"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now become acquainted with his birth, and with his, alas! hopeless claims, left Russia for the one profession open to him, that of sea-robbery; and did feats without number in that questionable line in many seas and scenes,—in England latterly, and most conspicuously of all. In one of his courses thither, after long labors in the Hebrides, Man, Wales, and down the western shores to the very Land's End and farther, he paused at the Scilly Islands ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... soon joined him, and learned from the nobleman what filled him at once with joy and terror. Knowing that Warner and Sibyll had left the Tower, he had surmised that the girl's virtue had at last succumbed; and it delighted him to hear from Lord Hastings, whose word to men was never questionable, the solemn assurance of her unstained chastity. But he trembled at this mysterious disappearance, and knew not to whom to impute the snare, till the penetration of Hastings suddenly alighted near, at least, to the clew. "The Duchess ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... richest man in the world, the richest man the world had ever known. And the richer he got the stronger the idea grew upon him with all the force of a morbid obsession. He thought of money by day, he dreamt of it at night. No matter by what questionable device it was to be procured, more gold and more must flow into his already overflowing coffers. So each day, instead of spending the rest of his years in peace, in the enjoyment of the wealth he had accumulated, he went downtown like any ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... conversation[4350]. The chaplain of a regiment, a curate in the vicinity, keeps fast hold of it; as to knowing what it means that is another matter. It is impossible to find anything out through explanations of it otherwise than "a theoretic perfection of government, questionable in its origin, hazardous in its progress, and visionary in its end." On the Englishman proposing to them the British constitution as a model they "hold it cheap in respect of liberty" and greet it with a smile; it is, especially, not in conformity with "the principles." ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... than a child—had no beauty of any kind; yet a certain gentleness of look redeemed the poor little face from absolute ugliness. She was queerly dressed, too. Her gown was of good, even rich material, but in questionable taste, and cut in a fashion that might have suited her grandmother. Peggy's own ideas of dress were primitive, and she was not very observant, but she did feel that blue poplin stamped with large red roses was not a suitable dress for a schoolgirl, even if she were not small and plain and wizened, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... Elizabeth visited her favourite, the Earl of Essex, here in August, 1575, and was entertained by him in a half-timbered house which formerly stood near the Castle, but was long since destroyed by fire. It is questionable whether Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in this house, or in a portion of the old Castle. Certain, however, it is that the unfortunate queen was brought to Chartley from Tutbury on Christmas day, 1585. The exact date at which she left Chartley is uncertain, but it appears ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... peculiar code of behaviour, that on the one hand prompted her to avoid scandals, but on the other hand found excuses even for making herself conspicuous as long as she herself knew that she was doing nothing wrong. Hence arose a mixture of inconsistencies, the questionable sense of which she was incapable of grasping. It was clearly impossible for her not to lose all real sense of delicacy; she showed, however, a sense of the fitness of things, which made her have regard to what was considered proper, though she could not ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of vegetables with liquid manure, the usual practice of the Japanese farmer, and the pollution of the paddies make salads and insufficiently cooked green stuff dangerous and many water supplies of questionable purity. Great efforts have been made to provide safe tap water from the hills. Intestinal parasites are common. The build of the Japanese makes for strength, but in the urban areas there is much absence from work on the plea of ill-health. Both ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... factory has come to stay. To be sure, a weaver, a potter, or a lens-grinder of peculiar skill may thrive at his loom or wheel at home; but such a man is far from typical in modern manufacture. Besides, it is very questionable whether the lamentations over the home industries of the past do not ignore evil concomitants such as still linger in the home industries of the present—those of the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... particularly jewelry—no one in the Bad Lands who knew his way about would ever have dreamed of going to the Spider with anything else! Nor was the Spider without justification in thus restricting his operations. The Spider had always managed to hide his questionable wares, until he was able to dispose of them and they passed again out of his possession, with an ingenuity that had baffled, enraged, and mortified the police—and commanded the enthusiastic confidence and admiration of the underworld! But this was, for the most part, past history, and of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of corruption and moral death. Nobody ever went to the devil yet by one big bound, like a tiger out of a jungle or a trout to the fly; it is an imperceptible passage down an easy slope, and the first step of all is sometimes taken when a young girl lends her ears to a smutty story or a questionable jest. Then let me say again, and I wish I could borrow Fort Sheridan's bugle to blow it far and wide, that every girl might hear: Close your ears and harden your hearts against the insidious advance of evil. Have nothing to do with a desk-mate or with a ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... 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 ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... conduct is now directed are the result of the judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal to which the late administration was amenable for its acts." In other words, Van Buren had introduced party contests in an official dispatch, not brazenly or offensively, perhaps, but with questionable taste, and, for this, the great senators combined and spoke against him—Webster, Clay, Hayne, Ewing of Ohio, Holmes of Maine, and seven others—"just a dozen and equal to a full jury," wrote Benton. Webster said he would pardon almost anything when he saw true patriotism and sound American feeling, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... hereditary honors of once noble families, and thus we still hear of pretensions to title of "the O'Brien," "the O'Donaghue," and a few others. That such pretensions are acknowledged by the generality of the nation, it would be questionable to assert. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... conceded that Theodosia Burr Alston must have been acquainted with her father's most intimate ambitions, and with at least part of the questionable plans by which he purposed to further them. Her blind and unswerving loyalty to him, passing all ordinary filial affection, was a predominant trait of her singular and by no means weak or hesitant character, in which masculine resolution blended so strangely with womanly reserve ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... is not strange, because the non-suffrage side is the popular one at present. Years hence, when it shall be customary for women to vote, it is questionable whether the lady who drew up that document would ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... work cannot be doubted, but whether he was justified in his many subdivisions of the degenerative states is questionable. His own description of the various forms immediately suggests the difficulty of clearly differentiating ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... pocket-handkerchiefs to throw away their time, and permit their feelings to become excited concerning interests that they are certainly not destined to control, and about which, under the most favorable circumstances, they seldom obtain other than very questionable information. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 them how to ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... wish in the slightest degree to palliate the coarse language, the debasement, the harsh villainy, which shock the virtuous when visiting the haunts of poverty. Our simple desire is to assure the sceptical that goodness and truth are sometimes found in strange questionable places, although it is undoubtedly true that they do not deliberately search out such places for an abode, but prefer a pure atmosphere and pleasant companionship if they ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... questionable whether or not these Christians were driven south, fought at Mombas, were repulsed, and since have crossed the Nile to where we now find them, under the name of Wahuma. People may argue against the possibility of this, as the Wahuma do not keep horses; but the only reason, I believe, why they ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... century. Yet at no period of our national history—unless, perhaps, during the orgies of the Restoration were aristocratic morals at so low an ebb. Edmund Burke, in a passage which is as ethically questionable as it is rhetorically beautiful, taught that vice loses half its evil when it loses all its grossness. But in the English society of his time grossness was as conspicuous as vice itself, and it infected not only the region of morals, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... existing system of the English Church; its claims to model itself on the purity and simplicity of the Early Church seemed to him, in the light of its documents, and still more of the facts of history and life, more and more questionable. But modern Rome was just as distant from the Early Church though it preserved many ancient features, lost or unvalued by England. Still, Rome was not the same thing as the Early Church; and Mr. Newman ultimately ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... inhabit it now and here, but only elsewhere and at a future time, in heaven, and at the final Judgment; and meantime the Church and the State are to maintain His jurisdiction over this outlying province as well as they can. The actual presence of God in the world would seem to drag Him down into questionable limitations, not to be assumed without express warrant, as exception, miracle, and in things consecrated and set apart. Hence the patchwork composition of the early painters; we see in it an extreme diversity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Overtop had derived from his questionable connection with the Slapman Divorce case, had (as has been already stated) materially contributed to his professional income. By the time the case was decided, the firm of Overtop & Maltboy ranked among the most successful of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... glamour of gas-light, it is flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight it is not. Indeed, I do not know that I will say "almost." Anything which tends to remove from woman her sanctity is not only almost, but altogether objectionable. Questionable action is often consecrated by holy motive, and there, even mistake is not fatal; but in this thing is no noble principle to neutralize ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... That Brocq affair is not clear! It's no use my trying to persuade myself to the contrary! There is some mystery about it! Those officers! This diplomat! And then this questionable person, neither servant, nor lady accustomed to good society, who has to me all the appearance of playing not merely a double role, but at the least a triple, perhaps a quadruple!... Good old Fandor, there's nothing for it, if you want to go South, but ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... who had taken seats where they could find them, on a dirty bed, a wooden trunk, and two or three chairs of doubtful integrity, grunted a questionable welcome to the new-comer. As he looked about him, he was not particularly proud of the company in which he found himself. The faces he recognized were those of the laziest and most incapable workmen in the town—men whose weekly wages were habitually docked for drunkenness, late hours, and botchy ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and fatally deranged in its action before it could show its best quality. Marvelous analytical faculty he had; but it all oozed out in barren words. Charming eloquence he had; but it degenerated into egotistical garrulity, rendered tempting by the gilding of his genius. It is questionable whether, if he had never touched opium or wine, his real achievements would have been substantial, for he had no conception of a veritable stand-point of philosophical investigation; but the actual effect of his intemperance was to aggravate to excess his ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... It is possible, however, that the young man's judgment had been inferior to his powers of observation. A clever man as a trusty ally is a valuable article, but when the said cleverness may be turned against his employer the advantage becomes a questionable one. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ground to justify the determination. Some regarded him as a 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 been at war with France, a second question ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... reaping, and reaping was work, and work was forbidden, which being settled, of course the inferential prohibition became more important than the law from which it was deduced. That is always the case with human conclusions from revelation; and the more questionable these are, the more they are loved by their authors, as the sickly child of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to nigh on sunrise they debated the matter, and Sanders sat patiently through it all, awake and alert. Whether this might be said of Bones is questionable. Bones swears that he did not sleep, and spent the night, chin in hand, turning over the problem in ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... to the fortunes and hopes of the men who crossed Europe when her forests, too, were still thick upon her. But the difference is really very fundamental, and much more worthy of remark than the likeness. Those shadowy masses of men whom we see moving upon the face of the earth in the far-away, questionable days when states were forming: even those stalwart figures we see so well as they emerge from the deep forests of Germany, to displace the Roman in all his western provinces and set up the states we know ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... only the questionable belief that he was on the side of the people, or his ethical and theological audacities, or his prolonged Continental exile, which won for Byron a greater name abroad than he has retained at home; but the character of his poetry. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... gradually it began to dawn upon them that the NEWS no longer printed accounts of crime with detailed descriptions, or scandals in private life. Then they noticed that the advertisements of liquor and tobacco were dropped, together with certain others of a questionable character. The discontinuance of the Sunday paper caused the greatest comment of all, and now the character of the editorials was creating the greatest excitement. A quotation from the Monday paper of this week will show what Edward ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... to remain inferior when we believe in God and know that this age is the right moment for all high and holy work? The yearning for guidance has never been so great. We have reached heights where the brain swims, and thoughts are confused, and it is held to be questionable whether we are to turn backward or to move onward to the land of promise; whether we are to be overwhelmed by the material world which we have so marvelously transformed, or with the aid of the secrets we have learned, are to rise Godward to ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... equal, whence come the terms 'marital power,' 'marital rights,' 'obedience and restraint,' 'dominion and control,' 'power and protection,' etc., etc.? Many cases are stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over the wife, sustained by the courts. (See 'Bishop on Divorce,' ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 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; whilst a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... so (replied the philosopher) if it chanced not to be in itself a compound of other questionable blessings. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing, compromise; but of course you can't negotiate that yourself. I must be thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort is in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a questionable thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin himself saved Mademoiselle Laguerre's life during the Revolution, but it seemed to others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her will with a diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to write many pages of the history of the people, and that in spite of the questionable morality of the received narrative of his career, and its unquestionable untruth. The emergence of the Swiss from slavery to freedom, as in the case of all other nations, was undoubtedly a gradual process, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... rapid travelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was, of course, very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went to a Bible class, with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom I afterwards discovered to be a strolling tailor, of very questionable habits." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... exhibits the brutal and ferocious habits of two varieties of Genus Homo, namely Nobility and Mobility—two varieties which, although distinguished by some external marks of difference, possess in common many questionable characteristics. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... marriage, and the capricious Manon, finding that the modest style of their menage hardly agrees with her ideas of comfort, listens to the advances made to her by a nobleman named Bretigny, and ends by conniving at a scheme, planned by the elder Des Grieux, for carrying off his son from his questionable surroundings. In the next act Manon is the mistress of Bretigny, feted and admired by all. During an entertainment at Cours-la-Reine, she overhears a conversation between Bretigny and the Count des Grieux, and learns from the latter that his son is a novice at Saint Sulpice. Seized ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... sacrilege. We had had, it is true, no designs on the peaks, but were we wholly guiltless in attempting so much as the passes in this the close season? Apparently not. At all events, we were a month ahead of time in our visit, which in itself was of questionable ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... his face to conceal the sneering smile that crept over it. His wife, indeed! as if he were going to encumber himself with marriage before he had made a fortune, and even then it was questionable as to whether he would surrender the freedom of bachelorhood for the ties ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... be a character appropriate to a lofty didactick poem, is perhaps questionable. It presents a fair subject for controversy; and the question is to be determined by the congruity or incongruity of such a character with what shall be proved to be the essential constituents of poetry. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a 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 ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... courtly dame might have envied her fine and taper fingers, and fancied she could improve them by protecting them against the sun, or by rendering them snowy white with paste or cosmetic, but this was questionable; nothing certainly could improve the small foot and finely-turned ankle, so well displayed in the red hose and smart little yellow buskin, fringed with gold. A stomacher of scarlet cloth, braided with yellow lace in cross bars, confined her slender ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the scriptures, and found what really was written! In the present case, Dr. Westcott's notation gives us to understand that there is another with 'a reasonable probability of being the true reading.' The difference is indeed small to the eye, but is great enough to give us fine gold instead of questionable ore. In an alternative of the kind, I must hope in what seems logical against what seems illogical; in what seems radiant against ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... mere fact of being a beauty that makes women popular," she would say; "it's the being able to persuade people that you are one,—or better than one. Don't some historians tell us that Cleopatra had red hair and questionable eyes, and yet she managed to blind the world so completely, that no one is sure whether it is true or not, and to this day the generality of people are inclined to believe that it was her supernatural beauty that dragged Marc Antony to the dust at ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... two exceptions, of all the main works now contained in the editions of Dante. The chief exception is the curious little treatise on physical geography, called De aqua et terra, which purports to be a lecture delivered by Dante at Verona, in the last year of his life; but this is of very questionable genuineness. It was first printed, indeed, in 1508, but no manuscript of it ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... them. I doubt if the grossest of Fetish worshippers ever imagined that a stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or that a fruit had a god within it to make it taste sweet. With regard to such matters as these, it is hardly questionable that mankind from the first took ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... the process of sobering up. His eyes lost something of their bleary, misunderstanding look, and took on a dangerous glint. The detectives knew him for a spendthrift, who had been in more than one questionable escapade. He had a violent temper, drunk or sober, once it was roused, and it did not take much liquor to make him a veritable devil. Though after his first wild burst he became maudlin and silly. King came of a good family, but his relatives had cast him off after his midnight ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... both in and out of the store, to ascertain whether he has any unexplained expenses, or any questionable companions. I want to know how he spends his time out of the office. It may be that the result of my investigation will be to his credit. It may be that he is all that he seems,—a reputable member ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... dated the 14th of October, 1546, and was subscribed by seventy of the principal cavaliers in the city. It was not improbably dictated by Cepeda, whose hand is visible in most of the intrigues of Pizarro's little court. It is also said, —the authority is somewhat questionable,—that Aldana received instructions from Gonzalo secretly to offer a bribe of fifty thousand pesos de oro to the president, to prevail on him to return to Castile; and in case of his refusal, some darker and more effectual way was to be devised to rid the country ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... preserved a stolid, impassive demeanour. She would not leave the house for three weeks after the tidings had come, and then unfortunately meeting Miss Miller, she was subjected to questionable sympathy. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the "Girl in the Pie Dinner," was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... that they would be valuable; but they have been supplanted by merinos, and thus exterminated. The sheep are remarkable from transmitting their character so truly that Colonel Humphreys (3/96. 'Philosoph. Transactions' London 1813 page 88.) never heard of "but one questionable case" of an ancon ram and ewe not producing ancon offspring. When they are crossed with other breeds the offspring, with rare exceptions, instead of being intermediate in character, perfectly resemble either parent; even one of twins has resembled one parent and the second the other. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... only all the men, but all the animals and all the plants, his soul had passed through." That Pythagoras believed and taught the doctrine of transmigration may hardly be doubted, but that he originated it is very questionable. Herodotus intimates that both Orpheus and Pythagoras derived it from the Egyptians, but propounded it as their own, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... has the reputation of being susceptible to disease and hence being short lived as a tree. Whether or not this is actually the case is perhaps questionable. Many butternut trees, particularly those in favorable situations of soil and moisture, live to be of large size and old age. Trees on poorer, thinner soils apparently die off earlier than those under better conditions. In any case, it is well recognized that the butternut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... on hand: but not for the real hard work of life; not for times of ambition and struggle, any more than of distress and anxiety, or of danger and difficulty. In such times, if a man may not lie a little, cheat a little, do a questionable stroke of business now and then; how is he to live? So it is in the world, so it always was; and so it always will be. From statesmen ruling nations, and men of business "conducting great financial operations," ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... with infinite 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 ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... it? The one thing inevitable about it was that the truth should be revealed to Leopold; but there were a dozen different ways in which that might have been effected. Perhaps, in real life, Bernard would have said something to this effect: "Young man, you are making questionable advances to a lady in whom I am interested. I beg that you will cease to persecute her; and if you ask by what right I do so, I reply that I am in fact your elder brother, that I have saved our father from ruin, that I am henceforth ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... malady at Huntingdon, or of his recovery from it, accompanied him to the close of his career: it gave in his eyes the sanction of Heaven to the more questionable events in his life, and enabled him to persevere in habits of the most fervent devotion, even when he was plainly following the unholy suggestions of ...
— 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
... what is manifest to animals, and we use as evidence that which is manifest to us who are animals, then it is to be questioned if it is true as it is manifest to us. It is absurd, however, to try to base the 61 questionable on the questionable, because the same thing is to be believed and not to be believed, which is certainly impossible. The evidence is to be believed in so far as it will furnish a proof, and disbelieved in so far as it is itself to be proved. We shall therefore have no evidence ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... Angels and ministers of grace defend us!— Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,[89] That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee—Hamlet, King, father: Royal Dane: O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,[90] Have burst their ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... it?" I repeated, wondering what gave some persons the royal right of doing the questionable and making it ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... 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, "fill the air with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... Associations do not touch the root of political evils. Their usefulness is great, because they give currency to a sound principle, but that principle though important, is not all-important—though powerful, is not all-powerful. If universally adopted, it is questionable that any useful change of a lasting character would be worked in the economy ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... wont. Not even the most saintly of human beings is wholly indifferent to social success. Julius was conscious of a stirring of the blood, of a subdued excitement. These sensations were pleasurable. But his training had taught him to distrust pleasurable sensations as too often the offspring of very questionable parentage. And, while Mary Cathcart's voice still breathed upon the fragrant night air, he, standing on the outskirts of the listening company, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... elm?—Why, size, in the first place, and 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... went to Padre Filippo, she would have to confess all she had done, and she was not prepared to do that. A few weeks would pass, and that time would be sufficient to mellow and smooth the remembrance of her revengeful projects into a less questionable shape. No—she could not confess all that just yet. Surely such an oath was not binding; at all events, she could not marry Del Fence, whether she broke her promise or not. In the first place, she would send for him and vent her anger upon ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... not a fool—I can see that—and you can think out these things for yourself. You are not accountable to me, anyway. I have no authority to find fault with you. If you think your part in this terrible time is to go the limit in fancy clothes, theaters, and late suppers with men of questionable character—that is for you to decide. I believe in the honor system. You are certainly setting a bad example—but you have that privilege. You cannot be sent to jail for it. The money you draw is hard-earned ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... it is 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 a most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... is alleged, were poor citizens, physical degenerates the prey of all manner of constitutional diseases, sometimes candidates for the lunatic asylum which they occasionally reached. The miscellaneous data which may thus be piled up are seldom critically sifted, and often very questionable, for it is difficult enough to obtain any positive biological knowledge concerning great men who died yesterday, and practically impossible in most cases to reach an unquestionable conclusion as regards those ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... permissible clause; the adjective "dignified" must be exchanged for an adverb. Perhaps Mr. Held sought to employ poetical enallage, but even so, the adjective does not correspond with "slowly"; besides, the use of enallage in prose is at best highly questionable. "This free and rank flowers and brush" is another bad clause. But it is not well to dissect the sketch too minutely. A youth of Mr. Held's ability needs only time and continued practice to raise him to the highest rank in ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... business of making a large army of drunkards in the land. To take up a traffic like this, for the revenue there is in it, is to trifle with the higher interests of the subjects and to become instrumental in the corruption and misery of the people whom it is bound to protect. It is questionable whether any other civilized government has involved itself in such unworthy means of creating a revenue. Doubtless, opium and drink represent, morally, the weakest part of this government. Of course, the all important defense lies in the revenue thus acquired. These two items of revenue flow ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... again, was fully aware of the effect of this new revelation on his position, already more than questionable. "I'll follow any suggestion, of ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... burlesques and parodies on the stage and in the light reading of the time. Whether the creation of this taste is to be ascribed to the appearance of two writers with such genius for wit and fun as Thackeray and Dickens, or whether they only supplied a natural demand, may be questionable; they undoubtedly headed the army of Comus, and thereby raised the whole standard of facetious literature. But the defect of this school was its propensity to take a hilarious or sardonic view, not only of mediaeval romance, but of quaint old times generally; ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... 