"Equivocal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curiously a weak spot in Hooker's character than the odd pride he took in Mr. Lincoln's somewhat equivocal letter to him at the time of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... phalanx of opposite authors with Hans de Laet, the great Dutchman, at their head, and at one blow tumbles the whole fabric about their ears. Hans, in fact, contradicts outright all the Israelitish claims to the first settlement of this country, attributing all those equivocal symptoms, and traces of Christianity and Judaism, which have been said to be found in divers provinces of the new world, to the Devil, who has always effected to counterfeit the worship of the true Deity. "A remark," says the knowing old Padre ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... contempt the local Courts and authorities by continually making all sorts of ridiculous and ex parte complaints to Her Majesty's Government in the first instance; Her Majesty's Government is also thereby placed in the equivocal and undesirable position of intermeddling in the internal affairs of this Republic, which is in conflict with the London Convention. Had the complaints been lodged with this Government, or with the proper officials ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... called from the number of large raisins that were showing their black heads in a substance of suspiciously similar color. At each corner of the table stood saucers, filled with a thick fluid of some what equivocal color and consistence, variegated with small dark lumps of a substance that resembled nothing but itself, which Remarkable termed her sweetmeats. At the side of each plate, which was placed bottom upward, with its knife and fork most accurately crossed ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... follow, because Shakespeare's early life was incompatible with a course of Education—whose Contemporaries, Friends and Foes, nay, and himself likewise, agree in his want of what is usually called Literature—whose mistakes from equivocal Translations, and even typographical Errors, cannot possibly be accounted for otherwise,—that Locke, to whom not one of these circumstances is applicable, understood no Greek?—I suspect, Rollin's Opinion of our Philosopher was ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... hurt and frightened her by his violence. He felt ashamed of himself now. By daylight he could see her point of view. Mary was so tactful and resourceful that she might safely be trusted to hush up the affair, to explain away the equivocal position in which she had been found. After all, both of them were known to be decent, God-fearing people. And one had only to look at Mary to see that here was no light woman. Nobody in his senses—not even Grindle—could think evil of that broad, transparent ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... to pursue a course so equivocal without arousing suspicion. In after years many who had been committed to it became ashamed of their actions, and loudly proclaimed that they had really been devoted to the Union; to which it was sufficient to answer that if this had been the case, and if they had been ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... said, slowly, "if they might not find their presence here a little equivocal. Your Majesty is no longer a private individual, and Mr. and Miss Van Decht, however agreeable in themselves, are not of the rank which entitles them to a ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... English church) troubled me like an anthem. "Sunday!" what was that? That was the day of peace which masked another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. "Palms!" what were they? That was an equivocal word; palms, in the sense of trophies, expressed the pomps of life; palms, as a product of nature, expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice; it was not merely ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the term Fellows of the House was applied, at Harvard College, both to the members of the Corporation, and to the instructors who did not belong to the Corporation. The equivocal meaning of this title was noticed by President Leverett, for, in his duplicate record of the proceedings of the Corporation and the Overseers, he designated certain persons to whom he refers as "Fellows of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... It is a perfect Penelope's web. Carpenters and bricklayers have been at work for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand and wonder whether anything has really been done. One exploit in last June was, however, by no means equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the limes shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was not a creature in the house but the workmen), so he had all the leaves stripped from every tree. There they stood, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... themselves had experience of the marriage bed are said to detect the virgin. The virgin's eyes are cast down and almost motionless, while she who has known a man has eyes that are bright and quick. But this sign is equivocal, says Schurig, for girls are different, and can simulate the modesty they do not feel. Yet this indication also rests on a fundamentally sound psychological basis. (See "The Evolution of Modesty," in the first volume of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to define the flavour of that speech, but Renouard received it with an austerely equivocal smile. The professor stepping into the boat opened his parasol and sat down in the stern-sheets waiting for the ladies. No sound of human voice broke the fresh silence of the morning while they walked the broad path, Miss Moorsom a little in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Captain Larimore in 1704 played an equivocal part in the case of Quelch and his pirate crew (see no. 104, post), assisting their attempts to escape, but his testimony as to prize-money is to be valued, as that of an experienced shipmaster and privateer. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... and noble purposes would, as the embodiment of the administrative authority, be the very best provision for the government of Colonies constituted as ours are. But he has also pointed out, and that in no equivocal terms, that the above are far from having been indispensable qualifications for the patronage of Downing Street. He has shown that the Colonial Office is, more often than otherwise, swayed in the appointment of Colonial Governors by considerations among which the special fitness of the man appointed ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... question of equivocal generation, I have been compelled, more conspicuously and frequently than I could wish, during the last ten years, to enunciate exactly the same views as those put forward by Professor Virchow; so that, to my mind, at any rate, the denial ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... so straight that he looked taller even than that; blue-gray eyes full of a canny twinkle; freckles,—yes, freckles that were really past the bounds of belief, for up into his hair they ran, and to the rims of his eyes,—no pale, dull, equivocal freckles, such as might be mistaken for dingy spots of anything else, but brilliant, golden-brown freckles, almost auburn like his hair. Once seen, never to be forgotten were Donald Mackintosh's freckles. All this does not ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... finishing Colombe's Birthday.[21] That play is a beautiful triumph of poetry over prose, of soul and heart over calculation and business. A Soul's Tragedy exhibits the inverse process: the triumph of mundane policy and genial savoir faire in the person of Ogniben over the sickly and equivocal "poetry" of Chiappino. Browning seems to have thrown off this bitter parody of his own idealisms in a mood like that in which Ibsen conceived the poor blundering idealist of the Wild Duck. Chiappino is Browning's ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Antoine's equivocal statement as to Mrs. Bashford's age was ridiculous. Instead of the middle-aged woman whom I was prepared to meet, here was beyond question a vigorous, healthy being whose every movement spoke for youth ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... is the most precise and least equivocal of any; but it is not brief enough, and is besides too technical for common discourse. The more usual mode of declaring the connotation of a name, is to predicate of it another name or names of known signification, which connote the same aggregation of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... or modifications of our own being, which alone—according to this system—we actually behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motion in our own brains. (3) That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation nor precludes the necessity of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percipient, which, at the more than magic touch of the impulse ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... period occurred in my practice. July 1st I attended a lady in labor, who was afterwards quite ill and feverish; but at the time I did not consider her case a decided puerperal fever. On the 8th I attended one who did well. On the 12th, one who was seriously sick. This was also an equivocal case, apparently arising from constipation and irritation of the rectum. These women were ten miles apart and five from my residence. On 15th and 2Oth two who did well. On 25th I attended another. This was a severe labor, and followed by unequivocal puerperal ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... submit to the shifty weather of "the mistress's" moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie's presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young gentleman of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of procedure, to allow things to make their own impression; and the result is attained by following the order of impressions in the mind of one of the actors, or of a looker-on. "To see things as they are" is an equivocal formula, which may be claimed as their own privilege by many schools and many different degrees of intelligence. "To see things as they become," the rule of Lessing's Laocoon, has not found so many adherents, but it is more certain in meaning, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... quarrel with curiosity; so far from complaining of yours, I am come merely with a design to gratify it, and only expect you will judge of my desire to oblige you by my readiness in obeying your commands; were I myself the subject, the motive for my obedience might be equivocal.' ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... and turned to Anaitis: now that the candles were behind him, she was standing in his shadow. "Well, well! but you are a little old-fashioned, with all these equivocal mummeries. And I did not know that civilized persons any longer retained sufficient credulity to wring a thrill from god-baiting. Still, women must be humored, bless them! and at last, I take it, we have quite fairly fulfilled the ceremonial requisite to the pursuit ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... misalliance by marrying a painter, and where a literary man (in spite of all we can say against it) ranks below that class of gentry composed of the apothecary, the attorney, the wine-merchant, whose positions, in country towns at least, are so equivocal. As, for instance, my friend the Rev. James Asterisk, who has an undeniable pedigree, a paternal estate, and a living to boot, once dined in Warwickshire, in company with several squires and parsons of that enlightened county. Asterisk, as usual, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was too equivocal and uncertain to last. Catherine strove, as long and as firmly as maiden could strive, against her love; whilst Herbert fed his by every sort of attention it was possible to evince. At length Dodbury felt the necessity of some strong measure. He perceived that consent to the ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... points in the history or character of persons of whom they have no previous knowledge, they at the same time persuade themselves that they see something indicative of their circumstances in their finger nails. Such is the equivocal character of the greater part of their sect: but there are some who are mere honest dupes to the pretensions of the science; and others again, who have not one tittle of credulity ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... have acknowledged it if he had, smiled the indulgent smile of a self-satisfied superior and uttered a few equivocal sentences. This was gall and wormwood to Sweetwater, but he kept his temper admirably and, with an air of bravado entirely assumed for the occasion, said to ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... the declaration of war is said to have a retroactive effect, and to render it liable to be considered as the property of enemies taken in time of war. The property is seized provisionally—an act hostile enough in the mere execution, but equivocal as to its effects, and liable to be varied by subsequent events, and by the conduct of the government, the property of whose subjects is so detained. Where the first seizure is equivocal, if the matter in dispute terminates in reconciliation, the seizure is converted into a ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... sound less equivocal, Lydia, if you added that the money is to build baths in our Shelter for ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... with the humiliation of their old rival, aimed at her absolute ruin, though she had broken no treaties. The Carthaginians, broken-hearted, sent embassy after embassy, imploring the Senate to preserve peace, to whom the senators gave equivocal answers. The situation of Carthage was hopeless and miserable—stripped by Masinissa of the rich towns of Emporia, and on the eve of another conflict with the mistress ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... went this evening to present my billet on a respectable looking house, the door was opened by the lady of it, wearing a most gingerly aspect. She told me, with an equivocal sort of look, that she had two spare beds in the house, and that either of them were at my service; and, by way of illustration, shewed me into a sort of servant's room, off the kitchen, half full of apples, onions, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... temporary gain but in the long run of life that man will be far ahead who deals squarely and honestly at all times. A thoroughly honest clerk will command a higher salary than one of equivocal habits, while the merchant who has a reputation for honesty and truthfulness in regard to the quality and value of his goods, will on this account he favored with a considerable custom. The business man whose "word is as good as his bond" can in any emergency, control large ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... to notice his proffered arm, Chloe walked beside him in a sudden pensive silence which Anstice found oddly appealing after her impetuous speech; and for a moment he forgot his own equivocal position in a desire to help her through what he guessed ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to their origin is offering an ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to the comforts of the trig, close house that Mrs. Royston had built for her, and the abundance of warm furnishings and nutritious food, a degree of luxury indeed which was hardly known elsewhere in the Boundary. Her prosperity had evolved the equivocal advantage of restoring her prestige as a sibyl, and she had entered upon a new lease of the practice of the dark arts of fortune-telling and working charms and spells. He gave a humorous account of her expressions of gratitude to him for the restoration ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... own equivocal position in Belvedere, a free boy, a leader afraid of his own authority, proud and sensitive and suspicious, battling against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his mind. The letters cut in the stained wood of the desk stared upon him, mocking his bodily weakness and futile ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Anna Comnena supposes, that Hugh was proud of his nobility riches, and power, (l. x. p. 288: ) the two last articles appear more equivocal; but an item, which seven hundred years ago was famous in the palace of Constantinople, attests the ancient dignity of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... recognition is very satisfactory.—No more, thank you, Sir Richard," the lady replied, not without a touch of acerbity. Ludovic was very clever no doubt; but his comments often struck her as being in equivocal taste. He gave a turn to your words you did not expect and so broke the thread of your conversation in a rather exasperating fashion. "Very satisfactory," she repeated. "And, of course, the constituency is fully informed of the attitude ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... interest the daintiest bits of scandal and the most equivocal adventures that took place among the elite. It was their happiness and their glory to learn the smallest details of the high life of Paris; to follow its feasts, speak in its slang, copy its toilets, and read its favorite books. So that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of civilization were the least equivocal, however, on and around a natural elevation in the land, which arose so suddenly on the very bank of the stream, as to give to it the appearance of a work of art. Whether these mounds once existed everywhere on the face of the earth, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... indirectly, but harder, more unjust to him, to pause without dissipating the cloud we have unexpectedly cast over him. The temptation to scrutinize his conduct and bearing is irresistible. Is it not better to lay bare all the facts, than to leave matters in the equivocal condition ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... philandering he had never experienced so keen a desire for conquest; and if this inexplicable husband chose to leave his wife in an equivocal position, he must be prepared to accept the consequences, which are, in general, the last things that any average man is prepared to accept. Shrewdness and vanity alike convinced Garth that Quita's attitude on Dynkund, viewed in the light of her subsequent ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... foolishly unhappy any more. She would shut her eyes to the haunting horrors, and forget. Theo had forbidden her to make herself too miserable. Why should she not obey him? And she proceeded to do so in her own equivocal fashion. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... good man at my side, looking on the people, remarked, "I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right." I suppose considerate observers, looking at the masses of men in their blameless and in their equivocal actions, will assent, that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity. The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... include the actors and the observations of the author's vagabond life. To a clear and unprejudiced mind, observation of the life of the common folk and, above all, of the itinerant population and of their equivocal moral code, of necessity and invariably, compels resort to the form and manner of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... regret was equivocal; it produced no impression on him. They reached a village where her leader deemed it adviseable to drive for the remainder of the distance up the valley to the barrier snow-mountain. She assented instantly, she had no longer any active wishes of her own, save to make amends to her brother, who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bridge, Hsiao Hung makes known sentimental matters in equivocal language. In the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, Tai-y gives, while under the effects of the spring lassitude, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... humane and Christian nation, of anguish unnecessary to the purpose. Unnecessary—what proof is there to the contrary?—To what is the present practice necessary?—Some readers will remember the benevolent (we were going to say humane, but that is an equivocal epithet,) attempt made a number of years since by Lord Somerville to introduce, but he failed, a mode of slaughter, without suffering; a mode in use in a foreign nation with which we should deem it very far from a compliment to be placed on a level in point of civilization. And it is a flagrant ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... any hesitation whatsoever upon your part, Mr. Greatson," she said. "Under my care the child's future would be fittingly provided for. Her position with you must be, at the best, an equivocal one." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her widely opened eyes seemed to look out ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... hypocrisies would cost them on either side much more than the usual effort. Mrs. Ambient, smooth-haired, thin-lipped, perpetually fresh, must have regarded her crumpled and dishevelled visitor as an equivocal joke; she herself so the opposite of a Rossetti, she herself a Reynolds or a Lawrence, with no more far-fetched note in her composition than a cold ladylike candour and ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... imposed by authority did not really serve any purpose of concealment. Every reader was let into the secret of the writer's true opinion of the old mysteries, by means of a piquant phrase, an adroit parallel, a significant reference, an equivocal word of dubious panegyric. Diderot openly explains this in the pages of the Encyclopaedia itself. "In all cases," he says, "where a national prejudice would seem to deserve respect, the particular article ought to set it respectfully forth, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... hasty departure when I add that I know all about the little house in Versailles, that my knowledge is shared by the chief of the Parisian police and the minister of war. If you annoy Miss Harrigan with your equivocal attentions...." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... this obvious example to experiments that are less striking and more equivocal; you see fevers, ills of all kinds which are cured, without it being well proved if it be nature or the doctor who has cured them; you see diseases of which the result cannot be guessed; twenty doctors are deceived; the one that has the most ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... these coincidences together. Don't you see that she had a lover, and that he was about her in London and other places? Stop! Fact 10.—Those two were married for years, and had no child but this equivocal one; and now four years and a half have passed, during all which time they have had none, and the young parson has been abroad ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to say that the incident is regretted, coupled with the statement that the affair was not of an unusual character in ports where foreign sailors are accustomed to meet. It is not for a generous and sincere government to seek for words of small or equivocal meaning in which to convey to a friendly power an apology for an offense so atrocious as this. In the case of the assault by a mob in New Orleans upon the Spanish consulate in 1851, Mr. Webster wrote to the Spanish minister, Mr. Calderon, that the acts complained ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... friends, informed them of their prosperity. The alluring picture, drawn by those whose bondage was past, exhibited a social state, precisely suited to the taste of their kindred and acquaintance. The sensual and dissolute were tempted by the riotous jollity of the "Rocks;" those fond of equivocal commerce with the profits of trade; and others were cheered by the assurance that a friend in bonds would find a nominal master in a relative or former friend, when the formalities of inspection were over.[108] Such as brought out spoil, were ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... battlements of some old turret, when a storm arose, the maiden crept to his side, but in an instant, with a hideous crash, she was borne away by the rude grasp of the tempest. He awoke, with a mortifying discovery that the crash had been of a somewhat less equivocal nature. A cabinet of costly workmanship lay overturned at his feet, and a rich vase, breathing odours, strewed the floor in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... his narrative at a date some fifteen years after Amy Robsart's death, brought Amy alive, and represented Queen Elizabeth as ignorant of her very existence. He might, had he chosen, have proved to his readers that, as regards Amy Robsart and her death, Elizabeth was in a position almost as equivocal as was Mary Stuart in regard to the murder of Darnley. Before the murder of Darnley we do not hear one word to suggest that Mary was in love with Bothwell. For many months before the death of Amy (Lady Robert Dudley), we hear constant reports that Elizabeth has a love ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... evil—is not suspicious—does not lay up slight expressions or equivocal conduct, and reason out evil from them, and suffer it to corrode and sour the mind against an individual; but puts the best construction upon the words and conduct of others that they will bear, not yielding to an ill opinion of ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... insufficient, in the opinion of those carnal men, to compensate for the want of fame, of empire, and of success; and whilst they refused to acknowledge his stupendous triumph over the powers of darkness and of the grave, they misrepresented, or they insulted, the equivocal birth, wandering life, and ignominious death, of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... new character altogether and relapsed into queer ancestral traits, stripping off, like so many worthless rags, the layers of laboriously acquired civilization. The refined and bashful girl became brusque, supercilious, equivocal. When sympathizing friends said that they had also lost lovers, she laughed and told them to look for new ones. There were better fish in the sea, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... us like an insincerity. All should be plain, all straightforward to the end. Hence it is that, in "Rhoda Fleming," Mrs. Lovel raises such resentment in the reader; her motives are too flimsy, her ways are too equivocal, for the weight and strength of her surroundings. Hence the hot indignation of the reader when Balzac, after having begun the "Duchesse de Langeais" in terms of strong if somewhat swollen passion, cuts the knot by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... There was an equivocal smile on the face of nearly every one present as they looked at the Member of Congress and awaited his reply. What that would have been they never knew, because just at that moment entered Mr. Sefton, breathing peace and good will. He had heard the last words, but he chose to view them ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... invariable in later Spanish history, and it resulted in cumbrous ineffectiveness. Interminable inquiry and discussion ended frequently only in suspension of judgment or a divided report. Points of policy of imminent importance had to await a dilatory investigation and equivocal conclusions. This impotence of the central organs of government did not come in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate successors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils was long overcome by the resolution of the monarchs. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... duty to abstain, and, instead of lending a hand to the operation of our Liberal friends, to do what we can to abate and dissolve the mass of prejudice, Tory or Nonconformist, which makes so doubtfully begotten and equivocal an operation as the present, producible ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... for eluding the designs of the governor without having recourse to arms. On this occasion the following resolutions were entered into by the Butacoyog, or national assembly of the ulmens. 1st, To delay the business as long as possible, by equivocal replies and delusive promises. 2d, When pressed to commence building, to require tools and other necessary aids from the Spaniards. 3d, To have recourse to war, when they found themselves no longer able to elude the demands of the governor; but that only the provinces that were compelled to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... and drinking at. Banes, distinction of, by a beggar. Banes, Frasers weel-baned. Bannockburn, guide to, refusing an Englishman's five shillings. Bannockburn, Scottish remark upon. Baptism, minister and member of his flock. Barclay of Ury, M. P., walk to London Bathgate, mending the ways of Beadle, equivocal compliment to minister's sermons Beadle or Betheral, character of Beast, a stumbling, at least honest 'Becky and I had a rippit, for which I desire to be humble' Begg, Dr., on Scottish morality of the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... This equivocal word is not specified for use in the text, but I mean to keep it for the accumulated stems of inlaid plants, palms, and the like; for which otherwise we have no ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... instance, by a foreign government that its treaties with other nations can not be executed without the establishment and enforcement of new principles of maritime police, to be applied without our consent, we must employ a language neither of equivocal import or susceptible of misconstruction. American citizens prosecuting a lawful commerce in the African seas under the flag of their country are not responsible for the abuse or unlawful use of that flag by others; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... small or so unimportant but that a portion of spirit dwells in it; and this spiritual substance requires a proper subject to become a plant or an animal"; and Hallam in a note on this passage observes how the modern theories of equivocal generation ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... all this disguise and mystery, and a doubt again arose in his mind as to the propriety of taking passengers who came on board under such equivocal circumstances. A feeling of compassion, however, added to the graceful manners and sweet voice of the lady, decided him to persevere in his original intention; and politely requesting her to make herself at home in the cabin, he returned on deck. Ten ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... saved herself, either by going on, or by turning back, or by standing still, would have signified nothing towards proving that she had intended to put an end to her own life and to that of her child. One shudders to think that innocent women may have suffered an ignominous death, from such equivocal proofs and ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... on several ponderous things. On different lines of action, and the pulling of different strings; Upon some equivocal doings, and some unequivocal duns; On how few of his numerous patrons were quietly prompt-paying ones; On friends who subscribed "just to help him," and wordy encouragement lent, And had given him plenty of counsel, but never ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... robustness and initiative in the light of superfluities, with which a world that goes by evolution can very well dispense. Men easily come to consider clearness and positiveness in their opinions, staunchness in holding and defending them, and fervour in carrying them into action, as equivocal virtues of very doubtful perfection, in a state of things where every abuse has after all had a defensible origin; where every error has, we must confess, once been true relatively to other parts of belief in those who held the error; and where all parts of life are so bound up with one another, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... discussions, sufficiently denoting the indeterminate limits by which they are respectively circumscribed. All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... all Poles are counts—those that are not princes. But why a Pole? Well, perhaps from the convenience of vagueness, inasmuch as there is something international about a Pole—international, and yet neither equivocal nor vulgar; every one sympathizes with them, for they all possessed, once upon a time, vast estates whose loss is borne in cheerful resignation, and never so much as alluded to; they know everybody, and everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or otherwise, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... profound regret. But he felt that, having been induced to undertake the defense by representations not justified in fact, and by an impression of the nature of the case which developments in the court-room had not confirmed, he had the right to step aside out of an equivocal position. He wished to do this without injury to the prisoner and while there was yet an opportunity for him to obtain other counsel. The whole tenor of the speech was the right to be relieved from the obligation of an error; an error that had involved him unwittingly by reason of assurances which ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Boyle Roche's invitations to an Irish nobleman was rather equivocal. He wrote, "I hope, my lord, if you ever come within a mile of my house you will stay ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... that Miss Fermor would feel such raillery to be equivocal. It may be added, that an equal want of delicacy is implied in the mock-heroic battle at the end, where the ladies are gifted with ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Robert Peel gave the government a very effective support, declaring that these laws could not possibly be preserved on their present basis. Mr. Hume, who was a very forward champion of English radicalism and colonial monopoly, at first objected to the new policy, but in equivocal and undecided terms, and finally supported the government. Mr. Gladstone spoke as if for the purpose of showing that he could consistently support either side, as he practically opposed both. Mr. Cobden made a "peace-society" ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... day something occurred that referred to business matters in Prince Edward Island; and becoming annoyed at Plaisted's equivocal answers, Mr. Sherwood took the copy of the letter Dexie had brought home with her, and laid it before his eyes. Plaisted read it with a puzzled ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... from the south-east, and that the Rio Negro issued immediately from it. (* See the classical memoir of this great geographer in the Journal des Savans, March 1750 page 184. "One fact," says D'Anville, "which cannot be considered as equivocal, after the proofs with which we have been recently furnished, is the communication of the Rio Negro with the Orinoco; but we must not hesitate to admit, that we are not yet sufficiently informed of the manner in which this communication takes place." I was surprised to see in a very ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... have made me very prudent, for I have seen pass under my eyes many equivocal and terrible situations, which not only agonized my conscience but gave me many cruel hours of indecision. Man is often so little responsible and circumstances are often so powerful. Our impenetrable nature is so capricious, our instincts are so mysterious ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... others have deemed that the best way to secure it was a retirement from the vexing world, a recreant forsaking of the active duties of life, as if it consisted in immunity from temptation rather than in victory over it. Others have placed it in surpliced observance or in monastic vow; an equivocal regard to patterns of things in the heavens which common men mistake for idolatry. Others again, reversing the old Pythagorean maxim, and wearing the image of God upon their ring, have expressed it by unworthy familiarity, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... conditional on the abandonment of the greater part of the rest of the Treaty, it could hardly be regarded as a serious one.[143] But the German Delegation would have done better if they had stated in less equivocal language how far they ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... adventurous life of Law, and the equivocal means by which he appeared to live, playing high, and always with great success, threw a cloud of suspicion over him wherever he went, and caused him to be expelled by the magistracy from the semi-commercial, semi-aristocratical cities of Venice ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Nitrate of Silver in the Treatment of Zona or Shingles. 28, On the Remedial Effects of Camphor in Acute and Chronic Rheumatism. 29, Examination of the Question, whether the Medical Use of Phosphorus internally, is useful, injurious, or equivocal. 30, Nitrous Acid and Opium in Dysentery, Cholera and Diarrhoea. 31, Tartar Emetic in Pneumonia Biliosa. 32, Bark of the Ampelopsis in Catarrhal Consumption. 33, Obstinate Vomiting cured with Extract of Marigold. 34, Vomiting of Fat and Blood. 35, Rupture of the Spleen. 36, Chilblains ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... name and my business frankly. I said I heard the house was considered to be haunted,—that I had a strong desire to examine a house with so equivocal a reputation; that I should be greatly obliged if he would allow me to hire it, though only for a night. I was willing to pay for that privilege whatever he might be inclined to ask. "Sir," said Mr. J——, with great courtesy, "the house is at your service, for as short or as long a time ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... things, and occasionally "showed her head" (a term in the lexicon of such characters) in the Bois, where the fashionable young men of the day began to remark her. In fact, before long Malaga was very much talked about in the questionable world of equivocal women, who presently attacked her good fortune by calumnies. They said she was a somnambulist, and the Pole was a magnetizer who was using her to discover the philosopher's stone. Some even more envenomed scandals drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche's. She reported them ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... beneath her window. The Chevalier was making equivocal jokes, foreign witticisms, vulgar and clumsy. She listened, in despair. Servigny, just a bit tipsy, was imitating the common workingman, calling the Marquise "the Missus." And all of a sudden he said to Saval: "Well, Boss?" That caused a ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... equivocal, something cryptic, lurking in and behind these busts—a secret something, that ...
— When We Dead Awaken • Henrik Ibsen
... repeal those obnoxious decrees (passed in the months of November and December, 1792,) which created so general and so just an alarm throughout Europe, and which excited the reprobation even of that party in England, which was willing to admit the equivocal interpretation given to them by the Executive Council of the day. I proved, in the Letter to a Noble Earl before alluded to, from the very testimony of the members of that Council themselves, as exhibited in their official instructions to one of their confidential agents, that ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... He rose, when I concluded. And with a manful brevity he replied that he submitted because it was the will of the Lord, and because he had no right to interpose his selfish love and yearnings between the people of God and their worldly opportunity. The others followed. Not one referred to the equivocal language of the manifesto or questioned it. They accepted it—as it was then and afterwards interpreted—as a revelation from God made through the Prophet of the Church; and they subscribed to it as a solemn covenant, before God, with ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... of which I speak, Tom Hopkins was of an age somewhat equivocal; public fame called him fifty, whilst he himself stuck obstinately at thirty-five; of a stout active figure, rather manly than gentlemanly, and a bold, jovial visage, in excellent keeping with his person, distinguished by round, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... additions required, and understand that anything you suggest shall be done. In the meantime pray order at once the water-engine and new pedal-board of which you speak, and inform me as to the cost.' He took me quite aback, and was gone before I had time to say anything. It puts me in a very equivocal position; I have such an antipathy to the man. I shall refuse his offer point-blank. I will not put myself under any obligation to such a man. You would refuse in my position? You would write a strong letter of refusal at once, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... degree affect others, and in the present instance this was peculiarly the case. Sir John and my mother must be let into the secret, and poor Lawless must learn the unsuccessful termination of his suit. But now, for the first time, the somewhat equivocal situation in which chance had placed me presented itself to my mind, and I felt a degree of embarrassment, almost amounting to shame, at having to make my appearance, and confess that I had been lying perdu during the whole of the preceding ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... equivocal in all the words in use to express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the qualities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause. The word gentleman has not any correlative ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... never excuses, but which it is more apt to overlook, when the appearances are saved, and the transgression is secret and concealed. Even those, who know with equal certainty, that the fault is committed, pardon it more easily, when the proofs seem in some measure oblique and equivocal, than when they are direct and undeniable. The same idea is presented in both cases, and, properly speaking, is equally assented to by the judgment; and yet its influence is different, because of the different manner, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... convoking a general meeting of the associates which consequently took place at the town of St. Trond, in the district of Liege. Full two thousand of the members appeared on the summons. The language held in this assembly was much stronger and less equivocal than that formerly used. The delay in the arrival of the king's answer presaged ill as to his intentions; while the rapid growth of the public power seemed to mark the present as the time for successfully demanding all that the people required. Several of the Catholic members, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... found difficulty in remembering that his wife would not always enjoy the humor of an equivocal situation, was sorry that he had spoken. "Come, Selma," he said, "there's no use in taking that view of the matter. You would not really care ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... woman," enforcing the Biblical view of that personage with singular force and effectiveness. But her methods are coarser and more commonplace than Becky's; she never could have long sustained such an ordeal as the tenure of the house in Curzon Street without losing even an equivocal position in decent English society; and it must always be remembered that she was under the orders, so to speak, of Lisbeth, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... passages of apparently a contrary import, he was understood to contend for the extension of the style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of 'real' life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... hence, also, there is an entire absence of comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in Macbeth,—the play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, there are no reasonings of equivocal morality, which would have required a more leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of mind;—no sophistry of self-delusion,—except only that previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth mistranslates the recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... all alike as savages. When our thought ceased to be that of ousting Spain, and attacked the more serious question what to do next, our manner toward the Filipinos abruptly changed. Our purposes were left unnecessarily equivocal. Our troops viewed the Filipinos with ill-concealed contempt. "Filipinos" and "niggers" were often used ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... so far do I know thee! Thou must ever be equivocal, trivocal, quadrivocal, and quinquivocal! Even what thou hast now confessed, is not nearly true enough nor false enough ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to help the unfortunate. But it is also incumbent upon us to remember carefully, what is so often overlooked in the denunciations of competition, that the end for which we must hope, and the approach to which we must further, is one in which the equivocal virtue of charity shall be suppressed; that is, in which no man shall be dependent upon his neighbour in such a sense as to be able to neglect his own duties; in which there may be normally a reciprocity of good services, and ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... did I ever pretend to be, a statesman; and that character is so tainted and so equivocal in our day, that I am not sure that a pure and honourable ambition would aspire to it. I have not enjoyed for thirty years, like these noble Lords, the honours and emoluments of office. I have not set my sails to every passing breeze. I am a plain ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... of safety families may feel here, to be sure! In spite of the huge numbers, which at first sight look a little equivocal, nothing in the least degree reprehensible can happen among these granites; which are, moreover, in a single piece, without the least crack or hole into which the straggler could contrive to crawl. No. The figures and the crosses denote simple blocks of stones, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... another, with an equivocal expression, with which Jane was made content; and, after a full half-hour's confabulation, in the primitive style, the parties separated—each, in her way, to give as much circulation to Betty's inuendoes as the importance of ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... of the court was equivocal and embarrassing. It encouraged every anti-revolutionary enterprise and avowed none; it felt more than ever its weakness and dependence on the assembly; and while desirous of throwing off the yoke, feared to make the attempt because success appeared difficult. Accordingly, it excited ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Government, and thus inviting a resistance commensurate with that policy; and that this breach should be made the exodus of the people from the bondage of all compromises. They argued that to cut down the issue between slavery and freedom to so narrow, equivocal, and half-hearted a measure, at a time when every consideration pleaded for radical and thorough work, was practical infidelity to the cause and the crisis. It was sporting with humanity, and giving to the winds a glorious ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... welcome in itself, and at this moment doubly so as putting a stop to the reformer. Even that person condescended to be pleased on the former consideration, though reasonably incensed on the other; and he advanced to the table in a continued ejaculation of inarticulate grunts—a sort of equivocal language in which he designed to convey alike his approbation of supper and displeasure at ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... knows the truth, and the perfidious meanness with which he makes her the reluctant instrument of her lover's ruin, win back for her much of our alienated sympathy. Yet at the close her position is curiously equivocal. It is at her prayer that Bussy has spared Montsurry when "he hath him down" in the final struggle; but when her lover is mortally wounded by a pistol shot, she implores his pardon for her share in bringing him to his doom. And when the Friar's ghost seeks to reconcile husband ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... of death in the prison at Bordeaux she attracted the attention of Tallien, the son of the Marquis of Bercy's butler and ci-devant lawyer's clerk, who had blossomed into "a Terrorist of the first water." He obtained her release and she became his mistress. She took advantage of the equivocal but influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal lenity ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... a better name for me," she said, casting Crossman a look whose intimacy made his blood run hot within him. "'The Black Dawn'—n'est-ce-pas? Though I have heard him call me in the night—by another name," with which equivocal statement she swung the axe into the curve of her arm, turned on her heel, and softly closed ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... moment Orlando, with his eyes turned towards the door, remained silent, again sad, reflecting no doubt on all the difficult, equivocal present, so different from the glorious past. But all at once he turned to Pierre, who was still waiting. "And so, my friend," said he, "you are staying at the Palazzo Boccanera? Ah! what a grievous misfortune there has ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Judaei, Christiani, et qui inter Persas Magorum institutis addicti sunt, populi libri dicuntur, (Reland, Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 15.) The caliph Al Mamun confirms this honorable distinction in favor of the three sects, with the vague and equivocal religion of the Sabaeans, under which the ancient polytheists of Charrae were allowed to shelter their idolatrous worship, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... hideous malignity. It was seldom that he saw him either following him in the streets, or entering any house or church after him; he only appeared in his place, George wist not how, or whence; and, having sped so ill in his first friendly approaches, he had never spoken to his equivocal ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the Literary Supplement of the Times commenced with the statement that "Among the strange, dismaying things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within general knowledge." The writer of the article in question thinks that as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation, we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the direction of those primitive ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Lord's Second Coming occupies at the present moment a curiously equivocal position in the thought of the Christian Church. On the one hand by many it is wholly ignored. There is no conscious disloyalty on their part to the word of God; but the subject makes no appeal to them, it fails to "find" them. Ours is a sternly practical ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... the breviary, the which much delighted the king. She was as gay as a lark, always laughing and singing, and never made anyone miserable, which is the characteristic of women of this open and free nature, who have always an occupation—an equivocal one if you like. The king often went with the hail-fellows his friends to the lady's house, and in order not to be seen always went at night-time, and without his suite. But being always distrustful, and ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... 'the year 1775. Those Canadians, who spoke nothing but French, showed their attachment to their sovereign in a manner not at all equivocal. They helped to defend this province. This city, these walls, this chamber in which I have the honour to speak, were saved partly through their zeal and their courage. You saw them join with faithful subjects ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... the presence of those supreme companions whose real and personal existence I have attempted to indicate. These ideal and yet most real companions of humanity make their presence felt by the soul in just the same immediate, direct and equivocal way in which we feel the influence of a friend or lover whose spirit, in his bodily absence, is concentrated upon our spirit, even as ours ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... of mixture has resulted a character equivocal and ambiguous, but peculiarly Porto Rican. The heat of the climate has made them lazy, to which end also the fertility of the soil has conduced; the solitary life of the country residents has rendered them ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-born Highland poverty for substantial Lowland wealth, who would dare to insult Upper Canada with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. What-do-they-call-him—Francis Bond Head." Ever and anon the Tory press retorted on him in a spirit by no means calculated to soften the asperity of his heart. The most contemptuous epithets were freely bestowed upon him, and he was from time to time taunted with ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... necessary to insist on, nor reiterate, the decadence of the Palais Royal. It is no longer the "capitol of Paris," and whatever its charms may be they are mostly equivocal. It is more a desert than an oasis or a temple de la volupte, and it was each of these things in other days. Its priestesses and its gambling houses are gone, and who shall say this of itself is not a good thing in spite of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... mention of the celebrated field-marshal, and, stopping by a gesture the reader, who, in his surprise, dropped his lorgnon upon the table on which his elbow rested. "I regret very much," he continued, "to be obliged to tell you that Monsieur Dorsenne and I"—here he turned to Dorsenne, who made an equivocal gesture of vexation—"can not admit the point of view in which you place yourself.... You claim that we are here to arrange a reconciliation. That is possible.... I concede that it is desirable.... But I know nothing of it and, permit me to say, you do not know any more. I am here—we are here, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... less equivocal testimony, which the credulity of the assembly, or of the greater part, greedily swallowed, however incredible. One of the soldiers had seen her work a cure upon a wounded man, brought with them to the castle of Torquilstone. She did, he said, make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated certain ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... read Nature less through "the spectacles of books," and does not hesitate to meet her face to face, and to trust and try himself alone with her. The result of all which appears in a greater freshness and reality of delineation. Here the persons have nothing of a dim, equivocal hearsay air about them, such as marks in some measure his earlier efforts in comedy. The characters indeed are not pitched in so high a key, nor conceived in so much breadth and vigour, as in several of the plays written at earlier dates: the plan of the work did not require this, or even ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... ask old ladies to tea, Or invite male supporters to crumpets or cricket; Should a snug Party Club prove a trifle too free, Or give an equivocal "treat," or hat-ticket; A seven years' nursing of Slopville-on-Slime, A well-fought Election and Glorious Victory (Crowed o'er by proud Party prints at the time) May—lose you your Seat. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... indeed; but the more she recollected and observed, the more deeply was she convinced that everything was now in a fairer train for Miss Crawford's marrying Edmund than it had ever been before. On his side the inclination was stronger, on hers less equivocal. His objections, the scruples of his integrity, seemed all done away, nobody could tell how; and the doubts and hesitations of her ambition were equally got over—and equally without apparent reason. It could only be imputed to increasing attachment. His good and her bad feelings ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to me one morning, rallied me in his coarse way, asked if I had entered myself of the glums, and insisted that I should go with him and take a ride to Abingdon. The chaise would be ready in half an hour, and he would introduce me to the finest girl in all England. Thinking his language equivocal and suspecting his intentions, I ventured to ask if she were a modest woman? He burst into a loud laugh and exclaimed (I shall omit his oaths) 'Modest! to be sure! as modest as any of her sex.' This did not ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... with men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only have ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... has become equivocal, since there are more green shades in employment now than were dreamed of by Andrew Marvell. Science is a great maker of homophones, without respect for the poets. There is, for instance, the demilune of lined buckram borne by the weak-eyed on their foreheads, the phylactery ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... schooners taken by Yeo in the engagement of August 10, which the British had not thought fit to add to their fleet, but used simply as carriers; mounting their guns on the fortifications of Kingston. Cooper justly remarks, "This sufficiently proves the equivocal advantage enjoyed by the possession of these craft." Chauncey himself, at the end of the campaign, recommended the building of "one vessel of the size of the 'Sylph,'"—three hundred and forty tons,—"in lieu of all the heavy ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... whatever, your Excellency. I discovered the Intendant and his friends by ear long before I got sight of them." An equivocal smile accompanied Philibert's words, which the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... brought back to Paris by an insolent and ferocious crowd, and looked back with gratitude to the equivocal civilities of Sauce. The journey occupied four days, during which the queen's hair turned grey. Three deputies, sent by the Assembly, met the dolorous procession half way, and took charge of the royal family. ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... way. The subterraneous and half-concealed passage in the rock, or rather shale, on which the castle stands, always under the ban of some vague and silly apprehension, had been reported of late as manifesting more than equivocal symptoms of supernatural possession. Dick Empson, or long-nebbed Dick, a sort of shrewd, half-witted incarnation, it might be, of the goblin or elfin species, a runner of errands from the abbey of Furness to the castle, and a being whose ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... had forfeited by her imprudence, and which had gone to swell the property of the male representative. But this idea had never entered into the conceptions of either mother or son. Mrs, Tyrrel conceived that she performed an act of the most exalted benevolence in admitting Miss Emily into a sort of equivocal situation, which was neither precisely that of a domestic, nor yet marked with the treatment that might seem due to one ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... lower in the scale than the araucarites of the Coal Measures,—which in structure it greatly resembles,—or than the pines or cedars of our own times (see Fig. 3). In the Middle Old Red Sandstone there occurs, with plants representative apparently of the ferns and their allies, a somewhat equivocal and doubtful organism, which may have been the panicle or compound fruit of some aquatic rush; while in the Upper Old Red, just ere the gorgeous flora of the Coal Measures began to be, there existed in ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and to reconcile him and those who agreed with him, a provision was inserted that persons who should commit treason and be "adjudged guilty thereof" should be punished. But to prevent misconception from equivocal phraseology in a somewhat questionable act, he explicitly made known that "regular trials in duly constituted courts" were to be observed, and the rights of the executive and judicial departments of the Government maintained. This precaution, and the determination ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... down stairs, that Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city library of Prague, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret, 'Is His Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (sic) he will go to Dux, too; and he may ask you for it, for there is a monument there which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... directions for it are as follow:—"Scene—An ale-house room.—Several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco; Tony at the head of the table, &c., discovered." Never perhaps, in any previous representation, was the mise en scene so perfect. It drew three rounds of applause. A very equivocal compliment to ourselves it may be; but such jolly-looking "shabby fellows" as sat round the table at which our Tony presided, were never furnished by the supernumeraries of Drury or Covent-garden. They were as classical, in their way, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... be nothing equivocal, these gentlemen carry their idea still farther, and on the same principle that we have heard them call the intensity of labor riches, we will find them calling the abundant results of labor and the plenty of everything proper to the satisfying of our wants, poverty. "Everywhere," ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... sir." But he did not move from the doorway and returned my stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time. Then his eyes wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice unusually gentle, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... through anarchy into despotism, and sent Lafayette to a foreign dungeon, and his master to the block. You came out victorious; but, from the violence of the rupture, you took a political bias not perhaps entirely for good; and the necessity of the war blended you, under equivocal conditions, with other colonies of a wholly different origin and character, which then "held persons to service," and are now your half-dethroned tyrant, the Slave Power. This Revolution will lead to a revision of many things,—perhaps to a partial revision of your history. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... unfit to serve the King in a military capacity-but I think this is not the last we shall hear of Whatever were his deficiencies in the day of battle, he has at least showed no want of spirit, either in pushing on his trial or during it. His judgment in both was perhaps a little more equivocal. He had a formal message that he must abide the event whatever it should be. He accepted that issue, and during the course of the examination, attacked judge, prosecutor and evidence. Indeed, a man cannot be said to want spirit, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of proof exists in his writings of the susceptibility of his heart; but it is not stated that he ever formed an attachment. In many of his pieces he speaks with tenderness of a female whom he calls Fanny; and in one of them, from which it appears that she was dead, he expresses his regard in no equivocal manner; but there are other grounds for concluding that his happiness was affected by disappointed affection. To his friend Mr. Maddock, in ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... interesting and uninteresting critics of life, is just the difference between those who have refused to let themselves be thus carried away, on the stream of their fatality, and those who have not refused. That is why in all the really arresting writers and artists there is something equivocal and disturbing when ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in hysterics. Yet she had power enough over her nerves to notice the surroundings as she entered the house. At the door of the room in which she was to sleep, and which was on the first story, Madame Strahlberg kissed her with one of those equivocal smiles which so long had ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... was truly equivocal. The son of a Protestant peer, through his marriage, early in life, with the daughter of a Catholic, he became involved in certain Papistic plots, and listened to the teachings of the missionary priests. James had ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... by the instructions of Sir William Davenant, who embodied his recollections of Joseph Taylor, instructed by SHAKSPEARE to play the character! What a delightful association—to see Hamlet represented in the true vein in which the sublime author conceived it! Kynaston's celebrity was of a more equivocal description. He played Juliet to Betterton's Romeo, and was the Siddons of his day; for women did not generally appear on the stage till after the Restoration. The anecdote of Charles II. waiting at the theatre for the stage queen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... and muleteers generally were clothed in blue cotton and grass hats, while the native cavalry, in the brilliant tunics and feathered coronals, already described, must have completed the diversity of the variegated cortege. Had poor Hammond been mounted among them, his costume would have been as equivocal as his new complexion, for he had attired himself in the scarlet coat of a British officer of rank, with several blazing stars of glass jewels, surmounted by a white Panama hat, in which clustered an airy profusion of ladies' ostrich feathers, ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... mind, I still held my burden uplifted. To have placed it on the floor, and encountered this visitant, without this equivocal token about me, was the obvious proceeding. Indeed, time only could decide whether these footsteps tended to this, or to some ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... of all my modesty, I can not help thinking I have a little something of the prophet about me. At least we have not conquered America yet. I did not send you immediate word of our victory at Boston, because the success not only seemed very equivocal, but because the conquerors lost three to one more than the vanquished. The last do not pique themselves upon modern good breeding, but level only at the officers, of whom they have slain a vast number. We are a little disappointed, indeed, at their fighting at all, which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... rebuke, from which, for the second time in Nell's service, he learned that he was perfectly horrid, and that if he once more did anything like that he would be led by a string like a puppy. He heard this, wagging his tail in quite an equivocal manner. Nell, however, claimed that it could be seen from his eyes that he was ashamed and that he certainly blushed; only this could not be seen because his mouth ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lines to record their visit. They pray the Blessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound from everything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi da ogni equivoco li possa accadere). Oh, farewell! We reverently salute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin, and ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... its energy and lustre; but at the same time, it must be confessed, it bore the stamp of imprudent daring, and might have given Napoleon an irreparable stroke. Was it not to be feared, that, in the equivocal situation in which he was placed, the electors, having every thing to dread from the Bourbons and foreign powers, would not accept so hazardous a mission, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... answer was somewhat equivocal. "She never said she was unhappy," she replied. Her husband sniffed and resumed his ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... dolefully, "what an equivocal and lewd poem it must be to please these ladies and make them laugh! My king, we must, then, to please these dear ladies, forget a little our chastity, modesty, and maiden bashfulness, and speak in the spirit of the ladies—that is to say, as ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... to all who are capable of it. It is evident, that many persons, by habit and education, are ill-adapted to take part in the polite amusements of an assembly; that some men are odious by their vices; and that many females of equivocal character ought not to be allowed to mix with the virtuous part of the sex; consequently, every inhabitant of a district ought not to be admitted to join in amusements which imply the contact of dancing and cards. It is also too certain, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... saw what I had by me, and perhaps he can say whether I was in my right senses yesterday or whether I was delirious? Perhaps he will judge as to our quarrel." Nothing would have pleased him better than there and then to have strangled that gentleman, whose taciturnity and equivocal ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... men, in which be reminded them of the mercy of God in having brought them so long a voyage with such favourable weather, and in comforting them with so many tokens of a successful issue to their enterprize, which were now every day becoming plainer and less equivocal. He besought them to be exceedingly watchful during the night, as they well knew that in the first article of the instructions which he had given to all the three ships before leaving the Canaries, they were enjoined, when they should have sailed 700 leagues west without discovering land, to lay ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... as its sub-title explains, was a sequel to the Virgin Unmask'd, and was produced at Drury Lane in May 1742. As already stated in chapter ii., Fielding's part in it was small. It is a lively but not very creditable trifle, which turns upon certain equivocal London experiences of the Miss Lucy of the earlier piece; and it seems to have been chiefly intended to afford an opportunity for some clever imitation of the reigning Italian singers by Mrs. Clive and the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... It was the heart of the shadow district, and the play of shadows was the order of things. The rules were the rules of phantoms. Flesh lived there in subjection. Long miscegenation with shadow had made phantoms of them all and endowed all shadows with the menace of the real. Everything was equivocal ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler |
