"Ambiguity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grain of Darwinism—in the principles posited—but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment. Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated. Perhaps there is mutual misapprehension growing out of some ambiguity in the use of terms. "Without any intention, purpose, or cooperation of God."- These are sweeping and effectual words. How came they to be applied to natural selection by a divine who professes that God ordained whatsoever ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the 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
... adversaries foolishly pervert many passages of Scripture to the defense of their errors, we shall add a few things on this topic. In the Confutation they have said many things concerning "sacrifice," although in our Confession we purposely avoided this term on account of its ambiguity. We have set forth what those persons whose abuses we condemn now understand as a sacrifice. Now, in order to explain the passages of Scripture that have been wickedly perverted, it is necessary in the beginning to set forth what a sacrifice ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... out of this ambiguity. In addressing the woman worker who does not, at the rate which her labour commands on the market, earn enough to give her any reasonable measure of financial freedom, the agitator will assure her that ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... and yet higher forms appear; the mute prophecies of the coming being become with each approach clearer, fuller, more expressive, and at length receive their fulfilment in the advent of man. A double meaning attaches to the term type; and hence some ambiguity in the writings which have appeared on this curious subject. Type means a prophecy embodied in symbol; it means also what Sir Joshua Reynolds well terms "one of the general forms of nature,"—a pattern form, from which all others in the same class or family, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... subjects as an army. That military metaphor comes out more clearly when we attach the true meaning to the words, 'in the day of Thy power.' The word rendered, and rightly rendered, 'power,' has the same ambiguity which that word has in the English of the date of our translation, and for a century later, as you may find in Shakespeare and Milton, who both used it in the sense of 'army.' Singularly enough we do not employ 'powers' in that meaning, but we do another word which means ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and returned to Burbage and the Theatre, knowledge of Shakespeare's company affiliations during these years is equally nebulous. Only by throwing light upon Burbage's activities during these years can we hope for light upon Shakespeare during the same period. Much of the ambiguity regarding Burbage's affairs during these years arises from the fact that critics persist in regarding him as an actor and an active member of a regular theatrical company after 1576, instead of recognising the palpable fact that he was ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... 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 ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... great truths of religion which the Orient has already received, but which in a large measure lies dormant because of its incomplete expression. The advent of the fully expressed teaching of this truth, freed from all vagueness and ambiguity, is a capital illustration of the way in which Christianity comes to Japan to fulfill rather than to destroy; it brings that fructifying element that stirs the older and more or less imperfectly expressed truths into new life, and gives them ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... The ambiguity of expression appears strange; indeed incomprehensible, to Dupre, as to others who overhear it. They attributed it to incoherence, arising from the shock of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... filthy syllables which, in the finest words, are a source of scandal: those eternal jests of the fools of all times; those nauseous commonplaces of wretched buffoons; those sources of infamous ambiguity, with which the ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... whenever these systems are brought into question, man either reasons in a very strange manner, or else is the dupe of very deceitful arguments: when they are agitated, and he finds it impossible to understand what is said concerning them when his mind cannot embrace the ambiguity of these doctrines, he imagines those who speak to him are better acquainted with the objects of their discourse than himself; these seizing the favourable opportunity, do not let it slip, they reiterate to him with Stentorian ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... 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 ultimate ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... reproach, and cannot but repel it, as I do at this moment. No! the honor of our flag was never compromised. No! never did this noble flag cover with its folds a more noble enterprise. History will tell. I confidently invoke its testimony and its judgment. History will throw a veil over all the ambiguity, tergiversation and contestation which have been pointed to with so much bitterness and so eager a desire to spread discord amongst us. It will ignore all this, or, rather, it will proclaim it all, in order that ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... sometimes would strain a point in order to effect strict and substantial justice. As a judge, he was peculiarly cautious. However intricate was any case, he bent to it his whole mind, and the great effort was always to learn the right—to sift from it all the verbiage and ambiguity which surrounded and obscured it, and then to sustain it in his decision. Upright and sincere in his pursuits, methodical, with fixity of purpose, he was never in a hurry about anything, and was always content, in his business, with moderate profits as the reward of his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and carried out the mobilization of the Russian Army; the real responsibility, however, falls on the British Government. The Cabinet in London could have made the war impossible if it had without ambiguity declared at Petrograd that Great Britain would not allow a Continental war to develop from ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Puyguilhem, much astonished, waits all the rest of the day, and seeing that the promised declaration does not come, speaks of it to the King at night. The King replies to him that it cannot be yet, and that he will see; the ambiguity of the response, and the cold tone, alarm Puyguilhem; he is in favour with the ladies, and speaks the jargon of gallantry; he goes to Madame de Montespan, to whom he states his disquietude, and conjures her to put an end to it. She promises him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... in relation to detail" which was one of the great 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
... face. It was to see, in terms of art, a scientific demonstration of race, temperament, and the results of their interplay with environment. The languors, the feverish indolences, the caprice of generations of Spanish exiles were there, and the ambiguity, the fierceness of Slav ancestry. And, subtly interwoven, were the marks of her public life upon her. The face, so moulded to indifference, was yet so aware of observation, so adjusted to it, so insatiable of it, that, sitting there, absorbed and brooding, lovely with her looped pearls and ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... being the sign of liberty, are the bit and bridle that hinder its fiery course toward God. The same thought, less vividly put, is found in a modern theologian—Dr. Moberly. "The real consummation of either moral or immoral character," he writes, "would exclude the ambiguity which was offered as the criterion of free will.... Full power to sin is not the key to freedom. On the contrary, all inherent power to do wrong is a direct infringement of the reality of free-will.... Free- will is not the independence of the creature, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... 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
... unsound on Slavery, Free Trade, and Internal Improvements, or whose opinions are shrouded in treacherous ambiguity—such a man, be he Black Republican or Democrat, is unworthy of her support. To vote for either, is to give away her influence, to be used against her. It is to stultify principle, and be the instrument of her ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... angry. It was borne in upon him that Mrs. Fazakerly was vulgar, after all. She looked at him, and her pince-nez balanced itself on the bridge of her nose, then leapt its suicidal leap. She was amused with the ambiguity of his reply. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... discussion of 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 that great power. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... of the use of the subjunctive and infinitive in all languages: on and me in Greek; indirect speech in Latin; negatives, comparisons, etc., etc., in all languages.) Esperanto—none. Common sense the only guide, and no ambiguity in practice. The perfect limpidity of Esperanto, with no syntactical rules, is a most instructive proof of the conventionality and arbitrariness of the niceties of syntax in national languages. After all, the subjunctive was made for man and not ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... 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 in Polycarp. I trust that in this edition ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... loon that drew the deed, We spell'd it ower richt carefully; In vain he yerk'd his souple head To find an ambiguity. It 's dated, tested, a' complete; The proper stamp, nae word delete; And diligence, as on decreet, May ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... because he happened to tell the truth once, don't cut no ice," Happy Jack maintained with sufficient ambiguity ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... to harmonize them, to various logical processes, but principally to the one described in the last chapter, of diverting the student, at all difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible contradicts science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad Church maintains that the inspiration of the Bible differs in kind as well as in degree from that of other books. The Second Broad Church appears to hold that it differs ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... 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
... Galliard (Vol. vi., pp. 311. 446.; Vol. vii., p. 216.).—Will you allow me to correct a mistake into which both the correspondents who have kindly answered my questions respecting this galliard seem to have fallen, perhaps misled by an ambiguity in my expression? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... 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; and, as his trade would speedily again bring him or his boat to Allonby, he ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Constitution considered; on Abolitionists; on negro race; his freedom from animosity toward opponents or slaveholders; does not denounce slaveholders; his fairness a mental trait; on popular sovereignty; convicts Douglas of ambiguity; alleged purpose to discredit Douglas as presidential candidate; feels himself upholder of a great cause; his moral denunciation of slavery; his literary form; elevation of tone; disappointed at defeat by Douglas; exhausted by his efforts; asked to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... have brought it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world. When we make experiments in lies and deceptions, intrigue and low cunning, we suffer hopeless and brutal failure. Our lies are coarse and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity. The history of the War proves this by a hundred examples. When our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of such tactics, we tried to imitate them. But these tactics will not fit the German. We are ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... is no risk of ambiguity, the breve is shown as the letter u; elsewhere it is shown ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... in general, so indistinct, that it seldom happened that any two of us, in writing down the fame word, from the same mouth, made use of the same vowels in representing it. Nay, we even, very commonly, differed about consonants, the sounds of which are least liable to ambiguity. Besides all this, we found, by experience, that we had been led into strange corruptions of some of the most common words, either from the natives endeavouring to imitate us, or from our having misunderstood them. Thus, cheeto was universally used by us, to express a thief, though ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... returned her victim, with unconscious ambiguity, and, closing the door behind her, returned to the parlour to try and think of some means of escaping from the position to which the ingenuity of Captain Nibletts, aided by that of ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a tale can be told with decent ambiguity it was so told by this man of whose refinement Coxeter had formed so poor an opinion, but still the fact that he was telling it remained—and it was a fact which to such a man as Coxeter constituted an outrage on the decencies ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... railroad, and other improvements too numerous to mention, all this difference, I say, is co-extensive with America before and after taking the labor treatment. But what can we say of the politician and his doings during these years, stripped of all ambiguity, when we tell the unpolished, but plain truth, we must say he never advanced one iota until he was routed from his old position by the toiling masses. It is curious to note that every new social, political, and ethical idea hatches in the same mind and is developed by the same crowd that contrives ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... orthodoxy in a strained and non-natural sense, and only gradually to develop a distinctive terminology of its own; but, as often as not, certain ambiguous expressions, formerly taken in an orthodox sense, are abandoned by the faithful on account of their ambiguity and are then appropriated to the expression of heterodoxy, so that eventually by force of usage the heretical meaning comes to be the principal and natural meaning, and any other interpretation to seem violent and non-natural. "The ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... to see what was going to happen elsewhere in respect of the succession to the throne. It was only when he knew that, on the 27th of October, the parliament of Paris had, not without some little hesitation and ambiguity, recognized "as King of England and of France, Henry VI., son of Henry V. lately deceased," that the dauphin Charles assumed on the 30th of October, in his castle of Mehun-sur-Yevre, the title of king, and repaired to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... moment the 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
... unnoticed. Napoleon required from the Holy See not only submission to his will, but the acceptance of his principles. The caution of the court of Rome irritated him more and more. He frightened Cardinal Caprara with a violent scene: "Write that I demand from his Holiness a declaration without ambiguity, stating that during the present war, and any other future war, all the ports of the pontifical states shall be closed to all English vessels, either of war or commerce. Without this I shall cause all the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... His ambiguity was beginning to exasperate me, and I felt myself shut out from some knowledge to which I had as good ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... contiguous to Belgrade. To this the Slavs demurred because Belgrade could then no longer remain the Serbian capital. But of these demands M. Bratiano would make no abatement, nor in the promise of the Entente to fulfil them would he admit of any ambiguity. Roumania's experience in 1877, under M. Bratiano's father, when, after having helped Russia to defeat the Turks, she was deprived of Bessarabia and obliged to content herself with the Dobrudja, was the main motive for this striving after definite conditions, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of such delightful 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 weekly ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... specimen is the bit of evidence read by the White Rabbit at the Trial of the Knave of Hearts.[1] One charm of these verses is the serious air of legal directness which pervades their ambiguity, and another is the precision with which the metrical accent coincides exactly with the natural emphasis. They are marked, too, by the liquid euphony that always distinguishes Lewis ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... ideal clear, a scientific language you demand, without ambiguity, as precise as mathematical formulae, and with every term in relations of exact logical consistency with every other. It will be a language with all the inflexions of verbs and nouns regular and all its ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... noble houses were not matters to be left open to dispute; a great deal of spilled blood and burned powder had resulted from ambiguity on some point of succession or inheritance or dower rights. Lucas bore it patiently; he didn't want his great-grandchildren and Elaine's shooting it out over a matter of a ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... have 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
... his fellows. The Republican was popular among the professional political element in his party and was supported by it; the Democrat never was. Cleveland openly declared his attitude on controverted issues, in words that admitted of no ambiguity and at times when only silence or soft words would save him from defeat. Blaine lacked the moral courage and the indifference to immediate results which were necessary for so exalted an action. Cleveland had more of the reformer in his nature, and had so keen ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... [60] [601] The emperor Claudius acknowledged her merit, and was content, that, while he pursued the Gothic war, she should assert the dignity of the empire in the East. [61] The conduct, however, of Zenobia, was attended with some ambiguity; not is it unlikely that she had conceived the design of erecting an independent and hostile monarchy. She blended with the popular manners of Roman princes the stately pomp of the courts of Asia, and exacted from her subjects the same adoration ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 frank. My muse will lay herself ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... poem was published anonymously. The preface, a defence of the Dunces, is, with probably intentional ambiguity, written in the first person singular but ends by referring to "the Writers of the following Poem" (p. viii). One hand seems responsible for the preface, but we can only conclude that a Dunce collaborating with other Dunces ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... emotions which no one may know until he senses the great weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on the great truths ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... in its provisions employees engaged in intrastate commerce as well as those engaged in interstate commerce, has been held by the local courts to be still in effect so far as its provisions apply to District of Columbia. There should be no ambiguity on this point. If there is any doubt on the subject, the law should be reenacted with special reference to the District of Columbia. This act, however, applies only to employees of common carriers. In all other occupations the liability law of the District is the old ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... much too shrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kind until he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence of this kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent and commendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimes carried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort of doubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as to his theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... have less fear of those who spoke to your mother, Mildred, than of those who spoke only to you. As I hate ambiguity, however, I will say, at once, that my allusion ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... c'est une maniere de Serpent." Hence Polo can only call the Tigers, whose portrait he draws here not incorrectly, Lions. So also nearly 200 years later Barbaro gives a like portrait, and calls the animal Leonza. Marsden supposes judiciously that the confusion may have been promoted by the ambiguity of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... latter of which is situated in the centre of the walls. He pointed out to me the window of the room in which the royal sufferers languished. As the story of sir Sidney Smith's escape from this prison has been involved in some ambiguity, a short recital of it will, perhaps, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... originally and essentially the intangible right to a thing, the word came to be applied also to the object of the right. This is done both in common speech and in judicial decisions, with inevitable ambiguity. This may be readily seen by trying to substitute the word ownership for property, a thing quite simple in some cases but impossible in others. One would not point to a house and say, "This is my ownership," but either, "This is ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... factors: (1) Freedom from ambiguity or obscurity of wording; (2) adaptation to the age and understanding of ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... more so because the poetry we have grown accustomed to, in our generation, is so different from this; so mystical and subjective, so remote from the crowd, so dim with the trailing mists of fanciful ambiguity. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... rolled rapidly over my startled soul. The facts were clear, the hypothesis definite, the sequence certain; there was no ambiguity, no supposititious hinge upon which I could hang a hope; no, not one. I could not even expect that I should be missed and sought for; there was no one to search for me. The simple habitans of the village I had left knew me not—I was a stranger among them: they only knew me as a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... or two, apparently letting this sink in. It wasn't until he'd turned and walked out of the door that I realized the ambiguity of that retort of mine. I was almost prompted to go after him. But I checked myself by saying: "Well, if the shoe fits, put it on!" But in my heart of hearts I didn't mean it. I wanted him to come back, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Adjectives thus used are confined mainly to the Nominative and Accusative cases. Such forms as magnorum, omnium; magnis, omnibus, would ordinarily lead to ambiguity; yet where there is no ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... marriage, so perpetually moved to her both by her parliament and by foreign princes, Elizabeth still preserved a cautious ambiguity of language, well exemplified in the following passage: "The duke of Wirtemburg, a German protestant prince, had lately friendly offered his service to the queen, in case she were minded to marry. To which, January 27th she gave him this courteous and princely answer: 'That ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in 1797 inserted some lines which were not in the magazine. They were probably restored from a MS. copy Lamb had previously seen, and if Coleridge did not cancel all that Lamb wisely counselled, he certainly drew the sting of the "affronting simplicity" by removing the word "little." The comical ambiguity of the Bristol man's exclamation as first reported could hardly have failed to drive Lamb's dull care away for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... alone be careful to distinguish between the nominative and objective cases of the pronouns, but try to avoid ambiguity ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... 