"Ambiguity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... characteristics of the lamented statesman's high distinction—the most analytic of the weekly papers was always talking about it—had enabled him to rescue the prospect from any shade of vagueness or of ambiguity. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... sense, devoid of all ambiguity, and confirmed by what precedes; that his labours are made pleasures, being beguiled by these sweet thoughts of his mistress, which are busiest when he labours, because it excites in his mind the memory of her "weeping to see him work." The correction has also the recommendation of being ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... There was some ambiguity in the compliment; but Lord Curryfin took it as implying that his aspect in all its variety was agreeable to the young lady. He did not then dream of a rival in ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... that in this instance the Hebrew chronicler purposely phrased his account to convey the impression that Sennacherib's tragic end was but the slightly delayed culmination of the punishment inflicted for his attack upon the "chosen people." On the other hand, the ambiguity may be quite unintentional, for the Hebrew writers were notoriously lacking in the true historical sense, which shows itself in a full appreciation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... it been written in different words or a different language. (60) That the Divine law has in this sense come down to us uncorrupted, is an assertion which admits of no dispute. (61) For from the Bible itself we learn, without the smallest difficulty or ambiguity,, that its cardinal precept is: To love God above all things, and one's neighbour as one's self. (62) This cannot be a spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the Bible had ever put forth a different doctrine it would have had to change ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... jury looked down from the awful circle, in the midst of which stood Saunders, and surveyed the little hard-faced, yellow-haired farmer, with eyes which seemed intent on searching him through all his shadowy ambiguity. If only he would make such answer as any other man in all the land might expect,—thought the prisoner,—"Why, your wife, of course." The doctor was prepared to believe in a miracle. Since he went away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Zeitschr. 1855; Bastiat's declaration (Harmonies, p. 171 ff.): that "valeur" (by which Bastiat means only value in exchange), le raport de deux services echanges, contains a two-fold error: the ambiguity of the word services, which applies equally to a yielding or affording of utility, as to useful labor, and the error that the labor necessary to produce a commodity, and of which the purchaser ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... he could not see "what Paradise Lost proved," I should not have been the least surprised. And yet the style of his writing was often remarkable for its perfect clarity and perfect avoidance of anything in the shape of ambiguity. He could say what he wanted to say in the fewest number of words and in a way in which the most ingenious person could not twist into meaning something which they were not intended to mean. He was indeed a super-draftsman. But that ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... nature of Pe-lung's reflection was clouded in ambiguity, though the fact that he became entirely enveloped in a dense purple vapour indicated feelings of more than usual vigour. When this cleared away it left his outer form unchanged indeed, but the affable condescension of his manner ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... praise the maker of the law for his great wisdom / for his playne writyng without any maner of ambiguity / y^t no strau[n]ger shulde p[re]sume to go vpon the walles / & reherce y^e law word for worde / & tha[n] shew som reasonable cause that mouyd the maker of the law that he wolde vtterly that no straunger shulde as- cende the walles. &c. Exa[m]ple of ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to the whispers that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors he walked continually in its shadow, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... construed my note on the subject as an unqualified acceptance, but that was owing entirely to his devouring desire to get the thing off his hands, and not to any ambiguity in my language. ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... character may, and probably will, be made by our naval forces, and I earnestly recommend that Congress may amend the second section of the act of March 3, 1819, so as to free its construction from the ambiguity which has so long existed and render the duty of the President plain in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... that his work was frequently criticized for its ambiguity and lack of consistency. But he claimed that these defects were unavoidable consequences of his way of writing. He had to write what he saw and could not be expected to express that clearly which he himself saw only dimly. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the ambiguity belongs only to the English word—it is impossible to make the mistake in the original: the word which stands for were, is a word which does not imply a continued state, but must imply a single finished act. It cannot by any possibility imply that ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... persuasion of her own powers in penetrating the future, we have seen that Hilda had never consulted her oracles on the fate of Harold, without a dark and awful sense of the ambiguity of their responses. That fate, involving the mightiest interests of a great race, and connected with events operating on the farthest times and the remotest lands, lost itself to her prophetic ken amidst omens the most contradictory, shadows and lights the most ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... anything as if it had the same sort of relation to the thing itself as a man's spirit is supposed to have to his body; and so they spoke of this fine essence of the fermented liquid as being the spirit of the liquid. Thus came about that extraordinary ambiguity of language, in virtue of which you apply precisely the same substantive name to the soul of man and to a glass of gin! And then there is still yet one other most curious piece of nomenclature connected with this matter, and that is the word "alcohol" itself, which is now so familiar to ...
