"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... originally was not the property of any one of them. In the eagerness they all evinced in purloining what was not theirs, and in the perfect content with which they then proceeded to enjoy what they had taken, they remind us forcibly of that happy-go-lucky class in the community which prefers to live on questionable loans rather than work itself for a living. Like those same individuals, whatever interest the Far Eastern people may succeed in raising now, Nature will in the end make them pay dearly for ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... following lines taken from a local poet, to whose picturesque descriptions and facile handling of the heroic measure, I must be indebted in this chapter. I refer to a book entitled "Visions of Childhood," by W. Warren Butler, of Barkway, printed and published by John Warren in 1843. Of one questionable form of sport ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... others lived during the reconstruction period. To have achieved something for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative. The street corner politician, who through questionable methods or even through skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court House, may be written up in the local papers as "representative," ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... and then be forced to attempt a series of conundrums propounded by a teacher who takes pride in maintaining a high percentage of failures, is indefensible. An examination should not be conducted with the primary object of making it a thing to be feared. However desirable such a questionable asset may seem to certain college professors, it is a serious fault in a high school teacher to have any considerable number of normal children fail. The ambition of the good instructor is to give ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... sidewalk passed beneath. Most of these old houses seemed to be taverns,—the Black Bear, the Green Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prisoner, sir," he remarked. "He's some feeder, that guy, and I guess the sooner we shake 'im th' better. He kicks on th' wine, sir. Says it's questionable vintage. When he gets tired readin' he pokes his head through the window and kids th' boys. He says he's goin' to remember th' place and come back when he's old. A charmin' retreat fer supernumerary superannuates, ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... prolonged inheritance, and of religious sanction. It flourished on the unaccustomed belief that theological dissensions need not detract from the power of the State, while political dissensions are the very secret of its prosperity. The men of questionable character who accomplished the change and had governed for the better part of sixty years, had successfully maintained public order, in spite of conspiracy and rebellion; they had built up an enormous system of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... biography of Haydn, when she says of Mrs. Schroeter that she was "an attractive, although, according to modern taste, a somewhat vulgar woman, of over sixty years of age, and there is no disguising the fact that she made violent love to Haydn. Her letters to Haydn are full of tenderness and in questionable taste; his to her have not been preserved, but we can have little doubt that they were warmer in tone than they would have been had not the Channel rolled between him and Frau Haydn in Vienna." We know how little Frau Haydn had had to do with Haydn's life in ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... French subject, and, if that view were correct, he could hardly be detained by us as a prisoner of war after we had concluded a treaty of peace with France. But, again, it seemed to some, the Lord Chancellor being among them, a questionable point whether in the last campaign we had been at war with France; whether, on the contrary, we had not assumed the character of an ally of France against him. And, on the supposition that we had ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... and out the windows" the words, "Round and round the city" (presumably on elevated or subway trains) and "In and out the stations" or "In and out the subway." While this tampering with a traditional form of the game is questionable, there is no doubt that children much enjoy playing about things related to their own experiences. A gradual and probably unconscious adaptation to environment is one of the manifestations of the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... genus is apt to be confused with certain species of Boletus which have a distinct radiate arrangement of the tubes. It is questionable whether it is clearly ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... The admission of millions, of what is termed an alien race into the solution of an untried problem of government by the people, rendered that problem still more difficult, hence, wild and extravagant speculations bearing on the future of the Negro and the questionable influence of his changed relations on American life, became the current literature of the country for two decades. Friends spoke in fulsome praise or doubtful measure, according to conviction, while ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... which I could call a friend, or offer one warm tear, in testimony of old acquaintance. A noble street, a line of palaces—merchants' palaces—had taken to itself the room of twenty narrow ways, that, in the good old times, had met and crossed in close, but questionable, friendship. Bright stone, that in the sunlight shone brighter than itself, flanked every broad and stately avenue, denoting wealth and high commercial dignity. Every venerable association was swept away, and nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... well as other agencies, boards and commissions which were obsolete or ineffective. Independent Inspectors General have been appointed in major agencies to attack fraud and waste. More than a billion dollars of questionable transactions have been ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... very questionable taste, I thought: "Oh, no; nothing like that!"—because we didn't want to make the least bit of trouble. The woman is dense at times. What else had we come there for? But Aunt Mollie said, then, how about some prime young pork tenderline? And Ma Pettengill said she guessed that ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Clarke imagined, might be turned to good account; but the matter demanded thought, and for a long time he sat motionless, deeply pondering. His farming had prospered, though the bare and laborious life had tried him hard; and he had made some money by more questionable means, lending to unfortunate neighbors at extortionate interest and foreclosing on their possessions. No defaulter got any mercy at his hands, and shrewd sellers of seed and implements took precautions when ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... we exclude the cases in which excitement, instead of collapse, is induced, and, in general, cases complicated with disorder of the head or chest, it appears that the inhalation of ether is not attended with questionable or injurious consequences; and that it places the patient in a condition in which the performance of a surgical operation may be prudently contemplated. If the operation require any length of time,—from thirty to forty minutes, for instance,—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... there was no doubt. Lord Poddle, although a questionable cousin of his, would have been glad to possess his spurious kinsman's acres. I should put down the young Esquire's income as at least Twenty Hundred Pounds a year. His Father had been, it cannot be questioned, a Warm Man; but I should like to know, if he was veritably, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... The country ladies, who had been debating with themselves whether to "take up" or "drop" this very questionable stranger, received their congee from the countess herself from the threshold of her own door. The planters' wives were stunned! Each was a native queen, in her own little domain, over her own black subjects, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... earl, born in London; sat in the House of Commons from 1716 to 1726; was an opponent of Walpole; held office under the Pelhams; in 1748 retired from deafness, or perhaps disgust, into private life; celebrated for his "Letters to his Son," models of elegance, though of questionable morality, which it appears he never intended to publish, and for the scorn with which Dr. Johnson treated him when he offered to help him, after he no longer needed any, in a letter which gave the death-blow ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... unexpurgated in the Children's Department, won't you please help that young woman remove Tom & Huck from that questionable companionship? ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said sadly, "but at what cost in tranquility! The discord, the unrest, the awakening of unnatural ambitions—a dreadful price to pay for a questionable gain. Too great a price, I think." His eyes opened, and he raised a thin hand to check the younger man's protest. "I know—I know—in this we do not see as one. Yet perhaps some day you will learn even as I have that ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... true) we profoundly deplore. Enough, and more than enough, debate has been already held on the complicated motives which have blended in your war, as in all other human concerns, and on the occasional acts of questionable spirit which must inevitably attend the public policy and sentiments of a nation engaged in deadliest conflict and bleeding at every pore. Somewhat you may perhaps forgive to those who have withheld their full sympathies, jealous that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... forces. The International Federation of Students (Corda ratres), founded at Turin in 1898, with its branches in all civilized countries, may be of great use. A censorship of the press to exclude all jingoistic and inflammatory utterances may at times be necessary. It is even questionable whether uniforms and martial music ought not to be banished for a while, until the habit of peaceful ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... reasons which induced your dissent, I am persuaded they were such as you deemed sufficient. Permit me to submit to your consideration whether on occasions where the propriety of nominations appear questionable to you it would not be expedient to communicate that circumstance to me, and thereby avail yourselves of the information which led me to make them, and which I would with pleasure lay before you. Probably my reasons for nominating Mr. Fishbourn may tend to show that such a mode ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Inkerman. Our loss was 24 officers and 119 men killed; 134 officers, and 1897 men wounded. Had the regiments engaged been composed of the same materials as those who won the heights of the Alma, the result might have been different, although even in that case it is questionable whether the small force told off for the assault would have finally maintained itself against the masses which the Russians brought up against them. But composed as they were of young troops, many being lads sent off to the front ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... disadvantageous circumstances were discovered. It would not do to compromise the minister, so they called the council together, which had not been heard of for fifteen years, except when its members drew their salary and had their band to play. The council, when this questionable affair was submitted to it, found a wise solution: it agreed to the decision in principle, but divided its execution into two parts. The fortifications on the river-side are to be provided for at once, but the Monostor section is only to be begun when the other is finished. So the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Here we were then once more at sea, and although on board a ship of which the stability was very questionable, we had hopes, if the wind continued favorable, of reaching the coast of Guiana in the course ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... additional problems. Each Iraqi ministry has an armed unit, ostensibly to guard the ministry's infrastructure. All together, these units total roughly 145,000 uniformed Iraqis under arms. However, these units have questionable loyalties and capabilities. In the ministries of Health, Agriculture, and Transportation—controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr—the Facilities Protection Service is a source of funding and jobs for the Mahdi Army. One senior U.S. official described the Facilities Protection Service as "incompetent, ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... Germans call Erd-kunde—earth-lore—in that knowledge of the face of the earth and of its products, for which we English have as yet cared so little that we have actually no English name for it, save the clumsy and questionable one of physical geography; and, I am sorry to say, hardly any readable school books about it, save Keith Johnston's 'Physical Atlas'—an acquaintance with which last I should certainly ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... wonder in her heart if she ought not to have told somebody else and taken Thomas along to help. It was rather a questionable thing for her to do, in the dusk of the evening—to women all alone. But then, she had Mrs. Cameron along and that made it perfectly respectable. But if she failed now, what else could she do? Her blood boiled hotly at the thought of letting Harry ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... serious thought or definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling interest, all of the author's other works. The truth, we believe, lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the introduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these romances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author's ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... appeared at Jamaica in 1824, designated a Defence of the Settlers of Honduras: a work intended to refute the imputations on which his anti-slavery policy had been justified. Whether the book itself really existed, or the passages professedly extracted from it deserve any credit, is questionable: the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Thespian laurels. He chose the part of Othello, and all Virginia assembled to applaud. The part was not well committed, and sentences were commenced with Shakespearian loftiness and ended with the actor's own emendations, which were certainly questionable improvements. Anything but a tragic effect was produced by seeing the swarthy Moor turn to the prompter at frequent intervals, and inquire, "What?" in a hoarse whisper. A running colloquy took place between Othello and his audience, in which he made good his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... kings and autocrats. He could join hands with Mill in assailing slavery, insisting upon prison reform, preaching toleration and advancing civilisation, although he heartily disapproved of the doctrines with which Mill's practical principles were associated. Mill, too, practised—even to a questionable degree—the method of reticence, and took good care not to ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious inspiration; sometimes a questionable guide, I fear. You don't even believe all I have told you about myself—you think it all a somnambulistic invention of your own; and so does your wife, and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "I might have known it! I might have known it! You and that Tucker boy are two of a kind. You'll both come to some bad ending. Only fools and questionable characters go ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... it, and is not the goodness of art itself, as such. If the end of fine art is to teach, then its goodness must be estimated by the matter and manner of its teaching, and a "moral pocket-handkerchief" must take precedence of many a Turner. Yet it would even then remain questionable whether a good and great moral teacher is necessarily a good man. In truth, a good man is one who obeys his conscience, and whose conscience guides him right. If, in defect of the latter condition, we allow that a man is good or well-meaning, it is because we suppose that his conscience is erroneous ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... and wrong, he meant, of course. According to his standard, there were many things he could do, and many things he could leave undone, quite innocently, of which they would not approve. Several of such questionable incidents had occurred in his manner of life about the time of their return from Gourlay last year, and he had kept away from them. He had been too busy since his coming back from M— to see much of any of his friends, and this ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... hours at this rate, as anyone with half an eye could see—even if everything stood the strain, which was very questionable—would place us on the chart pretty well where we were the day before; and, then, we should have all our work to do over again, without having a cable's length to boast of to the good so far as our onward progress was concerned into the Pacific Ocean—most aptly named by ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to shape and coin a word for—what thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word we have, there was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor, and bold questionable originality. 'Thy very ATTENTION, does it not mean an attentio, a STRETCHING-TO?' Fancy that act of the mind which all were conscious of, which none had yet named—when this new 'poet' first felt bound and driven to name it! His questionable originality and new glowing metaphor ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more, of the old Asiatics—I forget who—says he "would have no word used to describe the Infinite Cause." I suppose no word can be found that is not subject to exceptions. The final words that I fall back upon are righteousness and love. Even the word intelligence is perhaps more questionable. If it implies anything like attention to one person and thing or another, anything like imagination, comparison, reasoning, we must pause upon the use of it. To say knowledge would perhaps be better, for there must ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... iii. c. 12. If any corruption was used to promote the interest of religion, an advocate of Athanasius might justify or excuse this questionable conduct, by the example of Cato and Sidney; the former of whom is said to have given, and the latter to have received, a bribe in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... medicine and medical advice, and in cases of absolute poverty, the retreat of the hospital, are real charities, such as suffering humanity requires, and pure benevolence will provide for. But in other cases, it is questionable whether relief can be given without ill effects, except it be accompanied with the opportunity and the necessity for bodily labor. I am not, however, upon the present occasion to discuss the general question of charitable societies. It is one of great importance, and one which we think is not ...
— A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of the Boston Female Asylum for Destitute Orphans, September 25, 1835 • Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright
... my husband," said the princess, without embarrassment; "and had I not already signed your diploma, it is very questionable whether I should now do it, now that I know Count Munich desires ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... money sunk, the sight of these costly and beautiful plantations, menaced yearly by the returning forest, and the responsibility of administering with one hand so many conjunct fortunes, might well nerve the manager of such a company for desperate and questionable deeds. Upon this scale, commercial sharpness has an air of patriotism; and I can imagine the man, so far from higgling over the scourge for a few Solomon islanders, prepared to oppress rival firms, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to find that Sordello, that typical champion of chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a hundred times, and he ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Frenchman, who was appointed in the spring of 1862 an aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel upon the staff of General Fremont, who (with questionable legality) assigned him to command a brigade, [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. i. pp. 9, 35.] and recommended his appointment as brigadier for good conduct in the May and June campaign against Jackson. The appointment was made on October 14th, [Footnote: Army Register, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... was gathered about the inn table. There were some young girls seated among the blouses; one of them, for the hour that we had sat waiting for Fend l'Air to be captured and harnessed, had been singing songs of questionable taste in a voice of such contralto sweetness as to have touched the heart of a bishop. "Some young girls from the factories at Avranches, mesdames, who come here Sundays to get a bit of fresh air; Dieu soit si elles en ont ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighborhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the questionable son of Cronus, nor the gods always the mythologic Olympians. Generally, it is true, they appear as a larger order of subject beings—beings like men, and subject to a higher control—in a position closely resembling that of Milton's angels, and liable like them to passion and to error. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear questionable in ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... degree, but not when you harbour questionable characters—yes, I repeat it, questionable characters, such as the girl who ran off this morning I hope you ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... to meet the demand,—a work devoted not to the witcheries of poetry or to the charms of romance, but to the illustration of matters of graver import, such as obscure points of national history, doubtful questions of literature and bibliography, the discussion of questionable etymologies, and the elucidation of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... China has received a staggering blow, from which it will not recover during the lives of the present generation. Its progress, so far as any one can see, in the immediate future is at an end. It is even questionable whether it will not be wiped out altogether in Northern China. The terrible assaults by Boxers will largely decrease the number of converts. The temporal advantages that formerly ensued from its profession are now more than counterbalanced ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the tin for another material in which the father deals, without, however, changing anything in the verbal expression of the dream. The dreamer had entered his father's business, and had taken a terrible dislike to the questionable practices upon which profit mainly depends. Hence the continuation of the above dream thought ("if I had only asked him") would be: "He would have deceived me just as he does his customers." For the pulling off, ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... ineffectiveness of the teaching of the sciences, for those who never become scientific specialists, is the result of a separation which is unavoidable when one begins with technically organized subject matter. Even if all students were embryonic scientific specialists, it is questionable whether this is the most effective procedure. Considering that the great majority are concerned with the study of sciences only for its effect upon their mental habits—in making them more alert, more open-minded, more inclined to tentative acceptance and to testing of ideas propounded or ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... soundest judgment we can form is far from being sure. Even if we recognise to the full the lamentable resurgence of outworn superstitions and stupidities, which again pass current among us for an unhappy moment, if we detect the questionable or manifestly evil consequences of certain uses made or alleged of psychic influence, yet still we are not always in a position to say, with certainty, what is true in tales of healing which we hear in our own day. There are certain of the statements concerning Jesus' healing ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... dialect. Several writers of talent, natives of Malo-Russia, endeavoured to establish their language as a literary language in opposition to the Great Russian. The judiciousness of these proceedings, especially as the Russian literature has hardly passed from childhood to youth, would seem very questionable, even if ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation. Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for him, watched out for his comfort, but he was nothing ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... who have emigrated to Cuba has always been of a questionable character. The description of them by Cervantes in his time will apply in our own day with equal force. He says: "The island is the refuge of the profligates of Spain, a sanctuary for homicides, a skulking-place ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... not find in her husband it was Louise of Albany. There were dames in plenty in Rome (where they were now living) who, not content with devoted husbands, had their cisibeos to play the lover to them; but Louise sought no such questionable escape from her unhappiness. Her books and the clever men who thronged her salon were all the solace she asked; and under temptation such as few women of that country and day would have resisted, she carried the shield of a ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... to show that, although the object of their long pilgrimage was ostensibly a pious one, the Egyptians or gipsies were not very slow in giving to the people whom they visited a true estimate of their questionable honesty, and we do not think it would be particularly interesting to follow step by step the track of this odious band, which from this period made its appearance sometimes in one country and sometimes in another, not only in the north but in the south, and especially ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... altogether a new man; brisk, cheerful, and active, he has a smile for everybody, and a joke and a 'good-morning' even for the cobbler, who has the cure of soles in that very questionable benefice, the Mews. He visits his tap-room guests, and informs them of a plan which is in operation to improve the condition of the labouring-classes, of which they will hear more by and by. He is profoundly impressed with the sublime ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... is a narrow basis, because the possession of money is of itself no guarantee of political ability, and the system leads to the very questionable proposition that every rich man is a competent social reformer. It is, however, a sort of competence, but a competence very precariously established and on ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... to me," said Miss Benson, coldly. "I think you, Thurstan, are the first person I ever heard rejoicing over the birth of an illegitimate child. It appears to me, I must own, rather questionable morality." ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of that Kingdom is hereby declared to be established, and ascertained for ever, and shall, at no time hereafter, be questioned or questionable.' 3rd. That we are determined to make use of any powers we have, or may have at any time in the future, to work for our own advancement, and for the creation of a prosperous, ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... like her grandfather; which was his way of saying that she was intelligent. John Bergson's father had been a shipbuilder, a man of considerable force and of some fortune. Late in life he married a second time, a Stockholm woman of questionable character, much younger than he, who goaded him into every sort of extravagance. On the shipbuilder's part, this marriage was an infatuation, the despairing folly of a powerful man who cannot bear to grow old. In a few years his unprincipled wife warped the probity of a lifetime. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... Billy springing from his chair excitedly, and walking across the room, gloves in one hand, stick in the other, and Brummel coat buttoned tightly across the questionable waistcoat, "my dear lady, tell her it will be wicked—damnable—beg pardon, beg pardon; but I must repeat, dear lady, it will be wicked and wrong—a damning wrong, if she keeps the promise obtained by force—by force, lady, by duress. Tell her ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink nor yet what ye shall put on ... lay not up for yourself treasure upon earth ... take up thy cross and follow me"; who on Monday becomes a "speculating" disciple of another god, and by questionable investments, successful enough to get into the "press," seeks to lay up a treasure of a million dollars for his old age, as if a million dollars could keep such a man out of the poor-house. Thoreau might observe that this one good example of Christian degeneracy ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... and grudgingly, to England and to peace. Was he not in some sort thereby in debt to Tandy's bound by gratitude to the place? Should he not buy it—his private fortune being considerable—and there plant his hermitage? Should he not renovate and transform it, redeeming it from questionable uses, by transporting thither, not himself only but his fine library, his famous herbarium, his cabinets of crystals, of coins, and of shells? The idea captivated him. He was weary of destruction, having ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... from abroad seemed to be less interested in the questionable characters of Longpuddle and their strange adventures than in the ordinary inhabitants and the ordinary events, though his local fellow- travellers preferred the former as subjects of discussion. He now for the first time asked concerning young persons of the opposite ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... switchback, and refused to squander a second threepence upon it, contenting herself with watching Pip fly round, and madly running by his side, to keep up as long as she could. They finished the afternoon with a prolonged inspection of the fish-tanks, a light repast of jam tarts of questionable freshness, and twopennyworth of peanuts. And, as I said, it was half-past four as they hastened up the path again to the ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... Turkeys do," assisted the company in drinking, to the honor of my own arrival. I mention this as an instance that nothing can be done in California without the sanctifying influence of the spirit, and it generally appears in a much more "questionable shape" than that of sparkling wine. Mr. H. informed me that on the 20th of July, 1850, it was rumored at Nelson's Creek—a mining station situated at the Middle Fork of the Feather River, about eighty miles from Marysville—that one of those vague "Somebodies," ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. Then his venerable figure was to be seen dispensing these questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out what he feared was trash or worse, shrinking from the reproachful eyes of every ancient physician who might chance to be passing by, but withal examining closely the silver, or the New England coarsely ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sunset; it is, however, I fear, less suited for invalids of a consumptive nature than other parts of the Riviera. It is dangerous to be out late, almost less on account of the heavy dews and chill atmosphere than for the very questionable people one meets, in every grade, from princes to pick-pockets. Nice is literally infested with doubtful characters, for, being so near the frontier, numbers of Italian vagabonds, who have been in prison ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... have access, dealing with the philosophical and religious history of Christianity in the first few centuries of our era, are so questionable, that we can place but faint reliance upon them, if we would really become acquainted with the thought of that period. We have already seen that the number of spurious or counterfeit productions was so great that a strange kind of sorting out, or selection, took place ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... master's gate. The fourth dog, who bears the name of Tekal, and walks between his master's legs, has ears that seem to have been cropped. He has been said to resemble "the Dalmatian hound": but this is questionable. His peculiarities are not marked; but, on the whole, it seems most probable that he is "a pet house-dog"[9] of the terrier class, the special favourite of his master. Antefaa's dogs had their appointed keeper, the master of his kennel, who is figured on the sepulchral tablet ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... When has that been questionable? Yet what stead has either your prudence or your duty stood you in, with ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... would be unreasonable to doubt that such a flood might have happened, and that such a person might have escaped in the way described, any time during the last 5000 years. And if the postulate of loose thinkers in search of scientific "confirmations" of questionable narratives—proof that an event may have happened is evidence that it did happen—is to be accepted, surely Hasisadra's story is "confirmed by modern scientific investigation" beyond all cavil. However, ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... obligation? We are not nice, not very nice; but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly from their rottenness: nor do we wish to see the Muses dressed out in the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like Portia and Nerissa in the garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as Lord Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a measure in the fetters of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... evening that Lew Flapp and his particular cronies went down to Cedarville to have a good time in a very questionable way, Dick Rover and Songbird Powell also visited the village, one to buy some handkerchiefs, and the other to invest in a book he had ordered from ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... time—and this is especially true of comedy subjects—the director is merely, as a rule, carrying out the author's suggestions, if not his actual directions. The best way is not to give the director the opportunity to adopt objectionable features—leave even questionable incidents ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... theories with the best will in the world; much as Flush tries to understand me when I tell him that barking and jumping may be unseasonable things. Both of us open our eyes a good deal, but the comprehension is questionable after all. What, however, I do seem least of all to comprehend, is your hymn of triumph in England, just because you have a lower ideal of liberty than the French people have. See if in Louis Philippe's time France was not in many respects more advanced than England ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... men, and it will be necessary for our trio to make the best possible use of their legs, before the living cataract pours down upon them. Indeed, they would not have been on the towing-path at all, but among the rather questionable occupants of the grass plot before the inn on the other side of the river, were it not for their desire to run along with the boats, and inspirit the rowers on whom ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... group the individual can respond with spontaneous and instinctive loyalty is questionable. The small child throws out his arms and exclaims passionately, "I love the whole world." Auguste Comte could be imbued with a fervor for "humanity" in the abstract. The idea of a League of Nations arouses in some minds a passionate ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... setting it forward to that which deserves to be called and accounted good: which setting forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel crowns upon the poets as victorious; not only of the historian, but over the philosopher, howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable. For suppose it be granted, that which I suppose, with great reason, may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet, yet do I think, that no man is so much [Greek text], ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... content to render the neighborhood of Iron Works questionable to the delicate and apprehensive; in "shirt-factory air" he declares, upon honor, "there are little filaments of linen and cotton, with minute eggs" (goodness gracious!) "Threshing machines," he more than insinuates, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... containing the words his wife had written to Mr. Ffolliott, "Do not come to the house. Meet me at Bartyon Wood." It did not take much to convince people, if one managed things with decent forethought. The Brents, for instance, were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and they had never forgotten the questionable conduct of their locum tenens. Then, suddenly, he had changed his manner and had sat down, laughing, and drawn Rosalie to his knee and kissed her—yes, he had kissed her and told her not to look like a little fool ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which he was naturally inclined.'[649] And so his one idea of managing ecclesiastical affairs was to keep things quiet; he calmed down all opposition to the Church from without, but he conferred a very questionable benefit ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... also changed two other notes presented to me by the same gentleman, and put them all under my snuff-box. Play began. I had no croupier, so I was obliged to deal slowly and keep an eye on the two counts, whose method of play was very questionable. At last both of them were dried up, and Castelbajac gave me a bill of exchange for two hundred guineas, begging me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to the National Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Seth and his Sons, he having left it on brazen Pillars engraven with indelible Characters not to be obliterated by the ensuing Flood. Job makes mention of Fishing, who Lived as may be supposed before Moses; nor is it questionable, whether the illustrious Patriarchs used not this Recreation. Certain it is, there were many Fishermen before Christs Coming, whose sole Dependance was on this Innocent Art. Innocent indeed and harmless, when ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... children, and in this case the father too much resembled the son in wilful impetuosity of temper. Turned out of his first home, Shelley went wandering forth by land and sea,—a reed shaken by the wind, a restless outcast yearning for repose and human sympathy, and in this way encountering the questionable accidents of his troubled, unguarded life, and gathering all the feverish inspiration of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... people of Tournon—to which generous town, and to the breakfast provided by its cordial inhabitants, we came an hour before noon—entreated us with so prodigal a liberality in the matter of bottles that the questionable conduct of the Serrieres apothecary quickly faded from our minds. In ancient times Tournon had a black reputation for its evil-dealing with chance wayfarers along the Rhone, and one's blood runs cold with mere thought of the horrors which went ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... the inferior officers. They thought it best that those parts of the country, whose fidelity was questionable (suspecta) should be secured by garrisons (custodiri). Potius is an adj. and goes with ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... certain intermediate forms—or forms which we may fairly argue to be such. But looking at the very considerable differences between the earlier and the later of these forms—differences greater than those which now separate well-defined species, it seems questionable whether any of the divisions of Tertiary time, taking all the circumstances into consideration, could be lengthened out ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A] also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,—a right exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant." From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. The disbarred one has only the right of appeal to and review by certain of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... recompense for it all, that we have a still undiscovered country before us, the boundaries of which no one has yet seen, a beyond to all countries and corners of the ideal known hitherto, a world so over-rich in the beautiful, the strange, the questionable, the frightful, and the divine, that our curiosity as well as our thirst for possession thereof, have got out of hand—alas! that nothing will now any longer ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons traversing it, unexamined and uncontrolled, was greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice as well as of prudence it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered well for the government of a fierce and powerful people, in whose hearts lay an intense ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... difficulty I have been enabled to collect these biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers of them so questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... better, but one thinks nothing of the toothache when it is past. The mineral waters became too hot to drink, and not quite near enough the boiling-point to make good tea of, whilst, as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that I got booked in the way-bill for ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... measure in the house of lords came from Lord Brougham, who contended that due consideration had not been employed either in the framing or passing of this bill. The wisdom of making a definite arrangement for the life of a sovereign who might be expected to reign for the next half century was questionable; and yet this was to be done, and a civil list voted which exceeded that of lier majesty's predecessors, while parliament was left in the dark as to those very important revenues possessed by the crown, the incomes of the duchies of Cornwall ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... some difficulty about stowing away the legs of a tall philosopher, and to each knife three individuals were told off; but the birds were not badly cooked, and the plum-pudding arrived in time to convert a questionable ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... swaddling clothes, the most wonderful intelligence, we need no biographer to tell us. Is it not said of every baby? But that he was in truth a wonderful child we have undeniable evidence, and of a kind less questionable than the statement of mothers and relatives. At three years old he could seldom be brought to play with little children, and only on the condition of their being pretty. One day, in a neighbour's house, he suddenly began ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... a novelty in New York, and just growing to be a rage, which has not yet subsided. It was originated in the questionable resorts about Memphis and St. Louis by Negro piano players who knew no more of the theory of music than they did of the theory of the universe, but were guided by natural musical instinct and talent. It made its way ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... genius (as I see not how you can avoid, having understood it and cooperated with it so truly), you will be glad to know that he values his American readers very highly; that he does not defend this offensive style of his, but calls it questionable tentative; that he is trying other modes, and is about publishing a historical piece called "The Diamond Necklace," as a part of a great work which he meditates on the subject of the French Revolution. He says ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... suggestions. If they chose to allow their heir absolute liberty of action, merely because he had passed his twenty-first birthday, it was their own concern, and his ruin would be upon their own heads. No one cared to risk a savage retort from the aged prince, or a cutting answer from Sant' Ilario for the questionable satisfaction of telling either that Orsino was going to the bad. The only person who really knew what Orsino was about, and who could have claimed the right to speak to his family of his doings was San Giacinto, and he held his peace, having plenty of important ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... death, the Quaestiones were equally incompetent to award capital punishment. The anomaly thus resulting was not viewed in ancient times with anything like the favour which it has attracted among the moderns, and indeed, while it is questionable whether the Roman character was at all the better for it, it is certain that the Roman Constitution was a great deal the worse. Like every other institution which has accompanied the human race down the current of its history, the punishment of death is a necessity of society ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... were held together not by any tradition of service and nobility but by the natural sympathy of common interests and a common large scale of living. It was a class without any very definite boundaries; vigorous individualities, by methods for the most part violent and questionable, were constantly thrusting themselves from insecurity to security, and the sons and daughters of secure people, by marrying insecurity or by wild extravagance or flagrant vice, would sink into the life of anxiety and insufficiency ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... duty towards the other. The two were the same, were one. And this, somehow, some day, when time and sentiment offered opportunity for such disclosure, she must let her father know. She must repeat to him the story of the eating-house and its monkey-faced proprietor—of questionable reputation—away in tropic Singapore. It could hardly fail to appeal to him if rightly told. About the events and vulgar publicity of yesterday nothing need be said. About this, within careful limits, much; and that, with, as she believed, happiest result. She had succeeded ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... baldacchino raised with questionable taste above the ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio, a pupil of Nicolo Pisano (A. D. 1285), rests on four columns of Oriental alabaster, from the quarries of Sannhur, in the district of the Beni Souef, offered to Gregory XVI. by Mohammed ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... "and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one of noble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are together equal, in posse, as we will say, to these valuable lands. Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you if ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... first time that day. "Well, I am a questionable gift," she said quietly. "I thought you meant the gift of content—which he ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Oriana into the hut, and, spreading their coats upon the damp floor, made a rude couch for her beside the fire. The poor girl was evidently prostrated with fatigue and excitement, yet, with a faint laugh and a jest as she glanced around upon the questionable accommodations, she thanked them for their kindness, and seated ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... mode of proceeding; but Mr. Burke had heard it stated positively at the meeting of the Royal Society, that there were South Australian settlers within one hundred miles of Cooper's Creek in the direction he proposed to take;" and by this very questionable assertion, without evidence, his mind was biassed. There was, in fact, nothing to recommend the route by Mount Hopeless, while everything was in favour of that by the Darling. Blanche Water, the nearest ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... warm-hearted and benevolent feeling towards our fellow-creatures; and for the most part afford a just and unperverted view of human character and conduct. In them a very sparing use is made of satire—that weapon of questionable utility—which perhaps has never yet done much good in any hands, not even in those of Pope or Young. Satire is thought useful, too much because it gratifies the uncharitableness of our nature. But to hold up wisdom and virtue to our admiration, is better than to apply the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... friends. I had only that which was within me. I was only son of only son, and my parents and grandparents were dead, and my distant kindred cold, seeing naught of good in so much study and thinking of that old, dark, beautiful, questionable one, my grandmother. I had indeed a remote kinsman, head of a convent in this neighborhood, and he was a wise man and a kindly. But not he either could ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... and Lucinda Bowlsby can hardly be imagined. Lucinda was nineteen years of age. She was pretty, and, for a girl of her class and station in life, tolerably well educated. But she was notwithstanding a light, giddy creature—and, I fear, something worse, at that time. At all events, she had a very questionable sort of reputation among the boarders in the house, and was regarded with suspicion by everyone who knew anything about her ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... is debatable; hence his allegation that other friends of Mr Robins are witnesses as well as himself, and his insinuation that what he testifies was no secret. But it is obvious, that, were his own assertions of the fact at all questionable, he would be equally obnoxious to discredit in assigning these other witnesses; for clearly, the man who could falsify in the one case, would be capable of doing so in the other. This may be said without any impeachment whatever of either Dr Wilson or the other friends of Mr Robins. It is merely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... chiefly. Anything over twenty feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty- three feet of girth and a hundred and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Chinese writers are eloquent in their praises of the sage for the combination of propriety, complaisance and firmness, which they see in his behavior in this matter. To myself there seems nothing remarkable in it but a somewhat questionable dexterity. But it was well for the fame of Confucius that his time was not occupied during those years with official services. He turned them to better account, prosecuting his researches into the poetry, history, ceremonies, and music of the nation. Many disciples continued to ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... manifesting themselves on all hands, it is not to be marveled at that the merchant should have felt that he was committing his daughter to a very questionable acquaintance. He cursed in his secret soul the insinuating elegance of Feathertop's manners as this brilliant personage bowed, smiled, put his hand on his heart, inhaled a long whiff from his pipe, and enriched the atmosphere with the smoky vapor of a fragrant ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Chatelet, ultimately Treasurer of the Chamber of Accounts;" Mother, "Marguerite d'Aumart, of a noble family of Poitou."] and had gone through various fortunes; a man, now and henceforth, in a high degree conspicuous, and questionable to his fellow-creatures. Clear knowledge of him ought, at this stage, to be common; but unexpectedly it is not. What endless writing and biographying there has been about this man; in which one still reads, with a kind of lazy satisfaction, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... in her life and surroundings, enough was known of her by the people at large, to bring a goodly concourse of them to the Assembly Rooms on the night when she was announced to speak on a subject of which the very title seemed questionable, namely, "On the Corruption of the State." The police had been notified of the impending meeting, and a few stalwart emissaries of the law in plain clothes mixed with the in-pouring throng. The crowd, however, was very orderly;—there was no pushing, no roughness, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... most questionable part of Tom Jones [i.e. the Lady Bellaston episode, chap. ix. Book xv.], I cannot but think after frequent reflection on it, that an additional paragraph, more fully & forcibly unfolding Tom Jones's sense of self-degradation ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... no longer receive this questionable movement of the Duke of York as an instance of 'breaking the line' in the modern sense, it is certain that the English manoeuvres in this action were more scientific and elaborate than ever before—so much so indeed that a reaction set in, and it is this reaction which gave rise to the idea ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... some slight alterations have been made in the wording of the Canons. It may seem questionable whether the Canons add anything to the above propositions: I think they do. They are not discussed in the ensuing chapter merely out of reverence for Mill, or regard for a nascent tradition; but because, as describing the character ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the whole having a very fine allegorical effect, fully understood, no doubt, by the artist, but very difficult to explain upon any known principle of art. The butchers' shops are equally prolific in external adornments. On the sign-boards you see every animal fit to be eaten, and many of questionable aspect, denuded of their skins and reduced to every conceivable degree of butchery; so that if you want a veal cutlet of any particular pattern, all you have to do is to select your pattern, and the cutlet will be chopped accordingly. The ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... hours he had not been able to extract much of comfort out of the document. It was, as he felt, a stubborn, stiff-necked, disobedient, almost rebellious letter. It contained a manifest defiance of his mother, and exhibited doctrines of most questionable morality. It had become to him a matter of doubt whether he could possibly marry a woman who could entertain such ideas and write such a letter. If the doubt was to be decided in his own mind against Clara, he had better show the letter at once ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... conventionalities of society, have been left to pick up as they may their ideas upon personal conduct, and, coming face to face with puzzling problems, are at a loss, and perhaps are led into wrong ways of thinking and questionable ways of doing because no one has foreseen their dilemma and warned ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Hitchens is rather new to this line of advocacy. In the course of time he will learn—if indeed he has not already learnt, and is concealing the fact—that the "converted infidels" will not stand a minute's scrutiny. The only safe method is to drop questionable cases and resort to sheer invention. Even that method, however, is not devoid of peril, as one of its practitioners has recently discovered. The Rev. Hugh Price Hughes must by this time be extremely sorry he circulated that false and foolish story of the converted ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... lawyers; after which it is generally believed that it was continued to be preserved, along with the literature of the ancient Romans, in the buildings founded by the various monastic orders of Christians. Here again we are met by another equally vexing circumstance, it being excessively questionable whether monasteries ever really conserved, to any, even the least extent, the interests of human knowledge. Monks never had any love for learning; did not appreciate the volumes of antiquity; in fact, could not read them; for the Latin was not their Latin; and they are not likely to have ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... preference from any worth of its own. The public administration, so far as it was influenced by him, and his special department, the Admiralty, furnished much occasion for just censure; and the general policy on which he embarked appeared questionable and dangerous. He was coarsely compared to a mule which took its rider into a wrong road. Oxford suggested to men's minds the recollection of the opposition which the great nobles had once offered to Henry III. People said that they ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... exceedingly careful that nothing should be lost. If he had eels for breakfast, he would always contrive, by preserving and drying the skins, to save more than the original cost of these somewhat questionable members of the piscatory family. He early instructed his son in the elementary principles of his trade; and it is believed that before he was seventeen he not only knew the number of spokes in a wheel, but had actually adjusted them to the felloes, and driven them up to the hub. He was also ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... must be perplexing; since he is the only young man in the world, from whom a woman has no dishonour to fear.—Ah, Lucy!—It would be vanity in me, would it not? to suppose that he had more to fear from Harriet, than she has from him; as the virtue of either, I hope, is not questionable? But the event of his Italian visit will ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... comply with the rules may have afforded a more ample field to the poets to display their native originality, though at the expense of art. But even this assumption, on a closer examination, appears extremely questionable. The poetic spirit requires to be limited, that it may move with a becoming liberty within its proper precincts, as has been felt by all nations on the first invention of metre; it must act according to laws derivable from its own essence, otherwise its strength will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tendency of thought, in the Roman Catholic Church from the beginning of the seventeenth century. In no description of this chapel have I ever seen the names and subjects accurately given: the style of art belongs to the decadence, and the taste being worse than, questionable, the pervading doctrinal idea has been ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Margaret the chance for happiness and love her heart craved—to put out of Lorna's way the evil influence that had threatened her. Now the solution came to him. Sooner or later he would catch Swann with his sister in an automobile, or at the club rooms, or at some other questionable place. He knew Lorna was meeting Swann. He had tried to find them, all to no avail. What he might have done heretofore was no longer significant; he knew what he meant ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people to colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark upon our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose. The ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid,' ascribed with questionable authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an order of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle an eye in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was under Mrs. Fleming's charge. The joy of her love for it was written on its lustrous beds, as poets write. She had the poetic passion for flowers. Perhaps her taste may now seem questionable. She cherished the old-fashioned delight in tulips; the house was reached on a gravel-path between rows of tulips, rich with one natural blush, or freaked by art. She liked a bulk of colour; and when the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Shackaye, the Comanche (the latter of whom showed no evidence of having been engaged in questionable business during the preceding night), were similarly attired, though it would be supposed that the full-blooded Indian would have dressed in accordance with the fashion of his people. He claimed, however, to have been engaged in the cattle business before, and, when he first presented himself ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... silence; but as the keen edge of their appetites became a little dulled, the tongues of the banqueters were unloosed and a torrent of talk began to flow, interlarded with oaths and stories of a more than questionable character. Corks popped from bottles with loud explosions, the darkies greeted the sallies of wit with boisterous laughter and surreptitiously ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... harm he could, to those who claimed his allegiance. Such sights, however, are often seen; our own especial objects too frequently blinding us to the obligations that we owe morality, so far as not to be instrumental in effecting even what we conceive to be good, by questionable agencies. But the Senor Montefalderon kept in view, principally, his desire to be useful to Mexico, blended a little too strongly, perhaps, with the wishes of a man who was born near the sun, to avenge ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... positivist who has given up any definite hope of personal immortality—save that which by a metaphor is applied to one's influence upon the life of the world here upon earth. And in her own career, by her unconventional union with Lewes, she made a questionable choice of action, though from the highest motives; a choice which I believe rasped her sensitive soul because of the way it was regarded by many whom she respected and whose good opinion she coveted. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... alone. She climbed into the vehicle, and we wended a winding road, and forded several streams until we came to Puforatoai, having gone through Hatiti and Maora. There was a pass in the reef admitting to a questionable shelter, Port Beaumanoir, used by the French when little gunboats threatened to bombard villages to force ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... chanting the songs and ballads of her country, of which her store was great. The garden and nursery prospered so much, that he was induced to widen his views, and by the help of his kind landlord, the laird of Doonholm, and the more questionable aid of borrowed money, he entered upon a neighbouring farm, named Mount Oliphant, extending to an hundred acres. This was in 1765; but the land was hungry and sterile; the seasons proved rainy and rough; the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Universal air-chest forms a perfect solution of the problem of supplying prompt and steady wind-pressure, but as practically the same effect is obtained by the use of a little spring reservoir not one hundredth part of its size, it is questionable whether this Universal air-chest, carrying, as it does, certain ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... the badness of our history teaching makes it doubtful if every one does know, that the Federal Government of the United States of America did not begin as a sovereign Government, and has now only a very questionable sovereignty. Each State was sovereign, and each State delegated certain powers to Washington. That was the initial idea of the union. Only later did the idea of a people of the States as a whole emerge. In the same way I understand the ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... of Governor Clarke, and was influenced by his party feelings of hatred to Troup—in his opposition to a treaty, openly declaring that Georgia should never acquire the land while Troup was Governor. He was an unscrupulous man, of questionable morals, and vindictive ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks |