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, groping darkly within his own soul, or gazing ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... agree with the facts of the Gospel as it appears to us now? There is a certain ambiguity as to the phrase 'in order.' We cannot be quite sure what Papias meant by it, but the most natural conclusion seems to be that it meant chronological order. If so, the statement of Papias seems to be so far borne out that none of the Synoptic Gospels is really in ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... to move something from the car first," he replied, with ambiguity merely euphemistic. "You stand here and keep ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... that, logically, he left his bones there; and that it is but the phantom of an argument that he parades thenceforward to the end. Well was it for Knox that he succeeded no better; it is under this very ambiguity about Deborah that we shall find him fain to creep for shelter before he is done with the regiment of women. After having thus exhausted Scripture, and formulated its teaching in the somewhat blasphemous maxim that the man is placed above ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as it were, sees his experiences encircled with metaphysical rainbows, man is, in the highest degree, in need of a guiding hand, because he has suddenly and almost instinctively convinced himself of the ambiguity of existence, and has lost the firm support of the beliefs ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... prestige and of material interests must sink far into the background. This word must sound so that all who hear it can look in each other's eyes with a full mutual understanding and without the slightest sense of ambiguity; just as they do in Japan when the name of the common head of all families, the Mikado, is named. There must be one thing in Germany and it must be this thing, which is altogether out of reach of the yawning, blinking and grinning ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... of rivers, made mere equivocal by every new hypothesis, receives here additional ambiguity. If there were (as Mr. Bowdich affirms) three distinct rivers near Timbuctoo; viz. the 477 Joliba, the Gambarro, and the Niger, (i. e. the Neel El Abeed) how comes it that they have not been noticed by Leo Africanus, who resided at ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... 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, as to number (3), one great object of my essay was to ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... faithful historian I give the exact words. It sounded like swearing, though why we should regard it profane to make free with the devil's name, or even his nickname, I never could see. Can you? Besides, there was some ambiguity about Charley's use of the word under the circumstances, and he himself couldn't tell whether his exclamation had reference to the Author of Evils or only to the Author of Novels. The circumstances were calculated to suggest equally thoughts of the Great ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... cxl. he lays it down that we have an idea, or rather a notion, of spirit, and that we know other spirits by means of our own, from which follows—so in the next paragraph he roundly affirms—the natural immortality of the soul. And here he enters upon a series of confusions arising from the ambiguity with which he invests the term notion. And after having established the immortality of the soul, almost as it were per saltum, on the ground that the soul is not passive like the body, he proceeds to tell us in paragraph cxlvii. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty. This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the boundaries of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... 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 always played a fundamental part. {80} The term set ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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 ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... pastoral importance as those of the former kind; though the alarm which they may cause will often be greater, because the variation from ordinary belief is more easily apprehended by the mind, and, being a variation in fact, and not only in idea, cannot be concealed by any ambiguity in the use of theological terms, as may be the case in the former instances. Yet in the third of these three questions, this species of criticism may have a very intimate relation to practice; for it may so affect ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... that the Queen of Navarre herself gave no little aid and comfort to the advocates of timid and irresolute counsels, by a course singularly wanting in ingenuousness. This amiable princess knew how to express herself with such ambiguity as to perplex both religious parties and heartily satisfy neither the one side nor the other. She was the avowed friend and correspondent of Melanchthon and Calvin. She was believed to be in substantial agreement with the Protestants. Her views of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... 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 ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... happened that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when operated ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... into an eloquent eulogium upon the other crowned one—upon Ariosto—which has for its object as well to dash the pride of the living, as to do homage to the dead. He adds, with a most cruel ambiguity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... correspond. One's confusion is the greater because one doesn't know that everything may not really have changed, even beyond all probability—though it's only in America that churches cross the street or the river—and the mixture of the recognisable and the different makes the ambiguity maddening, all the more that the painter is almost as attaching as he is bad. Thanks at any rate to the white church, domed and porticoed, on the top of its steps, the traveller emerging for the first time upon the terrace of the railway-station seems to have a Canaletto ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... II. rise of the new, II. completion and ratification of, II. signed, II. launching the, II. benefits from, II. popularity of, II. Federalists and anti-Federalists on interpretation of, II. XIIth amendment to, II. broad construction of, III. ambiguity of, on slavery, III. precludes possibility ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... reserve or fear of directness is not merely a negative quality. It also results from a consciousness of the indefiniteness of the ground of all things, from the awe of the ambiguity of all that is. If Erasmus so often hovers over the borderline between earnestness and mockery, if he hardly ever gives an incisive conclusion, it is not only due to cautiousness, and fear to commit himself. Everywhere he sees ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... belong to the class of quadrupeds or not, is a question that has a good deal embarrassed our own savans" returned the stranger. "There is an ambiguity in our physical action that renders the point a little questionable; and therefore, I think, the higher castes of our natural philosophers rather prefer classing the entire monikin species, with all its varieties, as caudae-jactans, or ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... out of the question to trust to words, however choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; what colour, then, was I ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... variability, and this depends in some manner on the action of the surrounding circumstances on the organism. I have, also, often personified the word Nature; for I have found it difficult to avoid this ambiguity; but I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws,—and by laws only the ascertained ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose.' This is a prodigious merit, when we reflect with what fatal alacrity human language lends itself in the hands of so many performers upon the pliant instrument, to all sorts of obscurity, ambiguity, disguise, and pretentious mystification. Scaliger is supposed to have remarked of the Basques and their desperate tongue: ''Tis said the Basques understand one another; for my part, I will never believe it.' The same pungent doubt might ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... 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
... lady turned my attention, and prevented me from noticing the ambiguity of the reply. 'I respected and loved your brother, madam,' continued I. 'His stay was but short after I left the school, and I have not heard of him since. Is he in London?'—'I believe so; but ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. We have here the same ambiguity as we noted in discussing Berkeley in Chapter IV. In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... his hostess. Half the room was between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of reticence and ambiguity ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... to 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 people ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... carefully veiled jealousy of Madge. In his downright earnestness, he determined to give her no cause for this, and treated Madge much as he did Mrs. Muir, allowing for difference in age and relation. He determined that Miss Wildmere should discover no ambiguity in his course or intentions. If thoughts of him had kept her waiting through years, he would justify those thoughts by all the means in his power. Casting about with a lover's ingenuity for an explanation of her tantalizing ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... review, like the Romanists, maintain that this is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own interpretation of the phrase to be the only true one, press into their service the testimony of divines who, though using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs. The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Elizabeth Denton's eager questions concerning the nature of her husband's injuries, but she tried to prepare the poor young wife for the knowledge that the wound would prove fatal. This was a most delicate and difficult thing to do and Patsy blundered and floundered until her very ambiguity aroused alarm. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... 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 say; so that, on ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... under a comb. He did not mind how elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a sort of stifled passion, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... later, I must have a special power of attorney to transfer the income in the Funds. When that stands in my name, you and I have an equal interest in marrying each other. There it all is, my beautiful aunt, as plain as day. Between you and me there must be no ambiguity. I can marry my aunt at the end of a year's widowhood; but I could ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... or inside the percipient—whether it be a "vision sensible to feeling, as to sight," or but "a false creation proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain"? Is not this very distinction of outside and inside in the matter of perceptions open to no slight ambiguity? The savage, familiar with the electric sparks caused by the friction of deer-skins, ascribes the aurora borealis to the friction of a jostling herd of celestial deer. "Nonsense," says science, after centuries of false hypotheses, "it is nothing more nor less ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the election been left to himself. In attacking bad principles, he is obliged to select some individual who has made himself their exponent, and in whom they are impersonate, to the end that what he says may not, through ambiguity, be dissipated tenues in auras. For what says Seneca? Longum iter per praecepta, breve et efficace per exempla. A bad principle is comparatively harmless while it continues to be an abstraction, nor can the general mind comprehend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... He constantly adverts in his narrative to the influence of 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 of Persia, and shows his countrymen how often they ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... bronze ordnance, to aid in the erection of an equestrian statue of the late General John A. Rawlins, and to the facts that no appropriation of money to pay for the statue is made by the resolution and no artist is named or party designated to whom the ordnance is to be delivered. In view of the ambiguity of the statute, I would recommend that Congress signify what action is desired as to the selection of the artist, and that the necessary sum required for the erection of the monument be appropriated. A board of officers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all, and may be judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which will not disgrace the cause of truth. I propose, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 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
... 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, and selected Marcellus, because the memory of his career as an informer made him an object ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... nature, sobriety, dignity, and conclusiveness may fairly be required; but when a man ascribes his extraordinary power to his knowledge of some merely human secret, impropriety does but evidence his own want of taste, and ambiguity his want of skill. We have no longer a right to expect a great end, worthy means, or a frugal and judicious application of the miraculous gift. Now, Apollonius claimed nothing beyond a fuller insight into nature than others had; a ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... 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 of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the Books," who, under his patron, Sir William Temple, was naturally in alliance with "the Bees," with ingenious ambiguity alludes to the glorious manufacture. "Boyle, clad in a suit of armour, which had been given him by all the GODS." Still the truth was only floating in rumours and surmises; and the little that ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... unmatched doublequote marks in block of quoted speech: "if Britannia ... to the "Line!". To avoid ambiguity, this has been changed to "if Britannia ... ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... a model of ambiguity, by which it is impossible Napoleon could have been imposed upon. However, as yet he had no suspicion of the hostility of Austria, which speedily became manifest; his grand object then was the Spanish business, and, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then denotes ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... having been a follower of Wagner. What has Wagner-worship made out of spirit? Does Wagner liberate the spirit? To him belong that ambiguity and equivocation and all other qualities which can convince the uncertain without making them conscious of why they have been convinced. In this sense Wagner is a seducer on a grand scale. There is nothing exhausted, nothing effete, nothing dangerous to life, nothing ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married." That she loves Axel, the husband, is clear; and the probability is that she meant to avenge herself upon him for having before his marriage used her as a decoy, when the real object of his attention ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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
... of the protocol is free from ambiguity, but if it were otherwise is there any individual American or Mexican who would place such a construction upon it as to convert it into a vain attempt to revive this article, which had been so often and so solemnly condemned? Surely no person could for one moment suppose that either the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... conference with the prince de Soubise when the duc d'Aiguillon entered. "Good heaven," said he, kissing my hand very tenderly, "into what inquietude did you throw me by your dear and cruel letter. The ambiguity of your style has caused me inexpressible sorrow; and you have added to it by not allowing me to come to you at the first moment." "I could not: I thought it would be dangerous for you to appear before the king previously to having seen ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the ambiguity, the subtle trickery of that last line? What does it really mean? It means that Bryan W. Procter, who wrote it, had to be upon the shore to love the sea; that the more he was upon the shore the more he loved the sea and that the more he was upon the sea the more he loved the shore. In other ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... The ambiguity is almost like a stab. The child has told the truth unwittingly. Violet is like a person drowning in a wide dreary ocean, when some stray spar floats thitherward. It is not a promise of rescue, yet ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... 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 ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... that a 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... about, which is a great matter for lecturers to consider, because if, after a forcible harangue, a speaker's audience is in any way mystified, or not in touch with him as to the meaning of his remarks, why, then, his time and labour are both lost; therefore I purposely refrained from any ambiguity, and delivered my figures of speech and rounded periods in words suitable for the most ordinary comprehension, and I really think it had a good effect on both of them. Of course I addressed them more in sorrow than in anger, although the loss of eight ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... 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 conflicting, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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. One evening, when he was in ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... matters have to be handled cautiously, for there is great ambiguity in the nomenclature. Thus Man-tzu is often used generically for aborigines, and the Lolos of Richthofen are called Man-tzu by Garnier and Blakiston; whilst Lolo again has in Yun-nan apparently a very comprehensive generic meaning, and is so used by Garnier. (Richt. Letter ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