— Yeast • Thomas H. Huxley
... which Christopher Columbus was born remains unidentified, and the year of his birth undecided, no such ambiguity attaches to the place and year of Vespucci's nativity. Above the doorway of the mansion which "for centuries before the discovery of America was the dwelling-place of the ancestors of Amerigo Vespucci, and his own birthplace," a marble tablet was placed, in the second decade ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... his guilt with others. The town-council of Mutina, too, kept adding to their anxiety by offering them arms and money, styling them with ill-timed respect 'Conscript Fathers'. A 53 remarkable quarrel arose at this meeting. Licinius Caecina attacked Eprius Marcellus[331] for the ambiguity of his language. Not that the others disclosed their sentiments, but Caecina, who was still a nobody, recently raised to the senate, sought to distinguish himself by quarrelling with some one of importance, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... your theory is excellent, though your practice does not quite conform; your oracles are crooked and enigmatic, and generally rely upon a safe ambiguity; a second prophet is required to say what they mean. But what is your solution of the problem? How are we to cure Timocles of the impediment in ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... as during the preceding Parliament, the exertions of the majority in the Assembly could do little for Reform under the existing state of the constitution. The Lieutenant-Governor responded with curt ambiguity to the Assembly's Address, and cemented his alliance with the Compact by refusing to grant the prayer of the petition for the release of Collins. The Government submitted to one defeat after another with dogged ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... her, reasserted all their power. She saw herself as a wicked woman, in the eye of truth not less wicked than her husband declared her. A sinner stubborn in impenitence, defending herself by a paltry ambiguity that had all the evil of a direct lie. Her ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... old manuscripts, and even in early printed books, whereby letters are dropped out here and there, or particular collocations of letters represented by somewhat arbitrary symbols. The commonest form of abbreviation is the substitution for a word of its initial letter; but, with a view to prevent ambiguity, one or more of the other letters are frequently added. Letters are often doubled to indicate a plural or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... professes to have translated his work from the English of one Mr. D'Avisson (Davidson?) although there is a terrible ambiguity in the statement. "J' en ai eu," says he "l'original de Monsieur D'Avisson, medecin des mieux versez qui soient aujourd'huy dans la cnoissance des Belles Lettres, et sur tout de la Philosophic Naturelle. Je lui ai cette obligation entre les autres, de m' auoir non seulement ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... knowing where to find underwriters who would choose to insure them, and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run any hazard, even upon the credit of my own ingenuity, I was very much in doubt for some weeks whether any bookseller would be willing to subject himself to an ambiguity that might prove very expensive in case of a bad market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures at defiance, and takes the whole charge upon himself. So out I come. I shall be glad of my Translations from Vincent Bourne in your next ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... of this character, the brave English sailor was obstructed by no ambiguity as to how he should act. A single bound carried him across the Catamaran,—another landed him upon the top of one of the casks, and a third launched him six feet outward into the sea. Had he been apprised of the accident only ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... any ambiguity which might arise as to the scope of the treaty with regard to individual questions, the conclusion of peace was in itself of great importance: it implied a change of policy which created the greatest stir. It affected the United Provinces and filled them with anxiety, for in their ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... is the theme of Bubbles of the Foam: a little love-story, whose title, like that of all her elder sisters, has in the original a double application, by reason of the ambiguity of the last word, to Love, and to the Moon. We might also render it, A Heavenly Bubble, or, Love is a Bubble, or Nothing but a Bubble, or A Bubble of the World,[3] thinking either of Love or the Moon. For the Moon, like the goddess of Love, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... good humour. To listen to his stories, to receive his confidences and laugh at his jokes, seemed for the moment all that was required of her, and the complacency with which her hostess regarded these attentions freed them of the least hint of ambiguity. Mrs. Trenor evidently assumed that Lily's growing intimacy with her husband was simply an indirect way of returning her ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... spoken; but now he began to unburden himself of those opinions, hopes, fancies and idealistic meditations for which I had come so far to see him. In order that there shall be no ambiguity I have arranged for them to be set up in larger type than the rest of the article. After all, any type will suit my own poor setting, but the jewels, the jewels must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... possibly get money to buy his goods elsewhere, and Mr. Bruce himself speaks of the shop as a necessity for the fishing, and not a source of profit in itself. The price of meal was ascertained by William Goudie to be at least 3s. per boll above, the price elsewhere. There is also at Grutness an ambiguity about weight -pecks being sold by 'lispund weight,' 4 to 32 lbs., instead of boll weight, 4 to 35 lbs. quarter boll. The price of oatmeal for the whole of 1870 was 22s. at Grutness, which was the highest price it attained in Lerwick for a very short time after the breaking out ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of technical terms. Ambiguity of the terms Rotation and Revolution, owing to the double meaning improperly {20} attributed to each of the words. (No date nor place, but by Mr. Perigal,[42] I have no doubt, and containing letters ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... care should be taken to avoid ambiguity in the use of pronouns. It is very easy to multiply and combine pronouns in such a way that while grammatical rules may not be broken the reader may be left hopelessly confused. Such ambiguous sentences should be cleared up, either by a rearrangement of the words or by substitution of nouns ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... if sound "first principles are kept in mind," any other conclusion can be reached, whether by jumping, or by any other mode of logical progression. But the first principle which our author "keeps in mind" possesses just that amount of ambiguity which enables him to play hocus-pocus with it. It is this; that "the creation of value does not depend upon the finishing of the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... a ship, the draft of a picture, or a draught of medicine, or the present draft of this essay, though it may ultimately appear medicinal, are, some of them, quite as distinct objects or notions as, for instance, vane and vein are: but the ambiguity of draft, however spelt, is due to its being the name of anything that is drawn; and since there are many ways of drawing things, and different things are drawn in different ways, the same word has come to carry very ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound: sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on: 'He tells me it's now ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... withdraw. Even when we undertake to love others, we may do it in ways that hurt them, because we love them for selfish reasons. Human relationships, in themselves, are ambiguous, and we need deliverance from the ambiguity of them, for these relationships can either destroy ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... very different pattern was in use among the southern patriarchs. Why did he not, in plain words, and sober earnest, and good faith, describe the thing as it was, instead of employing honied words and courtly phrases, to set forth with all becoming vagueness and ambiguity what might possibly be supposed to exist in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... made to achieve accuracy in citation, and to avoid ambiguity or error in the enunciation of Principles, the Author will be very grateful if his readers will notify to him (at the address of the Publishers) any inaccuracies or omissions which ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... happened to tell the truth once, don't cut no ice," Happy Jack maintained with sufficient ambiguity to ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... complement direct, complement indirect. Gender is formed by distinctive particles; number by prefixing numerals, etc.; cases by position or appropriate prepositions. Adjectives precede nouns; position determines comparison; and absence of punctuation causes ambiguity. The latter is now introduced into most newly published works. The new education is bringing with it innumerable words and phrases not found in the old literature or dictionaries. Japanese idioms which are now being imported into the language are ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the ambiguity of language only which can make this proposition appear either doubtful or paradoxical. When properly explained and understood, it ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... my memory fails me, and I positively cannot recollect whether his hero was sliding or walking; as though a writer should describe a skirmish, and the reader, at the end, be still uncertain whether it were a charge of cavalry or a slow and stubborn advance of foot. There could be no such ambiguity in Burns; his work is at the opposite pole from such indefinite and stammering performances; and a whole lifetime passed in the study of Shenstone would only lead a man further and further from writing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this allusion to a name, an unusuall thing in common speech: But it had been a strange, and obscure speech, if our Saviour intending to build his Church on the Person of St. Peter, had said, "thou art a Stone, and upon this Stone I will build my Church," when it was so obvious without ambiguity to have said, "I will build my Church on thee; and yet there had been still the same allusion ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... and readiest, if not the most just, criterion of a man's services, is the wage that mankind pays him, or, briefly, what he earns. There at least there can be no ambiguity. St. Paul is fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a tentmaker, and Socrates fully and freely entitled to his earnings as a sculptor, although the true business of each was not only something different, but something which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interest could afford you from such a principal as you mention; and the most graceful excuse for the acceptance, would be, that it left you free to your voluntary functions. That is the less light part of the scruple. It has no darker shade. I put in darker, because of the ambiguity of the word light, which Donne in his admirable poem on the Metempsychosis, has so ingeniously illustrated in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... however, might fairly argue that this very ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if languages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation, there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation between them. He might, however, propose that he and his pupils should come to an understanding ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... little bit," said Mr. Searle, rather shirking, I thought, the burden of this tribute and for all response to the ambiguity of the compliment. ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... own]: Not coming by the Reppen Highway, then!" think they. And thereupon changed rear to front, as at Zorndorf, but more elaborately;—which I should not mention, were it not that hereby their late "right wing on the Muhlberg" has, in strict speech, become their "left," and there is ambiguity and discrepancy in some of the Books, should any poor reader take to studying them on this matter. Changed their front; which involves much interior changing; readjusting of batteries and the like. That of burning Kunersdorf was the barbaric ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... doubts and objections in the reader, which otherwise he would never have dreamed of. Thus my general position, that an opinion or belief is nothing but a strong and lively idea derived from a present impression related to it, maybe liable to the following objection, by reason of a little ambiguity in those words strong and lively. It may be said, that not only an impression may give rise to reasoning, but that an idea may also have the same influence; especially upon my principle, that all our ideas are derived from correspondent impressions. For suppose I form at present an idea, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... nothing beyond a verbal ambiguity here if we look at it closely, and yet there is a corresponding uncertainty in the conception of Literature and Art commonly entertained, which leads many writers and many critics into the belief that what are called "effects" ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... which is a correlative term to 'predication,' shares in the ambiguity. If we are to look for substance anywhere, I should find it in events which are in some sense the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... consideration, we have fixed in the subjoined schedule the prices of the various articles of produce, which prices are to remain free from all ambiguity. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... cross-examination commenced, which it is a painful task even for the most candid witness to undergo, since a story, especially if connected with agitating and alarming incidents, can scarce be so clearly and distinctly told, but that some ambiguity and doubt may be thrown upon it by a string ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... regret very much that some ambiguity in my language (S.R. I. p. 483) should have misled, and given Dr Lightfoot much trouble. I used the word 'quotation' in the sense of a use of the Epistle of Peter, and not in reference to any one sentence ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... shepherds and forest nymphs. To Peele the priority in the use of pastoralism in drama must doubtless be assigned; but the play of Gallathea loses none of its merit on that account. Coupled with a pretty ambiguity of sex, this pastoral setting completes the model from which As You Like It was yet to be moulded. Probably Peele, in his Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, preceded Lyly also in the introduction of sex-disguise, but his Neronis stirs up no serious difficulties by her appearance ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... former translations, this passage is: "opposite to this land, to the south, is Sueoland." The alteration in the text removes the ambiguity—E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... length discovered, containing a letter, in which the Superior of the company residing at Santa Fe informed the missionaries of the Orinoco of the persecutions to which the Jesuits were exposed in New Grenada. This letter recommended no measure of precaution; it was short, without ambiguity, and respectful towards the government, whose orders were executed with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... measure, had been formally adopted as a principle of Republicanism, which was hailed by its adherents as a new and brilliant economic device for enriching everybody at nobody's expense, and which had really enriched a few at the expense of the many. The Democrats, with considerable hesitation and ambiguity, pronounced against it, arraigned the Republican party for corruption, and named as their nominee ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Adrianople relative to the protection of the Christian religion." This was most unfortunately worded, but, however, the clause had obtained the sanction of the English Government, and the Czar expressed his willingness to accept it. Lord Stratford, however, saw the danger underlying the ambiguity of the language, and, under his advice, the Porte proposed as an amendment the substitution of the words "to the stipulations of the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that of Adrianople, relative to the protection by the Sublime Porte of the Christian ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... throughout this essay. The nature of the subject it discusses, the general misapprehension both of the strong and weak points in the physiology of the woman question, and the ignorance displayed by many, of what the co-education of the sexes really means, all forbid that ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression should be employed in the discussion. The subject is treated solely from the standpoint of physiology. Technical terms have been employed, only where their use is more exact or ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... well as a martyr without the crown. The light of which possibility is, however, too fierce; I turn it off, I tear myself from the view—noting further but the one fact in his history that, by my glimpse of it, quite escapes ambiguity. The youthful Albert, I have mentioned, was to resist successfully through those years that solicitation of "Europe" our own response to which, both as a general and a particular solution, kept breaking out in choral wails; but the other house none the less nourished projects so earnest ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... into 'A Code of Crimes and Punishments,' 'A Code of Procedure,' 'A Code of Evidence,' and 'A Code of Reform and Prison Discipline,' besides 'A Book of Definitions.' This work is marked by great unity of design, by the shunning of legal ambiguity, by the preventing rather than avenging crime, and by bringing 'mercy ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... comprehending the criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of the libel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, and the application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, and other devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or doubt to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished. Milton tells us, without the least ambiguity, what a spectator of these marvellous occurrences would have witnessed. I doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you, but I should like to recall one passage to your minds, in order that I may be justified in ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... the mysteries of thorough-bass, and went so far as to write out the entire theory of harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music, to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant by enharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, permissible and non- permissible octaves; but I did not find what I hoped. I composed a few short tunes, which I myself thought very pretty, but which my young master made great fun of, and with good reason. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... words which so often occur in this passage—'Invariable, continual, immutable, inevitable, irresistible.' There is an ambiguity in these words, which may lead—which I believe does lead—to most unphilosophical conclusions. They are used very much as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men. Are you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the world- old arguments between necessity ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the tariff question, Mr. Bigelow assumes it as a settled principle of national policy that revenue should be raised by duties on imports. To clear the ground from ambiguity, he states exactly what he means when he uses the terms "free-trade" and "protection," and then proceeds to describe and explain the tariff-policy of Great Britain. Not without good reason does he give this prominence to the action of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... company subject to English jurisdiction, framed according to English laws, and under the protection of England. Its principal center will be London. I cannot tell yet how large the Company's capital should be; I shall leave that calculation to our numerous financiers. But to avoid ambiguity, I shall put it at a thousand million marks (about L50,000,000 or $200,000,000); it may be either more or less than that sum. The form of subscription, which will be further elucidated, will determine what fraction of the whole amount must be ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, in his Latin translation, mistook it for ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... V.47: This grave shall have a living monument:] There is an ambiguity in this phrase. It either means an endurable monument such as will outlive time, or it darkly hints at ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... have an opportunity of pleading his own cause, and obtaining forgiveness for his indiscretion. He did not judge it safe to go into any detail concerning the circumstances by which he had been misled, and upon the whole endeavoured to express himself with such ambiguity that, if the letter should fall into wrong hands, it would be difficult either to understand its real purport or to trace the writer. This letter the old man undertook faithfully to deliver to his daughter at Woodbourne; ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... under his hand. But it is a question whether we cannot dispense with even more. The facts which constitute possession are in their nature capable of continuing presently true for a lifetime. Hence there has arisen an ambiguity of language which has led to much confusion of thought. We use the word "possession," indifferently, to signify the presence of all the facts needful to gain it, and also the condition of him who, although some of them no longer exist, is still protected ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... will have fifty pounds; and the least you can do is to let him have fifty pounds," replied Sugarman, with the same happy ambiguity. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... neatly worded significations: 'No. 32. To break through the enemy's line together and engage on the opposite side. No. 33. To break through the enemy's line in succession and engage on the other side.' Had these two lucid significations been adopted by Howe there would have been no possible ambiguity as to what ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... minds at every breeze of every fresh hope which presents itself, giving themselves up wholly to the impulse and inclination of the moment; and, like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express themselves with great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition whatever; are immoderately covetous of gold; and are so fickle and irascible, that they very often on the same day that they quarrel with their companions without any provocation, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... man. I have disguised, but could never stifle the conviction, that his eyes and voice had a witchcraft in them, which rendered him truly formidable: but I reflected on the ambiguous expression of his countenance—an ambiguity which you were the first to remark; on the cloud which obscured his character; and on the suspicious nature of that concealment which he studied; and concluded you to be safe. I denied the obvious construction ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... The studied ambiguity of the report which awards two first prizes to the competing engines, is no less apparent than the desire ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... have been surmised that our sterling young candidate for district attorney had not yet become skilled in dalliance with the equivocal; that he was no adept in ambiguity; that he would confront all issues with a rugged valiance susceptible of no misconstruction; that, in short, ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... sayings encouraged her to be extravagant. She thought that perhaps he would find her ankles worth a moment—if she took pains with them. Anyhow, he was worth dressing for. James never noticed anything—or if he did, his ambiguity was two-edged. "Extraordinary hat," he might say, and drop his eyeglass, which always gave an air of finality to comments of the sort. But her shopping done, for Lancelot's sake, life stretched before her a grey waste. She went back to tea, to a novel, to a ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... cites it as an example of what she felicitously calls "an ambiguity, not hazy, but prismatic, and therefore not really perplexing." She gives us accordingly our choice of two interpretations, "'each cries out on account of the second death which he is suffering,' and 'each cries out for death to come a second time and ease him of his sufferings.'"[194] ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... contains three distinct assertions concerning my views, and just the same number of utter misrepresentations of them. That which I have numbered (1) turns on the ambiguity of the word "same," for a discussion of which I would refer Dr. Stirling to a great hero of "Aufklaerung", Archbishop Whately; statement number (2) is, in my judgment, absurd, and certainly I have never said anything resembling it; while, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... doubt, dubiousness, dubiety, incertitude; irresolution, variableness, inconstancy, capriciousness; ambiguity, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Independents; and it was with difficulty that they were at last persuaded to intrust the working of the article to two or three individuals of known and approved orthodoxy. By these it was presented in a new and less objectionable form, clothed in such happy ambiguity of language, as to suit the principles and views of all parties. It provided that the kirk should be preserved in its existing purity, and the church of England "be reformed according to the word of God" (which the Independents would interpret ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... very simplicity of this book will encourage careless criticism from those who believe that genius and ambiguity are twin. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in its terms, an order must be definite and must be the expression of a fixed decision. Ambiguity or vagueness indicates either a vacillation or the inability ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... something from the car first," he replied, with ambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... self-existent or uncreated substance, it is afterwards applied to everything that exists, so as to exclude the creation even of that which is not self-existent; and this on the convenient assumption that whatever exists must be either a "substance," or an "attribute," or a "mode." And thus, partly by an ambiguity of language, partly by an arbitrary and gratuitous assumption, he excludes the possibility of Creation altogether. Surely it might have occurred to him that by proving the necessary existence of an uncreated Being—a doctrine held by ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... well as the point of a needle. To the son of a cook, "ego quoque tibi jure favebo." The ancients pronounced coce and quoque like co-ke, which alludes to the Latin cocus, cook, besides the ambiguity of jure, which applies to broth or law—jus. A Sicilian suspected of being a Jew, attempted to get the cause of Verres into his own hands; Cicero, who knew that he was a creature of the great culprit, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that the Hazaj is not in use as a hexameter, but only with an 'Aruz majzuah or shortened by one foot. Hence it is only in the second 'Aruz of the Wafir, which is likewise majzuah, that the ambiguity as to the real nature of the metre can arise;[FN457] and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... ever loved to be as explicit as possible; on which account, perhaps, I never attained to any proficiency in the law, the essence of which is said to be ambiguity; most questions may be answered in a few words, and this among the rest, though connected with the law. My parents deemed it necessary that I should adopt some profession, they named the law; the law was as agreeable to me as any other profession within my reach, so I adopted the law, and the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness, interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth, for which I have ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a good (see preceding footnote); as, "sunshine is good for weeds." But as applied to evils, the phrase "good for" more often means "good to abolish"; as, "hellebore is good for weeds." These usages illustrate the ambiguity of all our common ethical terms. To consider them here would be, however, needlessly confusing. The two senses of the term "good" mentioned in the text are the only senses we need to bear in mind for the purposes of ethics.] To put ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the evening in unusual quantities and gave the modest area the outward extension of a view that was "big" even when restricted to stars. Deeply and changeably blue, though not romantically large, they were yet youthfully, almost strangely beautiful, with their ambiguity of your scarce knowing if they most carried their possessor's vision out or most opened themselves to your own. Whatever you might feel, they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Pyrophilus, for the avoiding of Ambiguity, to imploy the Word Pigments, to signifie such prepared materials (as Cochinele, Vermilion, Orpiment,) as Painters, Dyers and other Artificers make use of to impart or imitate particular Colours, I shall be the better understood in divers passages of the following papers, and particularly ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... duty this evening is to ask your pardon for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of this lecture has been announced: for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and another material of riches, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and the sweet; and whoever went down first, the whole of his shed-mates were to follow next in order. This caused a good deal of joy in Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice—and that this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 1781, to his father. The person spoken of was Archduke Maximilian, who afterward became Archbishop of Cologne, and was the patron of Beethoven. [The ambiguity of the opening statement is probably due to carelessness in writing, or Mozart's habit of using double ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... was the transferred instruction. The cabman, quick to note the ambiguity in the direction given, prepared, with the subtlety of his kind, for a long ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... listen, his thoughts drifting hither and hither on a turbid flood of emotion. During the last passage—Allegro molto leggieramente—he felt a movement round about him as a general relief, and when, on the last note, there broke forth (familiar ambiguity) sounds of pleasure and of applause, he at once stood up. But he had no intention of pressing into the throng that rapidly surrounded the musicians. Seeing that Mr. Redgrave had vacated his place, whilst Mrs. Carnaby remained seated, he stepped forward to speak with his friend's wife. She smiled ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... and most properly expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government; and city amongst us has a quite different notion from common-wealth: and therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word common-wealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the first; and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body dislike, I consent with him to change it ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... this divine power, the Daemonion, as he calls it. He shows how the Deity visits the sins of the ancestors upon their descendants, how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own destruction, and how oracles mislead by their ambiguity, when interpreted by blind passion. He shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. He points out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... could have made that possible. It was merely odd that she should be putting an appropriate finish to a thing which in the meantime had been suddenly, absolutely, and radically undone. Neeld was loyal to his word; but none may know the terrible temptation he suffered; a nod, a wink, a hint, an ambiguity—anything would have given ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... sensible middle ground. However, I suppose Robert Rodale perceived communicating a less ideological message as a problem: most of the readers of Organic Gardening and Farming magazine and the buyers of organic gardening books published by Rodale Press weren't open to ambiguity. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... of the respective amounts demanded and supplied are, indeed, strictly meaningless without reference to some particular price. The reference may sometimes be implicit; but, whenever there is a chance of ambiguity, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... now to philosophy. An ultimate datum, even though it be logically unrationalized, will, if its quality is such as to define expectancy, be peacefully accepted by the mind; while if it leave the least opportunity for ambiguity in the future, it will to that extent cause mental uneasiness if not distress. Now, in the ultimate explanations of the universe which the craving for rationality has elicited from the human mind, the demands of expectancy to be satisfied have ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... rescinding act "either by general principles which are common to our free institutions, or by particular provisions of the Constitution of the United States." It was not until nine years after Fletcher vs. Peck that this ambiguity was cleared up in the Dartmouth College ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... comprehend the same ideas; for Newton wrote to Locke, "I beg your pardon for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle laid down in your book of Ideas—and that I took you for a Hobbist!"[43] The difference of opinion between Locke and Reid is in consequence of an ambiguity in the word principle, as employed by Reid. The removal of a solitary word may cast a luminous ray over a whole body of philosophy: "If we had called the infinite the indefinite," says Condillac, in his Traite des Sensations, "by this small change of a word we should have avoided the error ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli |