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 ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... ordinary reader will believe this picture to be overcharged, drawn with manifest exaggeration, and somewhat questionable taste. Every single statement which it contains may be paralleled by the circumstances and events of the decadence of the Roman Empire. The analogous situation was with the subjects of this type of all good government, always a possible, often an ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... and feeling. People stripped the garments from things in these days. He laughed inwardly at himself and his unwitting "these days." Senile severity mouthed just such phrases. Were they not his own days and the outcome of a past which had considered itself so much more decorous? Had not boldly questionable attitudes been held in those other days? How long was it since the Prince Regent himself had flourished? It was only that these days brought it all close against one's eyes. But this exquisite creature had a hideous little mind of her own whatsoever ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sway — and an ogre whose victims are so many more than he can eat, that he actually keeps a private graveyard for the balance." Who is honestly able to give the shrikes a better character than Dr. Coues, just quoted? A few offer them questionable defence by recording the large numbers of English sparrows they kill in a season, as if wanton ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... standpoint of a strict morality, the institution was obviously open to question. But we can scarcely fail to see that at its origin it possessed, even if unconsciously, a quasi-religious warrant in the worship of the Holy Mother, and we have to recognize that, notwithstanding its questionable shape, it was really an effort to attain a purer and more ideal relationship than was possible in a rough and warlike age which placed the wife in subordination to her husband. A tender devotion that inspired poetry, an unalloyed respect that approached reverence, vows ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... good a sailor by far to be cheered by any questionable hopes," laughed Theriere; "but you must take the will into consideration—I only wished to give you a ray of hope that might lighten your burden of apprehension. However, honestly, I do think that we may find a way to make ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beginning of each line on the original typewritten pages for this interview is very faint, and some words have been reconstructed from context. Questionable entries are followed by [??]; words that could not be ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... 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 to his mother, and allow ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... successful pastorate, Mr. Edwards preached a sermon about the reading and conversation of young people upon subjects of questionable propriety, which led to such local excitement that upon the recommendation of an ecclesiastical council he was dismissed by a vote of 200 to 20, and the town voted that he be not permitted on any occasion to preach or lecture in the church. Mr. Edwards was wholly unprepared ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... aside. Then there was a moment's silence, broken by faint applause. Even to a crew of noisy boys and girls playing the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and buried, there is something questionable in the sudden appearance of a young married woman, the mistress of the house, in a riding-coat and jackboots; and Mrs. Oke's expression did not make the jest ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... warm water, will often prove effectual. A bottle or two of flaxseed tea, made by prolonged boiling, should also be given at frequent intervals. Other stimulants, like rue, savin, laurel, and carminatives like anise, cumin, and coriander, are preferred by some, but with very questionable reason, the more so that the first three are not without danger. Ergot of rye, 1 ounce, or its extract, 1 dram, may be resorted to to induce contraction of the womb. The mechanical extraction of the membranes is, however, often ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another celibate in deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the rendering of such help? A man who is incapable of assisting a gendarme in discovering an assassin, has no scruple in taking a husband to a theatre, to a concert or even to a questionable house, in order to help a comrade, whom he would not hesitate to kill in a duel to-morrow, in keeping an assignation, the result of which is to introduce into a family a spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a portion of their fortune by giving them a co-heir whom they never perhaps would ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... said, with 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 ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... a questionable and forbidding neighborhood. Long lines of dull brick houses were only relieved by the coarse glare and tawdry brilliancy of public houses at the corner. Then came rows of two-storied villas each with ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the disagreeable state of the weather must be taken into consideration; this resulted in terrible suffering, to which the battling forces were subjected during the actual fighting and even more so while at rest, either on the open field or in the questionable comfort of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... commercial life grew strong and swept around her, the power of resistance grew more feeble from year to year, until finally some of her own people began to plead extenuation and even tolerance. The conflict was now open, and the result seemed questionable. With the conscience of the Southern portion of the Church asleep or dormant, the anti-slavery side of the issue came finally to depend upon the Church in the North for statement ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... depression and overclouding of mind, not quite to be characterized by the name of madness, but still less by that of perfect sanity. His eagerness to see his Bride was the same as formerly; but his spiritual health was in the questionable state described. The young Lady paused for a little, in such mood as we may fancy. She had already lost two offers, Bridegrooms snatched away by death, says Pauli; [Pauli, iv. 512.] and thought ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... in rudely tearing away the mask, and showing him what a monster he had formerly taken to his bosom? Should he inquire, I certainly must declare the truth: but should he be silent, what good inducement had I to speak? The morality of this reasoning was more questionable than I at ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Wilhelm, who had no difficulty in understanding the motive. In the first moment he thought he was glad of the approaching arrival of the Marquise de Henares. For, distasteful as the idea might be that the mother should become a witness of the daughter's questionable relations, he hoped that her presence would have a quieting effect on Pilar, and help to bring her to reason. But, on second thoughts, he was seized with afresh anxiety. He knew that Pilar's was the stronger spirit of the two, that she had a great influence over her mother, and could ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... graduated in 1856, and the sometime hinted contaminating influence of the "oldsters" upon the "youngsters" was a thing to be known no more forever, albeit the hint of contamination always seemed, to the writer, questionable, as, in his experience, the habit and propensity of the youngsters for mischief appeared to require neither promotion nor encouragement. Indeed, their methods and ingenuity in evading rules and regulations ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... the seasons went by it remained questionable whether Agatha was the more to be congratulated on having begun life after leaving school or ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... safe, and because they do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows. Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot, trapped, and their eggs destroyed ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... enacted 'that the right claimed by the 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, virile, ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... then 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 to Chicago, where it was popular some time before ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... his baser nature among the questionable attractions of the Inferno, she'd shot three hundred of her Precol credits on a formal black gown ... on what, yesterday, she would have considered a rather unbelievable gown. Even at an Ermetyne dinner she couldn't actually look dowdy in it. And then, ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Book, and just set the Printer to it; one solid volume (rather bigger than one of the French Revolution Volumes, as I compute); it is a somewhat fiery and questionable "Tract for the Times," not by a Puseyite, which the terrible aspect of things here has forced from me,—I know not whether as preliminary to Oliver or not; but it had gradually grown to be the preliminary of anything possible for me: so there it is written; and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... never forgot that embrace. It was to her a reflected realisation of what it must be to be loved by Jim Airth. And, thereafter, whenever Miss Murgatroyd saw fit to use such adjectives as "indecent," "questionable," or "highly improper," Miss Susie bravely gathered up her ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... It appears however questionable in the present instance, whether, if the marbles had not been carved to his hand, the architect would have taken the trouble to enrich them. For the execution of the rest of the pulpit is studiously ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... brought home by the early hunters to be tended and reared by the women and children. The present-day savage of New Guinea and mid-Africa does not, as a rule, take the trouble to tame and train an adult wild animal for his own purposes, and primitive man was surely equally indifferent to the questionable advantage of harbouring a dangerous guest. But a litter of woolly whelps introduced into the home as playthings for the children would grow to regard themselves, and be regarded, as members of the family, and it would soon ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... will be of this kind. If the first manners which serve us as models are coarse and boorish, ours will resemble them; if they are cultivated and refined, ours will be like them. If our models of conduct and morals are questionable, our conduct and morals will be of like type. Our manner of walking, of dressing, of thinking, of saying our prayers, even, originates in imitation. By imitation we adopt ready-made our social standards, our political faith, and our religious ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... thousand dollars he would feel justified in going. Moreover, there would be an advantage in leaving a part of the country where he was an object of suspicion to the authorities, and was liable at any time to be arrested for complicity in more than one questionable transaction. ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... standpoint, it is evidently a decided gain that a person is not compelled to see everything in an object which its sensuous attributes might permit one to discover in it. In the case of the man with the so-called untrained sense, therefore, it is questionable whether the failure to see, hear, etc., is in many cases so much a lack of ability to use the particular sense, as it is a lack of practical interest in this phase of the objective world. In such processes as induction and deduction, also, it is often ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... cease or be reversed. The merchant who requires dishonorable practices of his clerk wishes him to stop at a point which, in the world's estimation, is safe. And those who, like Gregory, would take the bloom from woman's purity and holiness in thought and action, that they may enjoy a questionable flirtation, would be horrified to see that woman drop into the foul gulf of vice. With the blind egotism of selfishness, they wish merely to gratify their present inclinations, ignoring the consequences. They are like children who think it would be sport to ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... conditions of the problem as on the conditions of human judgment, and must not be criticized too severely; for in fact the two religions here and there touch each other so nearly that to deny a relation between them is impossible, while in detail they diverge so widely that it is always questionable whether a coincidence of ritual or belief be ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... word, one of the most good-natured of men of genius. But his friendships with the other sex are of much more importance, and not in the least matters of mere gossip. His sister Laure, as has been said, and a school-friend of hers, Mme Zulma Carraud, played important and not questionable parts as his correspondents. But at least three ladies, all of a rank higher than his own, figure as his "Egerias" to such an extent that it is hardly extravagant to say that Balzac would not have been Balzac without them. These are Madame de Berny, a lady connected with the court ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... think you would say if, in some of these moments of unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people, you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would be a very lame and ragged set ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 an examination which shall ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... of fashionable scoundrels, had managed to maintain himself until now in the high and mighty position of a dandy in Paris, then called Gants Jaunes (lemon-kid-glovers), and since, "lions." It is useless to relate the history of his youth, full of questionable adventures, with now and then some horrible drama, in which he had always known how to save appearances. To this man women were never anything else than a means; he believed no more in their griefs than he did in their joys; he regarded them, like the late de Marsay, as naughty children. After ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... (printed on a slip that is pasted in at the conclusion of Cowley's first preface). The edition of 1669 substitutes 'immediately' in the text. The alteration must be accepted on Sprat's authority, but it is questionable if ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... amount of strength tends to command respect, and for that reason a navy sufficient for self-defense is warranted. Such a navy we now have. Why should it be enlarged? Naval enthusiasts would have us prepare, not for the probable but for the possible. Seize every questionable act of our neighbors, they say, magnify it a thousand times, publish it in letters of flame throughout the land, and make every American citizen believe that the great powers are prepared to destroy us at any moment. Having educated the people up to a sense of threatened ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... the comparative 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 ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... soldier: he was called upon to serve as a second-class (p. 233) soldier to defend what he often regarded as his second-class citizenship. In place of unsatisfactory black divisions, Circular 124 made the Army substitute three unsatisfactorily mixed divisions whose black elements were of questionable efficiency and a focus of complaint among civil rights advocates. Commanders at all levels faced a dilemma implicit in the existence of white and black armies side by side. Overwhelmed by regulations and policies that tried to preserve the fiction of separate but equal opportunity, these officers ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... a certain 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 counted your spoons ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... attention was at once turned to the Bancal house, a dilapidated, gloomy building with musty, dirty corners. It had formerly been owned by a butcher, and pigs were still kept in the yard. It was a house of assignation and was visited nightly by soldiers, smugglers, and questionable-looking girls; now and then, too, heavily veiled ladies and aristocratic-looking men slipped in and out. On the ground floor there lived, beside the Bancal couple, a former soldier, Colard, and his sweetheart, the wench Bedos, and the humpbacked Missonier; above them, there dwelt an ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... appears by the following letter from Mr. Stone, (a gentleman subsequently brought into notice by the trial of his brother for High Treason,) to invest Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan with the same distinction, had not the prudent interference of Mr. Stone saved them from this very questionable honor. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... touch. It is the absolute criterion of quality, which is supposed to be the keystone of perfection in all animals, whether for the pail or the butcher. The skin is so intimately connected with the internal organs, in all animals, that it is questionable whether even our schools of medicine might not make more use of it in a diagnosis of disease. Of physiological tendencies in cattle, however, it is of the last and most vital importance. It must neither be thick, nor hard, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... little observation showed Mr Percival that his conjectures about Kenrick were correct. Clever as he was, his work deteriorated rapidly; the whole expression of his countenance changed for the worse; he was implicated more than once in very questionable transactions; he lost caste among the best and most honourable fellows, and proportionately gained influence among the worst and lowest lot in the school, whose idol and hero he gradually became. His descent was sudden, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Ellis knew. It would put the merchant to no inconvenience whatever to continue the accommodation for ten days longer; but the policy of asking this was felt to be a very questionable one, as it would be most likely to create in his mind a doubt of Ellis's standing, and a doubt in that quarter would be injurious. Still, the case was so pressing, that Ellis determined to see him. So, assuming a pleasant, partly unconcerned air, he called ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... suggestion of evil, and to go to a theatre, where you have only to look at the stalls to see one-half of the female form, and to the stage to see the other half undraped, is far more pregnant with evil imaginings than the most objectionable of totally undraped figures. In French art there have been questionable nude figures exhibited; but the fault was not that they were nude, but that they were the portraits of ugly immodest women. Some discussion follow'd. There was a general concurrence in the principle contended for by the reader of the paper. Sir Walter Stirling maintain'd that the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... also undoubtedly become the prey of the devouring sea—for there was no hope of saving anything out of the ship if she once touched that reef—and, worst of all, there was only too great a probability that many precious lives would be lost; it seemed, indeed, very questionable whether any of us could hope to escape the fury of ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... been the 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... assault of Terry, is worthy of preservation. And now that his assailant has been arrested in his career by death, all honest men who respect the law will breathe more freely. Judge Terry had gained a most questionable reputation, not for courage in the right direction; not for generosity which overlooked or forgave, or forgot offenses against himself or his interests. He never conceded the right to any man to hold an opinion in opposition ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham |
