Doubtful Quotes
More Doubtful Quotes
Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?
blair hugh— Quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern, ed. Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Company (1908), p. 23
It's hard to say how long he'll be out but he's 100 per cent doubtful for the weekend, that's for sure.
phil brown— 13-Mar-2008, Hull Daily Mail
— There's no doubt that he's definitely doubtful - I think.
Oh, rather give me commentators plain,Who with no deep researches vex the brain;Who from the dark and doubtful love to run,And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.
George Crabbe— The Parish Register (1807), Part i, "Introduction". Compare "How commentators each dark passage shun, / And hold their farthing candle to the sun", Edward Young, Love of Fame, Satire vii, Line 97.
How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
washington irving— Book II, ch. 3.
America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.
thomas paine— The Crisis No. I
It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
aiden wilson tozer— Glorify his name!, The Root of the Righteous, Ch. 39.
What is clear to one man may be doubtful to another.
— Lord Kenyon, Godfrey v. Hudson (1788), 2 Esp. 500; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 172.
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712), Canto V, line 73.
All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
Edmund Burke— No. 1, volume v, page 286.
But there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.
james joyce— "A Painful Case"
What is clear to one man may be doubtful to another.
kenyon, lloyd, 1st baron kenyon— Godfrey v. Hudson (1788), 2 Esp. 500.
Thus public works even of doubtful utility may pay for themselves over and over again at a time of severe unemployment, if only from the diminished cost of relief expenditure.
john maynard keynes— Book 3, chapter 10, Section 5, p. 127
False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth . Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education , party, reverence, fashion , interest, et cetera.
john locke— Book IV, Ch. 7
...the old axiom that 'all power corrupts' has doubtful validity, because it derives from our neglect of Plato 's advice to find men carefully and train them by methods which make them fit for heroes.
oswald mosley— Excerpt from Beyond the Pale by Nicholas Mosley
We are thus led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call "hard" data and "soft" data. This distinction is a matter of degree, and must not be pressed; but if not taken too seriously it may help to make the situation clear. I mean by "hard" data those which resist the solvent influence of critical reflection, and by " soft " data those which, under the operation of this process, become to our minds more or less doubtful.
bertrand russell— p. 70. (Our Knowledge of the External World (1914))
Many agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are only convenient symbol in discourse, not actually existing things.
bertrand russell— What is an Agnostic? (1953).
Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them.
thomas fuller— Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
Equity in its general sense is that quality in the transactions of mankind which accords with natural justice, or with honesty and right. . . . But in its juridical sense, that is to say, as administered by the Courts, equity embraces a jurisdiction much less wide than the principles of natural justice:;; for there are many matters of natural justice which the Courts have wholly unprovided for, partly from the difficulty of framing rules to meet them and partly from the doubtful policy of attempting to give a legal sanction to duties of so-called imperfect obligation, such as charity, justice and kindness.
— Snell, Eq. Part I., Ch. 1, p. 1. (The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904))
Where the law is known, and clear, though it be inequitable and inconvenient, the Judges must determine as the law is, without regarding the unequitableness or inconveniency, but where the law is doubtful and not clear, the Judges ought to interpret the law to be as is most consonant to equity, and least inconvenient.
— Vaughan, L.C.J., Dixon v. Harrison (1669), Vaughan's Rep. 37, 38, Fortesc. 392, 393.
If it were a doubtful point how the statute should be construed, I must consider myself as bound by the construction it has already received in two Courts in Westminster Hall
— Rooke, J., Cox v. Morgan (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 411.
Oh! rather give me commentators plain, Who with no deep researches vex the brain; Who from the dark and doubtful love to run, And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.
George Crabbe— George Crabbe, The Parish Register, Part I. Introduction.
As it is generally seen, blank verse seems to be only a laborious and doubtful struggle to escape from the fangs of prose. [...] if it ever ventures to relax into simple and natural phraseology, it instantly becomes tame and the prey of its pursuer.
— Charles Symmons, The Æneis of Virgil (1817), "Preface".
A case may not be the less doubtful because I entertain no doubt on the subject; but that is doubtful concerning which learned men differ.
— Heath, J., Cox v. Morgan (1801), 1 Bos. & Pull. 413.
Nature is infallible and is the voice of God, with this difference, that the language of the Holy Scripture can and should be interpreted in many ways (otherwise it would say many things contrary to the evidence of the senses), but the language of Nature is always the same, without metaphor, without allegory, without hyperbole, without doubtful, obscure, mysterious meanings. Nature speaks clearly to him who knows how to understand her, and has no need of interpretation.
— Antonio Vallisneri, in a letter to Louis Bourguet (30 August 1721)
It seems probable that the early Greeks were largely indebted to the Phoenicians for their knowledge of practical arithmetic or the art of calculation, and perhaps also learnt from them a few properties of numbers. It may be worthy of note that Pythagoras was a Phoenician; and according to Herodotus , but this is more doubtful, Thales was also of that race.
— W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (1905)
The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.
— Winston Churchill, From The World Crisis, 1911-1918 : Chapter I (The Vials of Wrath), Churchill, Butterworth (1923)
The most temperate of persons is the one who controls hismself, and in doubtful events is self-contained.
— Majlisi, Bih?rul Anw?r, vol.78, p.373
