire have found themselves unexpectedly called upon to vote upon some measure for crippling or extending rival manufactures in India; for opening new markets by some very dubious aggression in a distant land; or for limiting the child labour employed in the local manufacture; and these members have often believed that the right course was a course which was exceedingly repugnant to great sections ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... surely cry 'St. Michael! Who is this that stands With Ireland in his dubious eye, And Perigord ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... seppuku offered, naturally enough, no small temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the agio, so to speak, was not always solid gold, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... I were as well served abroad as the King of Spain is here," she said aloud, that the retreating ambassador might hear the dubious compliment; and for my lord's ear alone she added under her breath: "The spy! Philip of Spain will ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the dubious exceptions to this rule, such as words with an enclitic attached, e.g. prim[)a]que in which some authorities put the stress on the vowel which precedes the enclitic, or such clipt words as 'illuc', where the stress may at one time have fallen on the last ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... truthful criticism of the performance, which was a classical burlesque, wherein the star displayed an unconventional frankness of shapely limbs and unrestrained gestures and glances; but he applauded the more dubious parts equally with the audience. He was evidently familiar with the performance, for a look of eager expectation greeted most of the "business." Either he had not come for the entire evening, or he did ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... a rather dubious smile over the quip. This much he felt that he could afford, since those same courts served his personal ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana |
