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Questionable   /kwˈɛstʃənəbəl/   Listen
Questionable

adjective
1.
Subject to question.  "A questionable reputation" , "A fire of questionable origin"
2.
Able to be refuted.  Synonyms: confutable, confutative, refutable.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Questionable" Quotes from Famous Books



... But when sufficient Ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with one another, it was found that the offspring was always pure Ancon. Colonel Humphreys, in fact, states that he was acquainted with only "one questionable case of a contrary nature." Here, then, is a remarkable and well-established instance, not only of a very distinct race being established 'per saltum', but of that race breeding "true" at once, and showing no mixed forms, even when crossed with ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... from a local poet, to whose picturesque descriptions and facile handling of the heroic measure, I must be indebted in this chapter. I refer to a book entitled "Visions of Childhood," by W. Warren Butler, of Barkway, printed and published by John Warren in 1843. Of one questionable form of sport ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... reliance on this assurance; but he felt that he could afford the loss of five dollars, if loss it should prove, and it might prevent Luke's obtaining the money in a more questionable way. ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... this, if the author is correct, that the musical critic of to-day must be content to generalize somewhat and must not be put out if the key is changed on repetition and if tempo and rhythm depart at times from their standard gait. It is questionable if even the experts in the palmy days of the hula attained such a degree of skill as to be faultless and logical ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... mature age, but a man of the world, who had already acted as a travelling tutor. Considering that the young widower was not yet twenty, and that all his wife's wealth would be in his hands, also that his cousin Sedley formed a dangerous link with the questionable diversions of the garrison at Portsmouth, both father and friend felt that it was well that he should be out of reach, and have other ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... back quickly to Tacloban, which keeps up an active intercourse with Manila, and has all the attractions of a luxurious city for the men living on the inhospitable eastern coast. [Beauty of Samar-Leyte strait.] It is questionable whether the sea anywhere washes over a spot of such peculiar beauty as the narrow strait which divides Samar from Leyte. On the west it is enclosed by steep banks of tuff, which tolerate no swamps of mangroves on their borders. There ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... so extreme in its severity was partly dictated by policy. The state of the country was critical; and the danger from questionable persons traversing it unexamined and uncontrolled was greater than at ordinary times. But in point of justice, as well as of prudence, it harmonised with the iron temper of the age, and it answered ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... doubt that the first and third stanzas are the finest, and some may respect the judgment that cut down the Poem by the removal of its second verse: but others will say, if it was right that such a verse should be removed, why were many others of questionable merit allowed to remain? Why was such a poem as 'The Glowworm', of the edition of 1807, never republished; while 'The Waterfall and the Eglantine', and 'To the Spade of a Friend', were retained? To give one other illustration, where a score ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... here about two years, and Mr. Otto had already learnt to speak the Papuan language with fluency, and had begun translating some portions of the Bible. The language, however, is so poor that a considerable number of Malay words have to be used; and it is very questionable whether it is possible to convey any idea of such a book, to a people in so low a state of civilization. The only nominal converts yet made are a few of the women; and some few of the children attend ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... of Hume, whose conceptions are usually so clear, definite, and consistent, it is as unsatisfactory as it is surprising to meet with so much questionable and obscure phraseology in a small space. One and the same thing, for example, resemblance, is first called a "quality of an idea," and secondly a "complex idea." Surely it cannot be both. Ideas which have the qualities of "resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect," are said to "attract ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... no thought (for your life) what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink nor yet what ye shall put on ... lay not up for yourself treasure upon earth ... take up thy cross and follow me"; who on Monday becomes a "speculating" disciple of another god, and by questionable investments, successful enough to get into the "press," seeks to lay up a treasure of a million dollars for his old age, as if a million dollars could keep such a man out of the poor-house. Thoreau might observe that this one good example ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... prank of a clever man in high place made this widely known. Nor in any case can we regard as alien to the scope of this book the illustration of a work of mediaeval Asiatic art, which is quite as remarkable for its own character and indisputable history, as for the questionable origin ascribed to it. (Tod's Travels, 385, 504; Burgess, Visit to Somnath, etc.; Jacob's Report on Kattywar, p. 18; Gildemeister, 185; Dowson's Elliot, II. 468 seqq.; Asiatic Journal, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... curious combination of devotion and gallantry. It is related of her that she confided to a friend one day that she had taken great care to prevent her husband's peace of mind from being disturbed by her somewhat questionable conduct, and then added: "But he will be very much surprised when the Day of Judgment comes!" The Torlonia palace was practically the only princely house open to strangers, and it often sheltered a most ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... 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 of value ascribed to the things about them. It is a world partly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Dr. H. Berliner's work Die Geschichte der Juden in Rom. His derivation of the Hebrew word used for Pope, [Hebrew:] from Peter, is questionable. It is the Greek [Greek: hepiphoros]. See Talmud, Aboda Zarah, ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela

... Houstonia to be supposed thereby to indorse the Texan President? Or are the deluded damsels who chew Cassia-buds to be regarded as swallowing the late Secretary of State? The names have long since been made over to the flowers, and every questionable aroma has vanished. When the godfather happens to be a botanist, there is a peculiar fitness in the association; the Linaea, at least, would not smell so sweet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... singers merely, or rather to notice the difference between them in point of execution. What supports the theatre is this: the women are a spectacle before and after the play. Vanity alone will pay the exorbitant price of forty francs for three hours of questionable pleasure, in a bad atmosphere and at great expense, without counting the colds caught in going out. But to exhibit themselves, to see and be seen, to be the observed of five hundred observers! What a glorious mouthful! as Rabelais ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... union leaders stripping off their coats, throwing them on the floor and stomping on them; to uplifters who wanted to ban cosmetics on our women employees so the male employees would not be tempted to think Questionable Thoughts. I could not recall ever having ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton

... elm, oak, poplar, tulip, cedar, hemlock, magnolia, pine or any other species which, unless cut, are capable of producing no crop other than that of shade, would hardly be in keeping with the present need for utility. It would be giving a questionable degree of thought to the welfare ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... and the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors. As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked out in the meretricious garb of fancy, or aided by the transient attractions of beauty. Who can tell how much the heart-stirring appeals of Shakspeare have done to string to lofty purposes the British heart; how powerfully the dignified sentiments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... you to be out alone," she said, and the girl seemed to perceive dimly a hedge of conventionality which she had not hitherto known. She had often taken a car when she was alone of an evening, without a thought of anything questionable. Some of the conductors lived near Ellen, and she felt as if she were under personal friendly escort. "I know the conductor on that car, and it would take me right home, and I am not in the least afraid," she said to Robert, as the car came rocking down the street ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... held doubtless in full sincerity by the royal profligate, now, in his decline, a fervent champion of the Faith and a strenuous tormentor of heretics. The machinery of conversion was of a character somewhat questionable, since Cartier and Roberval were empowered to ransack the prisons for thieves, robbers, and other malefactors, to complete their crews and strengthen the colony. "Whereas," says the King, "we have undertaken this voyage for the honor of God our Creator, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... certainly a natural tendency to reduce profits; but experience proves that it has also a tendency to reduce costs. A monopolist company never goes very economically to work; and, although much economy, or rather parsimony, of a very questionable and impolitic kind, has been of late years attempted to be introduced into the management of the Hudson's Bay Company's affairs, a free and fair competition will suggest economy of a sounder kind—the facilitating ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... natural in such a case as his, seemed to him very much like instincts. It seemed to him, if he once reasoned on the matter, that, as he had good cause to hate the intruder, so there must be justification for shooting him. Were this not so, the policy of hating would be very questionable, and surely very unprofitable. It would be a great waste of a very laudable quantity of feeling—something like omitting one's bullet in discharging one's piece—a profligacy only justifiable in a feu de joie after victory, where the bullets have already done all necessary mischief, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... this temple can be traced at the foot of the castle hill. Dnia was captured by the Moors in 713, and from 1031 to 1253 belonged successively to the Moorish kingdoms of Murcia and Valencia. According to an ancient but questionable tradition, its population rose at this period to 50,000, and its commerce proportionately increased. After the city was retaken by the Christians in 1253, its prosperity dwindled away, and only began to revive in the 19th century. During the War of the Spanish ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... boys and girls, for so considerable a portion of the day, did not strike us as so desirable as it is there said to be. The advocates of the system say it refines the rough manners of the boys; but it is more than questionable if the characters of the girls are improved by it, and if the practice, in its general ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... left him gasping. It was perfectly true that he had scribbled a certain amount in years gone by, when he was at the 'Varsity: but not seriously. . . . An essay or two which he had been told showed distinct ability: a short story, of possible merit but questionable morality, which had been accepted on the spot by a not too particular periodical and had never been paid for—that was the extent of his scribbling. And yet—Margaret might be right. . . . One never knows till ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... National Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... were fusing into a sort of descendant of the old coalition. The leaders of the new Vindictive group were much the same as the leaders of the earlier group. There was one conspicuous addition. During the next six months, Henry Winter Davis held for a time the questionable distinction of being Lincoln's most inveterate enemy. He was a member of the House. In the House many young and headstrong politicians rallied about him. The Democrats at times craftily followed his lead. Despite the older and more astute Vindictives of the Senate, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... the main, at least, reversed. The poet throws off intellectual restraint, and "lets his illumined being o'errun" with music and song. This Arnold could not or would not do. Then, too, Arnold's lyrics are often at fault metrically. This, combined with frequent questionable rhymes, argues a not too discriminating poetical ear. He also lacked genius in inventing verse forms, and hence found himself under the necessity of employing or adapting those already in use. In this respect he was notably inferior ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself; and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the love-scenes in the Jerusalem were innocent. For the bigots had begun to find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war. The bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices, and excited ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... not help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of Providential favor, by which we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American government as we were on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we incline ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... was under Mrs. Fleming's charge. The joy of her love for it was written on its lustrous beds, as poets write. She had the poetic passion for flowers. Perhaps her taste may now seem questionable. She cherished the old-fashioned delight in tulips; the house was reached on a gravel-path between rows of tulips, rich with one natural blush, or freaked by art. She liked a bulk of colour; and when the dahlia dawned upon our gardens, she gave her heart to dahlias. By good desert, the fervent woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... young man to start out in business life with a weak, yielding disposition, with no resolution or backbone to mark his own course and stick to it; with no ability to say "No" with an emphasis, obliging this man by investing in hopeless speculation, and, rather than offend a friend, indorsing a questionable note. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... of upper-class syndicalism, that despairs of Parliaments, deplores the bungling work of politics, and ridicules the general incompetence of democratic institutions. At the same time, however, they exercise stupendous efforts, in the most devious and questionable ways, to retain their political power. Facing the inevitable, and realizing that potentially at least the suffrages of the immense majority stand over them as a menace, they are beginning to seek other methods of action. Of course, in all the more democratic countries ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... he prefers silently to shrink from entering into the sacred bond; the holy joys of home and family lose their divine attractions; he prefers the cold life of an ignominious celibacy to the humiliation and opprobrium of the questionable privileges of ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... the love of his science, Mr. Darwin published a series of researches which at once arrested the attention of naturalists and geologists; his generalizations have since received ample confirmation, and now command universal assent, nor is it questionable that they have had the most important influence on the progress of science. More recently Mr. Darwin, with a versatility which is among the rarest of gifts, turned his attention to a most difficult ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley

... imagine. In his childhood, it is true, he had been a dweller and wanderer among scenes well calculated, according to the ordinary notion, to implant the first rudiments of poetic feeling. But, though the poet may afterwards feed on the recollection of such scenes, it is more than questionable, as has been already observed, whether he ever has been formed by them. If a childhood, indeed, passed among mountainous scenery were so favourable to the awakening of the imaginative power, both the Welsh, among ourselves, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... to see what he never could have seen but for its being shown to him in brick and mortar. But to the pilgrim of the other sort—day-dreamer, if you will—there must come a sense not of gain but of loss. He will feel that, for a questionable combination of a restoration with a ruin, there has been sacrificed the most impressive spectacle on the island—the ancient church tower of vanished James Towne, standing in the shadow of the little grove by the river, ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... 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, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... duchess, despite her misfortunes, as we do with the "White Devil." She is neither quite a virtuous woman (for in that case she would not have resorted to so much concealment) nor a frank professor of "All for Love." Antonio, her so-called husband, is an unromantic and even questionable figure. Many of the minor characters, as already hinted, would be much better away. Of the two brothers the Cardinal is a cold-blooded and uninteresting debauchee and murderer, who sacrifices sisters and mistresses without ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... diffused and established. See L'Esprit des Loix, liv. 25, chap. 10. According to this principle, Laud's indulgence to the Catholics, and severity to the Puritans, would admit of apology. I own, however, that it is very questionable, whether persecution can in any case be justified; but, at the same time, it would be hard to give that appellation to Laud's conduct, who only enforced the act of uniformity, and expelled the clergymen that accepted of benefices, and yet refused to observe the ceremonies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... an especial friend of Governor Clarke, and was influenced by his party feelings of hatred to Troup—in his opposition to a treaty, openly declaring that Georgia should never acquire the land while Troup was Governor. He was an unscrupulous man, of questionable morals, and vindictive as ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... this Begonia Company was so painful to him that he repressed it, that is, drove it down into the unconscious. Twenty years later he was unconsciously afraid to recall the name of the flower, because the name might have brought back the painful memories of the questionable books. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill

... were blinder victims than some of the priests. It had made such an impression on them that they scarcely could believe anything was real, or any sentiment was true; and when they admitted its truth it was only to prove its madness. Of other and more questionable motives I shall say ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... before recorded. How much of additional information she may really have expected to gain from the sorceress, it is impossible to say,—or whether this matter of the attempted poisoning was really the matter which sent her to that questionable fountain of intelligence; but it is not at all strange that she should have blended the terrors of the real and the imaginary together, and been powerfully impressed by the events of that day which marked so important ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... vision of the household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he accept ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... intent is so unequivocally kindly, is it not gross and unfeeling to suggest in the modest orchestra a questionable chord, a cracked reed, a cornet out of tune? Why so insistent, so scrupulously exigent? Are you never out of tune, good sir? Your chords, say in the domestic concert, are they always finely harmonious, and your own reed never cracked? Why so eager to cast ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... territory of Samaria was joined to Judea. In return for three hundred talents they were also promised exemption from taxation. Furthermore, membership in one of the royal orders was conferred upon the Maccabean leader. Thus by good fortune and by often questionable diplomacy the Jews finally secured in the days of Jonathan that freedom for which they had fought and which they had partially won ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... possibly tell you what I shall say to your father about the play until Ive seen the play. But I'll tell you what I shall say to him about you. I shall say that youre a very foolish young lady; that youve got into a very questionable set; and that the sooner he takes you away from Cambridge and ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked "B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C.," one woolen one marked "D. F.," and ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... elder English judges did really pretend to knowledge of rules, principles, and distinctions which were not entirely revealed to the bar and to the lay-public. Whether all the law which they claimed to monopolise was really unwritten, is exceedingly questionable; but at all events, on the assumption that there was once a large mass of civil and criminal rules known exclusively to the judges, it presently ceased to be unwritten law. As soon as the Courts at Westminster Hall began to base their judgments on cases recorded, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... give Margaret the chance for happiness and love her heart craved—to put out of Lorna's way the evil influence that had threatened her. Now the solution came to him. Sooner or later he would catch Swann with his sister in an automobile, or at the club rooms, or at some other questionable place. He knew Lorna was meeting Swann. He had tried to find them, all to no avail. What he might have done heretofore was no longer significant; he knew what he meant ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... scarcely an English idiom which Milton has not violated, or a foreign one which he has not borrowed." Now, in answer to this extravagant assertion, I will venture to say that the two following are the sole cases of questionable idiom throughout Milton:—1st, "Yet virgin of Proserpine from Jove;" and, in this case, the same thing might be urged in apology which Aristotle urges in another argument, namely, that anonymon to pathos, the case is unprovided ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... principle was neither more nor less than political suicide. And though at the commencement of our struggle there were many at the North in whose minds the dogma had taken deep root, few are found to-day to uphold the pernicious doctrine, and those few men of more than questionable loyalty. And not this principle only, but every other which is inconsistent with republican ideas, antagonistic to the growth of the giant plant of human freedom, has come to its death at the hands of the god of war. Great commotions are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... fruit of one of the palms, than which it is questionable if there is any other species of tree marking, in itself, so abundantly the goodness of Providence, in making provision for the wants of man. It grows wild in the Indian seas, and in the eastern parts of Asia; and thence it has been ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... 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 for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... party agents often obtain their appointments because of their previous success in winning elections, the mere force of competition is compelling agents, sometimes against their own wishes, to resort to these questionable practices. The success of the Municipal Reform campaign in the London County Council election of 1907 was followed by a demand from many Progressives that the tactics of their opponents should be copied, that gramophone should be answered by gramophone, poster by poster. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... gratitude. The effect of the whole was a manner so pitying and agitated, and words intermingled with her refusal so expressive of obligation and concern, that to a temper of vanity and hope like Crawford's, the truth, or at least the strength of her indifference, might well be questionable; and he was not so irrational as Fanny considered him, in the professions of persevering, assiduous, and not desponding attachment which closed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is it an animal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favour of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's land and the vegetable world, on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... inverse and questionable method of arguing that the high profits distributed by a Trust are themselves proof that prices have not fallen as they would have fallen under free competition, it is not possible to build a very convincing condemnation of the Trust from statistics of price. And even ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... Very often the solution of an apparent difficulty is found in studying the exact words used. The accuracy, precision and inerrancy of the exact words used is amazing. To the superficial student, the doctrine of verbal inspiration may appear questionable or even absurd; any regenerated and Spirit-taught man, who ponders the words of the Scripture day after day and year after year, will become convinced that the wisdom of God is in the very words, as well as in the thought which the words endeavour ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey

... masterpiece of English comedy. The one play in our language which may fairly claim a place beside, or but just beneath, the mightiest work of Moliere, is The Way of the World.' But he continues: 'On the stage, which had recently acclaimed with uncritical applause the author's more questionable appearance in the field of tragedy,'—The Mourning Bride,—'this final and flawless evidence of his incomparable powers met with a rejection then and ever since inexplicable on any ground of conjecture.' There the critics are not unanimous. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... young couple are engaged to each other, they should not dance together so often as to be conspicuous. Nor may they disappear into secluded corners and sit out dances. It is poor taste and very questionable ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... settle down into a heavy citizen. In order to bring down a few brace of golden game, he shovels into Lintott's hands his stray verses of all kinds, a bundle of letters he wrote from Holland, a dignified essay or discourse upon Comedy, and, with questionable taste perhaps, a set of copies of the love-letters he had addressed to the lady who became his wife. All this is not very praiseworthy, and as a contribution to literature it is slight indeed; but, then, how genuine and sincere, how guileless and picturesque ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... that time was, say, twenty thousand, or three thousand families, fifty cents for every head of a family would have raised a larger sum than could possibly have been raised by the expensive and questionable process resorted to. At first sight it may seem strange to us that this was not thought of at the time; but when we reflect that even in our enlightened times people are quite as thoughtless about the processes ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... point pleasant people soon knew about Miss Cordelia's questionable windfall, and she was overwhelmed with advice and suggestions. She listened to all tranquilly and then placidly followed her own way. Mr. Griggs was very obliging in regard to his old express wagon, and the next Saturday Point Pleasant was treated to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... anomalous figure for Nick, the worker of domestic woe. Then he saw that his aunt's grievance—there came a moment, later, when she asserted as much—was not quite what her recreant child, in Balaklava Place, had represented it—with questionable taste perhaps—to a mocking actress; was not a mere shocked quarrel with his adoption of a "low" career, or a horror, the old-fashioned horror, of the louches licences taken by artists under pretext of being conscientious: the day for this ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... attitude to indicate that its business was not to hunt, but to keep watch and ward at its master's gate. The fourth dog, who bears the name of Tekal, and walks between his master's legs, has ears that seem to have been cropped. He has been said to resemble "the Dalmatian hound": but this is questionable. His peculiarities are not marked; but, on the whole, it seems most probable that he is "a pet house-dog"[9] of the terrier class, the special favourite of his master. Antefaa's dogs had their appointed keeper, the master of his kennel, who is figured on ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... treason in moments of difficulty, which never came to much—until in the following reign the indomitable race rose again in another branch and under another name, and furnished in the Regent Morton one of the strongest as well as the most questionable figures of a deeply disturbed time. Never was a ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... to sit in council with the British Resident. But the confidence of his countrymen in him remained unshaken by the appearance among them of British envoys in military state, bearing despatches to the friend of the national foe, and the questionable attitude of Lehna became to the Resident daily more and more the ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... Marie de Medicis exerted all her energies to ascertain through whose agency her influence had thus been undermined; nor was it long ere she became assured that Richelieu had availed himself of her absence to renew all the old misgivings of the King, and by rendering her motives and affection questionable, to make himself entirely master of the mind of the jealous and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... these extracts somewhat more at length than may, perhaps, be to the point in question, because they contain much that is highly interesting as to the apparently questionable mode in which the Hospitallers obtained the protection of the courts (and probably they were not singular in their proceedings); annual pensions to judges, besides other largesses, and much of this "pro favore habendo," contrasts painfully with the "spotless purity ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... no questionable chaff or talking at the possible lovers. Older people who have forgotten how tender their own sensibilities once were are rather fond of cracking jokes, and make tactless, pointed remarks. The old friend of the family who slaps the prospective suitor on the back, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... He was told that Simon had been dead a long while, but had first fallen into complete poverty through lawsuits and bad debtors whom he could not sue because, it was said, the business relations between them had been questionable. Finally he had been reduced to begging and had died on the straw in a strange barn. Margaret had lived longer, but in absolute mental torpor. The people in the village had soon grown tired of helping her, because ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... informed of, must conclude that they were either very credulous, or deceived the people. To refuse to believe the marvels which have reached us by an uniform and universal tradition, is to call in question all tradition; to render all its channels suspicious, and to cause it to be looked upon as a questionable proposition. What can be thought of the saints, if the miraculous graces, which they certify that they have received from God, are to be treated as chimeras; if the accomplishment of what they have foretold, is to be attributed to chance? What even can be thought of their most heroic victims? ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... by changing sides and taking service with the highest bidder, as occasion prompted. Nor, though his character for probity and loyalty stood exceptionally high among the men of his profession, was he the slave to any questionable claims of honor or of duty. In that age of confused politics and extinguished patriotism, there was not indeed much scope for scrupulous honesty. But Filippo Maria Visconti proved more than a match for him in craft. While Colleoni was engaged in pacifying the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... every way more tolerable than the old one. It had no fire, and it enjoyed the questionable benefit of being constantly filled with nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it. The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in the wall where a stone had been disturbed. This aperture also served the less ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... Decherd," said Eddring, "and see if we don't look at it about alike. For instance, if Delphine is Indian, she isn't white. Uncle Sam's Supreme Court says she's Indian. That's record, that's evidence. Take the two girls, one of noble blood, the other of questionable descent, and they are together equal, in posse, as we will say, to these valuable lands. Do you follow me? Oh, give up thinking of your gun. I'll kill you ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... things doubtless there are to be given up—amusements that are dangerous, society that is questionable. What we give up, let us give up, not from quick feeling, but from principle. Enthusiasm is a lovely thing, but let us be calm in what we do. In that solemn, grand thing—Christian life—one step backward is ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... hardly a 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 ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... moral sense: or that Allegra's father, watching her drive by in Count G.'s coach and six, had any remnant of so ridiculous a thing to guide,—or check,—his poetical passion, may alike seem more than questionable to the liberal and chaste philosophy of the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes or speaks aside, do you, good reader, know good "style" when you get it? Can you ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... horses at the present day in Asia, Africa, and America; but it is questionable whether any of these are the descendants of an originally wild stock. More likely they are the progeny of horses escaped from the domesticated breeds. Of course we refer to the true horses of the genus equus; and not to the dziggetais, quaggas, and zebras—to which we ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... is Fo and P'u-sa who are involved, it should be enough simply to pray. Why, then, must the women also go and pass the night in the temple? There must be some questionable artifice in that." ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli

... was dressed and had just dispatched the professor to the stand to engage a hack to take them to the station, and while he was thinking of nothing better in the way of a morning meal than the weak, muddy coffee and questionable bread and butter of the railway restaurant, he received a summons to the dining room, where he found his two hostesses presiding over a breakfast of Mocha coffee, hot rolls, buckwheat cakes, poached eggs, broiled salmon, stewed oysters, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... devotion to tobacco led, on at least one occasion, to a peculiar and somewhat questionable proceeding. Mr. W.M. Rossetti had a temporary acquaintance with the poet, and in the "Reminiscences" which he published in 1906, he told a curious anecdote concerning him which was new to print. Rossetti told, on the authority of Woolner, how, in the course of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... sensations. And when he came the following day he apparently had once more restored her father to his proper place of a nonessential. All that definitely remained of the day before's impression was a certain satisfaction that he was aiding with his money an enterprise of greater value and of less questionable character than merely his own project. But the powerful influences upon our life and conduct are rarely direct and definite. He, quite unconsciously, had a wholly different feeling about Dorothy because of her father, because of what his new knowledge of and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... chocolate are liable to a number of fraudulent or questionable additions. In the cheaper qualities of cocoa-powder sugar and starch—the latter in the form of sago flour or arrowroot—are admixed in very large proportions, and, in order to give to such mixtures something like the appearance of genuine ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... hospitals at Chattanooga, Tenn., at the beginning of the Sherman campaign in Georgia, where I found a ward of eighty sick and wounded soldiers fresh from the battle of Resacea. My professional fitness for duties so grave and so large in extent was of a very questionable order, and I did not in the ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... an acquired asset of questionable value. With him were a lot of followers but it was plain to be seen that he was the leader of the gang; which was, for all the world, like a typical street gang ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... to sit in judgment of others, Tom," said Vidac, smiling again. "If there are any more—ah—questionable applicants, I suggest you send them to me. And if I want to give them another chance, you will, of course, ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable—we were yet liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of the ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our knowledge of the north did not extend farther than New ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... shadow or cloud on the faces in Club windows, or in the eyes of drivers of four-in-hands, or of fashionable young men walking down Piccadilly. For these live by a Rule which has not been drawn down from far-off and questionable skies, and needs no sanction; what they do is Correct, and that is all. Correctly dressed from head to foot, they pass, with correct speech and thoughts and gestures, correctly across the ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... chapter is merely one of definitions and that a definition is a description of something given to it after—not before—it is finished. A definition is a tag, like the label the entomologist ties to the pin after he has the butterfly nicely dead. Of questionable profit it would be to you, struggling to waken your playlet into life, to worry about a definition that might read "Here Lies ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... I was looking for came, as opportunities often do come, spontaneously and unexpectedly, yet in shape so questionable that it was open to doubt whether, if I accepted it, my second condition would not be worse than ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... spent in the railway carriage extended, travellers multiplied, and the newspaper ceased to be sufficient for the journey. At this period reading matter for the rail sensibly increased; the tide of cheap literature set in. French novels, unfortunately, of questionable character were introduced by the newsman, simply because he could buy them at one-third less than any other publication selling at the same price. The public purchased the wares they saw before them, and very soon the ingenious caterers for railway readers flattered themselves that ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... questionable right of an Indian maiden; she asked what no Indian dared refuse a chief's daughter; she took the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... one thinks nothing of the toothache when it is past. The mineral waters became too hot to drink, and not quite near enough the boiling-point to make good tea of, whilst, as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... as to the extremely questionable manner in which the Quaker proposed to beat the devil about the stump. Presently he asked ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... I have been able to recall in England concerning existing occult practices to which a questionable purpose might be attributed, appeared in a well-known psychological journal some few years since, and was derived from a continental source, being an account of a certain society then existing in Paris, which was devoted to magical ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... copy of Hero and Leander Collier found, together with other questionable matter, the following MS. notes:—"Feb. 10, 1640. Mr. [two words follow in cipher], that Marloe was an atheist, and wrot a booke against [two words in cipher,] how that it was all one man's making, and would have printed it, but it would not be suffred to be printed. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... be either anvil or hammer, and it always seemed as if Pattison deliberately chose to be anvil—not merely in the shape of a renunciation of the delusive pomps and vanities of life, but in the truly questionable sense of doubting both whether he could do anything, and whether he even owed anything to the world in which he ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... of the loyalty to which he believed himself fully committed, Stella Wildmere, with her Wall Street complications, her variegated experience as to adorers, and her present questionable diplomacy, seemed rather faded beside this girl, upon whose heart the dew ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... 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 strictly ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... my motive: nor will there ever, I hope, be a stronger, notwithstanding your questionable throbs—even were the merits of Mr. Lovelace much greater than ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... his genius as a composer. Visions of a dark plot against him rose before his fevered and sensitive imagination, and after 1756 he left the Society of the Encyclopedists, never to return. Holbach, on the other hand, while admitting rather questionable treatment of Rousseau, never speaks of any personal injury on his part, and bewails the fact that "l'homme le plus loquent s'est rendu ainsi l'homme le plus anti-littraire, et l'homme le plus sensible s'est rendu le plus anti-social." [17:24] He ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... books of which an ancient, but very questionable, ecclesiastical tradition asserts Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the authors, agree, not only in presenting the same general view, or Synopsis, of the nature and the order of the events narrated; but, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... the Salians by a Saxon tribe is a fact on which no doubt rests. The name of the victors is, however, questionable. The Varni having remained settled near the mouths of the Rhine till near the year 500, there is strong, probability that they were the people alluded to. But names and histories, which may on this point appear of such little importance, acquire considerable interest ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... this also of the catastrophe, which we found questionable from the strictly dramatic point of view. Its purpose is not merely dramatic. This sudden blow out of the darkness, which seems so far from inevitable, and which strikes down our reviving hopes for the victims of so much cruelty, seems now only ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... by direct legislation. Its power to tax was however undoubted. The friends of the State bank system claimed that the indirect method of destroying the institution by taxing its notes out of existence was an arbitrary exercise of questionable power. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... hand, the Maryland Committee does well in recommending that permission be given to the minister to shorten the Lessons at his discretion, though the hard and fast condition, "provided he read not less than fifteen consecutive verses," apart from the questionable English in which it is phrased, smacks more of the drill-room than of the sanctuary. Far better would it be (if the suggestion may be ventured) to allow no liberty of abridgment whatever in the case of Proper Lessons, while giving entire freedom of choice on all occasions ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... comfort, however, to know, that subsequently a voice came to him, on which he rose, "seated himself upon the Lotus in an attitude of contemplation, and reflected upon the Eternal, who soon appeared to him in the form of a man with a thousand heads": a questionable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... the intervention of a human being is not more questionable for us, I agree that he has at his disposal means of action beyond those possessed by humanity. There is a mystery still, but if we discover the man, the mystery will be discovered also. The question, then, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... have never had a breathing-spell, and we need, more than any other people on the globe, immunity from disturbing experiments on novel questions of doubtful expediency. We can not afford to risk our future prosperity and happiness in making an innovation so questionable. We want peace, and must have it. Let Massachusetts or New York, or some older State, therefore, try this nauseating dose. If it does not kill them, or if it proves healthful and beneficial, we guarantee that Kansas will not be long in swallowing it. But the stomach of our State, if we may be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... same Sir Henry Bulwer who, in 1850, succeeded by questionable diplomatic methods in foisting upon the American people a treaty which was contrary to their best interests and which for half a century was a hindrance and barrier to an American Isthmian canal. We owe it chiefly to the masterly and straightforward ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden

... 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 ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... Within that corporal tenement installed Look'd from its windows, but with temper'd fire Beam'd mildly on the unresisting. Thin His beard and hoary; his flat nostrils crown'd A cicatrised, swart visage,—but withal That questionable shape such glory wore That mortals quail'd ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... one warm tear, in testimony of old acquaintance. A noble street, a line of palaces—merchants' palaces—had taken to itself the room of twenty narrow ways, that, in the good old times, had met and crossed in close, but questionable, friendship. Bright stone, that in the sunlight shone brighter than itself, flanked every broad and stately avenue, denoting wealth and high commercial dignity. Every venerable association was swept away, and nothing remained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... matter, described him as the most companionable man under the age of thirty he had ever met with. Shelley rode and practised pistol-shooting with his brother bard, sat up late to talk with him, enjoyed his jokes, and even betted with him on one occasion marked by questionable taste. All this is quite incompatible with that martyrdom to persecution, remorse, or physical suffering, with which it has pleased some romantic persons to invest the poet. Society of the ordinary kind he hated. The voice of a stranger, or a ring at the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Linn, of Bellefonte, stood second to Meginness in popular repute as historian of the West Branch Valley. However, he too calls Pine Creek the Tiadaghton, though the reliability of his sources is questionable. Unlike Meginness, whose judgment derived somewhat from interviews with contemporaries of the period, Linn based his contention upon the statements made by the Indians at the second Stanwix ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... 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 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, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn'd, Hath ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... children would differ each from each other in at least as many ways, it never seems to have occurred to the father that one inflexible system for them all could hardly be wise or comfortable. But, indeed, like so many parents similarly trained and circumstanced, it is questionable whether he ever realised their possession of separate individualities till they were pleaded for by the mother, or made, as on this evening, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... suggestions and corrections in matters of detail; and I would gladly mention his name if it could be supposed that an historian of established reputation would wish to be associated, even in any slight way, with an enterprise of questionable orthodoxy. ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... as if I had done him a wrong. That is the way with all these Christians. They think it their duty to force on others what they themselves think right, and any one who turns a deaf ear to their questionable truths they at once set down as narrow-minded, or as hostile to what is good. Agatha, of whom you were just now speaking, and Zeno her father, my husband's brother, are Christians. I had hoped that Korinna's death would have brought the child back to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... family. Again, an individual marries and without even admitting to himself that his marriage is a failure he gradually shuts himself off from any emotional expression—protects himself from the married state by sublimating his natural domestic ties, usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable ways—by hobbies, speed manias, and excesses of various kinds. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile, quite apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used means of repression or wish sublimation. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... 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

... that our contemporaries were incapable of being fired to enthusiasm by new religions, whose exponents seemed to us as questionable as their doctrines. But we need only observe the facts to behold with what inconceivable ease an age considered prosaic and incredulous has adopted spiritual principles which frequently show up the lack of harmony between our manner of life and our ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... was, why he should be so eager to condemn himself, and so went to The Manor on the lookout for treachery. Chaldea always judged other people by herself, and looked upon treachery as quite necessary on certain occasions. Had she guessed the kind of trap which Lambert was laying for her, it is questionable if she would have fallen into it so easily. And Lambert, even at this late hour, could not be certain if she really regarded him as guilty, or if she was only bluffing in order ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... pursuing nefarious designs of their own and plotting to rend the breast that fed them. The great war gave rise to many noble acts of chivalry on both sides, deeds which are luminous with a spirit transcending the hatreds of the time, and glorify human nature; but it is happily questionable whether it produced an example to equal that expounded in these pages, of ignoble treachery and ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... slightingly of his eloquence would take to heart his example. Stephen had in 1811 been rewarded for his support of the Orders in Council by a Mastership in Chancery. Romilly observes that the appointment was questionable, because Stephen, though he was fully qualified by his abilities, was not sufficiently versed in the law. His friends said that it was no more than a fair compensation for the diminution of the prize business which resulted from the new ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... negroes the victims. In the last days of July more portentous tidings arrived from New Orleans. An attempt was made by Union men to revive the constitutional convention of 1864 for the purpose of remodeling the constitution of the State. The attempt was of questionable legality, but, if wrong, it could easily have been foiled by legal and peaceable means. The municipal government of New Orleans was in possession of the ex-Confederates. It resolved that the meeting ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... wonder—questionable enough at times, but, on the whole, marvellously beneficent—the German knightly poets, so early in the field, are naturally among the earliest (for the Provencals belonged to a sceptical, sensual country) to give us a written record. Nearly all of the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... also bear witness to the splendid conduct of the French troops and the French nation. Our conception of the French people derived from books, chiefly novels of a questionable nature, are entirely wrong. The French soldier is cool and intrepid and they "carry on" their work without the slightest "fuss." The pose of the nation is an inspiration and speaks of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... and that sort of Christianity, with the feeling that all this action on the part of the church is but another feeble effort at competitive morality. They will turn from it and seek their own organizations wherein no issue of the supernatural has ever been raised; where the quasi personality and questionable existence of an unseen God are not at all discussed; and where man and his present life are the only subjects deemed worthy ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... 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 is ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... the effect that nobody did anything very foolish except from some strong principle, carries with it a tribute to motive as well as a censure on action, and it is certain that the promptings to which Lord John yielded in the questionable phases of his public career were not due to the adroit and calculating temper of self-interest. His weaknesses were indeed, after all, trivial in comparison to his strength. He rose to the great occasion and was inspired by it. All that was formal and hesitating in manner and speech ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... June and September, rises regularly. We used to get them in the Colne considerably over 1/2 lb. in weight, and an afternoon's perseverance and a little wading would, in favourable weather, put from twenty to thirty fish into your basket. But it is questionable whether this can be done now. Many a pleasant evening have I spent by Thames-side, beginning at Ham Lane and working upwards, or crossing the river below Richmond bridge; fishing always with fine tackle and a black ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... with women have not dared to declare their love to one woman; that all Sterne's sentiment was perfectly ideal, and proceeded always from the head and never from the heart; that Seneca's morality was no barrier to his practicing usury; and that, according to Plutarch, Demosthenes was a very questionable moralist in practice. Why, then, necessarily conclude that a moralist is a moral man, or a sarcastic satirist a deceitful one, or the man who describes scenes of blood and carnage a monster of cruelty? Does not Montaigne say of authors that ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... in the other affairs of life, regulated by the caprice and supported by the authority of a few leading practitioners, which has been frequently the occasion of dismissing from practice valuable medicines and of substituting others less certain in their effects and more questionable in their nature. As years and fashion revolve, so have these neglected remedies, each in its turn, risen again into favor and notice, whilst old receipts, like old almanacs, are abandoned until the period may arrive that will once more adjust ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... become a destructive and iconoclastic principle of theirs. When, however, even the friends of antiquity, possessed of such doubts and hesitations, point to our present classical philology as something questionable, what influence may we not ascribe to the outbursts of the "realists" and the claptrap of the heroes of the passing hour? To answer the latter on this occasion, especially when we consider the nature of the present assembly, would be highly injudicious; ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche

... them derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that the 'Chronicle' must have been fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not uncommon. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... think when she should come to know the truth? Margaret told herself as she lay there, holding her head between her hands, that she was even now occupying that room and enjoying the questionable comfort of that bed under false pretences. When it was known that she was absolutely a pauper, would she then be made welcome to her uncle's house? She was now remaining there without divulging her circumstances, under the advice and by the authority of her cousin; ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... Europeans already Diseased.—To persons already suffering from disease, the experiment of a residence in Ceylon is one of questionable propriety. Those of a scrofulous diathesis need not consider it hazardous, as experience does not show that in such there is any greater susceptibility to local or constitutional disorders, or that when these are present, there is greater ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Muker to the upper part of Wensleydale is by a mountain road that can claim a grandeur which, to those who have never explored the dales, might almost seem impossible. I have called it a road, but it is, perhaps, questionable whether this is not too high-sounding a term for a track so invariably covered with large loose stones and furrowed with water-courses. At its highest point the road goes through the Buttertubs Pass, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... 134 officers, and 1897 men wounded. Had the regiments engaged been composed of the same materials as those who won the heights of the Alma, the result might have been different, although even in that case it is questionable whether the small force told off for the assault would have finally maintained itself against the masses which the Russians brought up against them. But composed as they were of young troops, many being lads sent off to the ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty



Words linked to "Questionable" :   unquestionable, equivocal, contestable, in question, dubitable, shady, confutative, impugnable, so-called, dubious, alleged, confutable, soi-disant, doubtful, suspicious, problematic, apocryphal, debatable, self-styled, deniable, supposed, fishy, problematical, suspect, funny



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