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More "Indecorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dealing more or less with the same subject or class of subject. She had also in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on that perennial and somewhat facile source of laughter—the putting together of incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them are regarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself rather less than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of a generally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely to follow, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... indecorous haste, she went down into the drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... point of contact and resemblance—each was at times prodigiously inferior to himself. Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill. There are passages in his work in which he reaches such heights of literary art as since his time no mortal has found accessible; and there are passages which few or none of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the little girl down at Allington. She felt no anger against Crosbie. To be angry on such a subject would be futile, foolish, and almost indecorous. It was a part of the game which was as natural to her as fielding is to a cricketer. One cannot have it all winnings at any game. Whether Crosbie should eventually become her own son-in-law or not it came to her naturally, as a part of her duty in life, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... more solitary and alone, drooped its dispirited leaves. Amedee, in his confused childish desire for information, was just ready to ask why this sycamore looked so morose, when the door opened and M. Batifol appeared. The master of the school had a severe aspect, in spite of his almost indecorous name. He resembled a hippopotamus clothed in an ample black coat. He entered slowly and bowed in a dignified way to M. Violette, then seated himself in a leather armchair before his papers, and, taking off his velvet skull-cap, revealed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... we descended to the lower floor. As we entered the room, the stranger rose, and, glancing in an embarrassed way from one of us to the other, suddenly broke out into an undeniable snigger. I looked at him sternly, and Thorndyke, quite unmoved by his indecorous behaviour, said ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy,—is it Lucy, or Ruth?—that gathers wise sayings in ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... the left rein over her head, thus enabling himself to drive with his arm round her waist. She did not mind. Mr. Eager, who sat with his back to the horses, saw nothing of the indecorous proceeding, and continued his conversation with Lucy. The other two occupants of the carriage were old Mr. Emerson and Miss Lavish. For a dreadful thing had happened: Mr. Beebe, without consulting Mr. Eager, had doubled the size of ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... literature, as distinguished from anecdote, does not concern itself with superficial appearances alone. Literature is revelation. Modern literature is indecorous revelation. It is the duty of the earnest author to tell you what you would not have seen—even at the cost of some blushes. And the thing that you would not have seen about this young man, and the thing of the greatest moment to this story, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... satisfied him, but he took a candle, and saw my cheek was hurt: "How comes this wound?" said he. Though I did not consider myself as guilty of any great offence, yet I could not think of owning the truth. Besides, to make such an avowal to a husband, I considered as somewhat indecorous; I therefore said, "That as I was going, under his permission, to purchase some silk stuff, a porter, carrying a load of wood, came so near to me, in a narrow street, that one of the sticks grazed my cheek; but had not done me much ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... ashamed, a little shy, what with his gray hairs, his paternity, that there should still be a thrill in his heart, a sense of flight in him. At fifty-eight to feel like a schoolboy going home, it seemed—well, not indecent, indecorous. This thing of returning to Antrim had been a matter of pure reason, and then suddenly his heart ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... deal of trial, and the thunder of trouble has soured the milk of human kindness. When he gets criticising Dr. Butterfield's sermons and books, I have sometimes to pretend that I hear somebody at the front door, so that I can go out in the hall and have an uproarious laugh without being indecorous. It is one of the great amusements of my life to have on opposite sides of my tea-table Dr. Butterfield and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... beds, and the unfortunate inmates were obliged to take their rest on the oaken floor. The condition of the rooms was indescribably filthy and disgusting; nor were the habits of the occupants much more cleanly. In other respects, they were equally indecorous and offensive. "It is with no small concern," writes an anonymous historian of Newgate, "that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men not only in respect to their mode of living, but more especially as to their ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... democratic gentlemen were not less inflexible, and instructed their delegates to say to the president that they would make no other recommendation. On the third visit they were received by Mr. Randolph, secretary of state, to whom they made the communication, but who considered it indecorous, knowing the president's ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... of the two mules with side- saddles, dismissed one of the guides after a brief consultation, and helped Miss Denham to mount. In attending to these preliminaries Lynde had sufficient mastery over himself not to make any indecorous betrayal of his intense satisfaction at the turn affairs had taken. Fortune had given her into his hands for five hours! She should listen this time to what he had to say, though the mountain ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... harlequinade with the monarch as clown, and of tragic relief in the torture chamber with the monarch as pantomime demon committing real atrocities, not forgetting the indispensable love interest on an enormous and utterly indecorous scale. Catherine kept this vast Guignol Theatre open for nearly half a century, not as a Russian, but as a highly domesticated German lady whose household routine was not at all so unlike that of Queen Victoria as might be expected from the difference in their notions ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... lips, is depressing in the extreme. It may be injudicious, but it is certainly allowable, to look sad when the bank that holds our all suddenly falls; but for a woman to acknowledge in her face that the bank of her affections is broke is most indecorous, and shows a want of proper spirit and proper pride pitiful to witness. She may scream if she is pinched; but neither sign nor cry must show that her ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... observations and remarks. Some of these were disgusting enough; so much so, that I will not offend my readers by repeating them. Suffice it to say, that any individual possessing the slightest pretensions to the name of gentleman, in any hotel I had visited in England, on indulging in the indecorous language I heard at these places, would, by a very summary process, have met with ejectment, without ceremony. Here, however, a laxity of moral feeling prevails, that stifles all sense of propriety; and scurrility, obscene language, and filthy jests, of which the coloured population ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... done me in this." In short, Hume had only made a pretext of complying with the proposal, in order to have an opportunity of reviling the Judges to their faces, or giving them, in the phrase of his country, "a sloan." He was hurried off amid the laughter of the audience, but the indecorous scene which had taken place contributed to the abolition of the office of Dempster. The sentence is now read over by the clerk of court, and the formality of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... internal evidence of his letter written the following morning 'from the regions of hell, amid the horrors of the damned.' It would appear that the gentlemen left in the dining-room had got ingloriously drunk, and there and then proposed an indecorous raid on the drawing-room. Whatever it might be they did, it was Burns who was made to suffer the shame of the drunken plot. His letter of abject apology remained unanswered, and the estrangement was only embittered by some lampoons which he wrote afterwards ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... question the lawful endowment of the church, and he reproved his wife for being piqued at Mrs. Mellicent's blaming her passion for high-crowned hats, ruffs, and farthingales, which the sage spinster thought indecorous for yeomen's wives, though very suitable to Lady Waverly. He silenced the good dame's remarks on Mrs. Mellicent's interfering disposition, by reminding her of the value of that lady's green ointment, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... technical demerit. In every line of those leaden dolls is expressed the fact that they were not set up with any heat of natural enthusiasm for beauty or dignity. They were set up mechanically, because it would seem indecorous or stingy if they were not set up. They were even set up sulkily, in a utilitarian age which was haunted by the thought that there were a great many more sensible ways of spending money. So long as this is the dominant national sentiment, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Marocco, and actually desired him to adopt a different and a more parsimonious system, if he wished to be quiet; alleging, that his munificence exceeded that of his Imperial Majesty, which was highly indecorous; but afterwards finding little attention was paid to his injunction, he published a decree throughout the city, that any one that should be found asking for, or receiving money from Ali Bey, should have a very ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... return to his garret, Marius cast his eyes over his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the Luxembourg with his "every-day clothes," that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse carter's boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sturdy little steamer noses her way into some picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small boats are seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward her with almost indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me, and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch commences operations—and a sewing machine emerges de profundis. This is swung giddily ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... inhuman may be the superstition which brands such exaltations of natural passion as shameful and indecorous, there is at least as much common sense in disparaging love as in setting it up as a panacea. Even the mercy and loving-kindness of Shelley do not hold good as a universal law of conduct: Shelley himself ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... character of the room a man sits in insensibly affects his manner and his bearing, and that the habits which would not be deemed strange in the low-ceilinged chamber, with the sanded floor and the "mutton lights," would be totally indecorous in the richly-carpeted room, a blaze of wax-light, and glittering with decoration. Now this alternating between Club and Cafe spoils men utterly. It engenders the worst possible style—a ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Madame Cheron had been asked to meet him; and, when he looked at Emily, and considered that a time might come when the enmity of her uncle would be prejudicial to her, he determined not to incur it himself, by conduct which would be resented as indecorous, by the very persons who now showed so little ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the whole world, if it listed, might at least look on it and adore. At one time indeed she was rumoured to have personated the Goddess of Health, when the 'celestial' Doctor Graham was giving his strange and indecorous lectures in Pall Mall; but that scandal has been contradicted. Certain it is, however, that her witcheries effectually subjugated Romney and Hayley. The painter went fairly mad about her; could not see her often ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... slopes of the mountain, and the misshapen rock, gave one's thoughts a twist in the direction of the vague and mysterious. Wylo's continual harping on the wonderful stone renewed the old longing for adventure. He had seen it from a safe distance, but from the present aspect only the indecorous glint at ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of "Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already sew a fine seam ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... spinning away before us at a most indecorous pace for an invalid vehicle, and was making most irregular curves upon the sand. Mr. Slinkton, noticing it after he had put his handkerchief to ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... life, they differ in this from almost all other nations; that they do not permit their children to approach them openly until they are grown up so as to be able to bear the service of war; and they regard it as indecorous for a son of boyish age to stand in public in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... chair; spilled his sand-box; in mending his pens, impatiently split them all to pieces, and threw them on the floor in a sudden passion; stood up, and leaned over his table, boxing his papers about in a most indecorous manner, very sad to behold in an elderly man like him. Nevertheless, as he was in many ways a most valuable person to me, and all the time before twelve o'clock, meridian, was the quickest, steadiest creature, too, accomplishing a great deal of work in a style not easily to be matched—for these ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... I remember right, whose memories carried them back to a date earlier than the Revolution. M. Hugon had acted as acolyte at the consecration of M. de Talleyrand in the chapel of Issy in 1788. It seems that the attitude of the Abbe de Perigord during the ceremony was very indecorous. M. Hugon related that he accused himself, when at confession the following Saturday, "of having formed hasty judgments as to the piety of a holy bishop." The superior-general, M. Garnier, was more than eighty, and he was in every respect an ecclesiastic of the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... it at almost any hour of the day or night, and you will see many things that are new to you. Strange characters meet you at every step; even the shops have a Bohemian aspect, for trade is nowhere so much the victim of chance as here. You see no breach of the public peace, no indecorous act offends you; but the people you meet have a certain air of independence, of scorn, of conventionality, a certain carelessness which mark them as very different from the throng you have just left on Broadway. They puzzle you, and set you to conjecturing who they are and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... speak, anyhow, even if only to express the ideas of others. Suppose the governor comes and asks, "Why is it the judge stammers?" And they'd say, let's assume, "It's a paralytic stroke." "Then bleed him," he'd say. And it would be highly indecorous, in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... from his waistcoat pocket, and commenced a general kissing of the assembled females, which occasioned great commotion and much excitement. We observed that several young gentlemen—including the young gentleman with the pale countenance—were greatly scandalised at this indecorous proceeding, and talked very big among themselves in corners; and we observed too, that several young ladies when remonstrated with by the aforesaid young gentlemen, called each other to witness how they had ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... such humanity, delicacy, firmness, and justice in the form of man, as he crowded into this small space, was altogether new to her, and in the highest degree fascinating. She had a confused feeling as if there had been something indecorous in her behaviour or appearance, when Mr. Falkland had appeared to her relief; and this combined with her other emotions to render the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... parliament; and before its next meeting secured a majority by wholesale corruption, such as had been employed in England by Fox and Bute, and overthrew the power of the undertakers. His want of tact and his indecorous conduct rendered his victory fruitless, and he was recalled ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Nance Redferne were at the bottom of it. As to the portrait of Isole de Heton, it was found under the table, and it was said that Nicholas himself had pulled it down; but this he obstinately denied, when afterwards taken to task for his indecorous behaviour; and to his dying day he asserted, and believed, that he had danced the brawl with Isole de Heton. "And never," he would say, "had mortal ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the happy termination of the story. Nor may any deeply tragic incident take place in the course of the play; for death is never allowed to be represented on the stage. Indeed, nothing considered indecorous, whether of a serious or comic character, is allowed to be enacted in the sight or hearing of the spectators, such as the utterance of a curse, degradation, banishment, national calamity, biting, scratching, kissing, eating, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... his legs thrust into the armholes of a scarlet vest, another with a pair of spurs on his heels, and a third in a cocked hat and feather. In addition to these articles, they merely wore the ordinary costume of their race—a slip of native cloth about the loins. Indecorous as their behaviour was, these worthies turned out to be a deputation from the reverend the clergy of the island; and the object of their visit was to put our ship under a rigorous "Taboo," to prevent the disorderly scenes and facilities for desertion ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... blasphemous satire in A Tale of a Tub, published and misunderstood early in his career, critically affected, even by his own admission, his employment in the Church. It is this evil character of the author, the priest with an indecorous and politically suspect humor, that offended some contemporary readers. To them, the engraved frontispiece of Jonathan Smedley's scurrilous Gulliveriana (1728) is the proper image of the author of the Travels. It portrays Swift ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... her. Many a single woman whom she knew at home took a gentleman into the house as a roomer, and thereafter referred to him as "he" and spent hours airing the curtains of smoke and even, as "he" became a member of the family, in sewing on his buttons. There was nothing indecorous about such an arrangement; merely a concession to ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... coming here to impose upon your good uncle! You know that no one has been here—not a soul;—and as for yourself, you have been too busy looking after a certain gentleman ever to think of your poor uncle;—that you have;—taking advantage of his illness to behave in so indecorous a manner. I would have told him everything, but I was ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and publishing some of Zola's novels. Nana and L'Assommoir were indeed fatal books to him, as his imprisonment and ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... written of the reign of Tiberius. Each has mentioned many things omitted by the rest, (Lardner, part i. vol. ii. p. 743.) yet no objection is from thence taken to the respective credit of their histories. We have in our own times, if there were not something indecorous in the comparison, the life of an eminent person written by three of his friends, in which there is very great variety in the incidents selected by them; some apparent, and perhaps some real contradictions; yet without ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... atmosphere which we breathe and in which we move, social opinion operates powerfully without our being conscious of its weight. Everyone knows that governments, manners, and beliefs which were thought to be right, decorous, and true at one period have been judged wrong, indecorous, and false at another; and that views which we have heard expressed by those in authority over us in early life tend to become axiomatic and unchangeable in ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... "whatever your grievances—and I will inquire into it later—you have chosen a highly indecorous and, er, offensive way of obtruding it. At this moment, sir, we are going together to dine and to thank God for many mercies vouchsafed to us. If you have any sense of these you will stand aside now and follow us when we have passed. His lordship will read ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pick up the horrid thing, for fear the nice young man would feel obliged to do it for me; but, in my indecorous haste, I caught hold of the wrong end and emptied the entire contents on the stone flagging. Aunt Celia didn't notice; she had turned with the verger, lest she should miss a single word of his inspired testimony. So we scrambled up the articles together, the nice young ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shame! noble Lords! Is it with this irreverent glee, these scurvy flouts, and indecorous mockery, that you would have this stranger believe that we celebrate the ceremonies of our Father Rhine? Shame, I say; and silence! It is time that we should prove to him that we are not merely a boisterous and unruly party of swilling varlets, who leave their brains in their cups. It ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... bent her stately brows, and the twenty rosy lips were all tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the wicked courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the twenty lips broke into a smile,—but a smile so tortured, constrained, and nipped in the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the features ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is said. Ay, ay! they have not unfrequently opposed the keen sword to the savage pike. "But they are bigoted and narrow-minded." Ay, ay! they do not like idolatry, and will not bow the knee before a stone! "But their language is frequently indecorous." Go to, my dainty one, did ye ever listen to the voice ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sympathy for the Northern States of America, I turn in absolute disgust from their hypocrisy. If there is a sink of political iniquity, it is at Washington. They are corrupt; they are base; they are cowardly; they are cruel." This highly indecorous speech was made in the presence of members of the British Ministry. The Premier, Lord Palmerston, followed Mr. Roebuck on the floor, calling him his "honorable and learned friend," and offering neither ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... love, I reciprocate, I remain virtuous, my mind is superior, and my courage indomitable. I am philosopher, statesman, and writer, worthy of the highest success," is constantly in her mind, and always perceptible in her phraseology. Real modesty never shows itself. On the contrary, many indecorous things are said and done by her from bravado, and to set herself above her sex. Cf. the "Memoirs of Mirs. Hutchinson," which present a great contrast. Madame Roland wrote: "I see no part in society which suits me but that of Providence."—The same presumption shines out in others, with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little surprised at its contents; indeed, I thought so much about it that I revoked at Lady Betty Blabkin's whist-party, and lost four shillings and sixpence. You say that you have a child at your house belonging to your cousin, who married in so indecorous a manner. I hope what you say is true; but, at the same time, I know what bachelors are guilty of; although, as Lady Betty says, it is better never to talk or even to hint about these improper things. I cannot imagine why men should consider themselves, in an unmarried ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... were ready enough to make a Jingalese princess feel at home in their midst. But the whole thing, in view of its local color, was rather precipitate and indecorous; and when the Queen heard of it, and of its special application, from the old match-making Margravine with whom she had shared confidences, she was aghast. "Charlotte," she cried, "whatever did you do ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... is highly disorderly and indecorous. The court can take no cognizance of this sort of testimony. Do you desire to be heard by counsel? If you do, the judge-advocate will give you ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... for she had felt strongly drawn towards her uncle as her kindest friend, and the sense of his loss renewed the old sorrow she had experienced at her own parents' death. But she had no time and no place to cry in. On her devolved many of the cares, which it would have seemed indecorous in the nearer relatives to interest themselves in enough to take an active part: the change required in their dress, the household preparations for the sad feast of the funeral—Lois had to arrange all under ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was no medium in them; they were either very indecorous or very expensive. I have been positively assured that eighteen francs were paid for what was called a parish-funeral, and not unfrequently a quarrel arose between the agent of the rector and the relations ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... industry and thrift, therefore, are not uniformly furthered by a prevailing pecuniary emulation. On the contrary, this kind of emulation indirectly discountenances participation in productive labour. Labour would unavoidably become dishonourable, as being an evidence indecorous under the ancient tradition handed down from an earlier cultural stage. The ancient tradition of the predatory culture is that productive effort is to be shunned as being unworthy of able-bodied men, and this tradition is reinforced rather than ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... can you!" exclaimed the lady, overcome with horror. "Rouge! What are you saying, and what are young girls coming to! At your age, I'd never heard the word, no, indeed. And, besides, my love, it is indecorous of you to address me as 'Lydia.' I am ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... must end. Madam's love-bound pupils must be separated. The adieus must be spoken, but there must be no tears; that were a weak and indecorous manifestation of feeling, in madam's estimation. Blandly bowing her stately head, and kindly congratulating each upon having "finished," and finished well, madam gracefully waved them out of her presence, into the future, with a gentle motion ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Greeks, dancers were had in at dinner to make merry; for although the upper-class Egyptian was forbidden to practice the art, either as an accomplishment or for the satisfaction of his emotional nature, it was not considered indecorous to hire professionals to perform before him and his female and young. The she dancer usually habited herself in a loose, flowing robe, falling to the ankles and bound at the waist, while about the hips was fastened a narrow, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... blaze, Peng skipped derisively, jeered at them, performed a brief but indecorous pantomime, and then, kicking up his heels with ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... notice of a serious chronicler, should be received with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated, took his leave of the Presidio and hurried ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dining-room in England is ever considered to be complete. Everything spoke at once the stereotyped Society style of a dozen years ago (before Mr. Morris had reformed the outer aspect of the West End), entirely free from anything so startling or indecorous as a gleam of spontaneity in the possessor's mind. To be sure, it was very far indeed from the centre round-table and brilliant-flowered-table-cover style of the utter unregenerate Philistine household; but it was further still from the simple natural ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... up, or he would have been there. He is a little rascal. It was a relief to me to have Perdita live up to her name and reputation, though," said Hannah. "I heard about her all summer as a little mischief, and I never saw her do an indecorous thing. I didn't ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... expression of opinion and a fair decision of the questions discussed. Without rules of order this object would, in most cases, be utterly defeated; for there would be no uniformity in the modes of proceeding, no restraint upon indecorous or disorderly conduct, no protection to the rights and privileges of members, no guarantee against the caprices and usurpations of the presiding officer, no safeguard against tyrannical majorities, nor any suitable regard to ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... travelling suits, and come out of this baptism unharmed. The incident nearly suffocates the company, for there is not a soul among them who would not sooner suffer the pangs of dissolution than laugh outright. As for me, I am nearly expiring with the merriment that consumes me and my efforts to prevent indecorous explosion. The young woman, after having wiped me dry, once more presents the cream-jug, this time with both hands, but I can only murmur faintly in my trouble, "Thanks, no—no more cream." This appears to be quite too much for the young person, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... pure and delicate countenance was fortunately not yet disfigured by paint. This child, as well as the others, was dressed in the same way as the women; and I remarked that the Persian dress was really, as I had been told, rather indecorous. The corset fell back at every quick movement; the silk or gauze chemise, which scarcely reached over the breast, dragged up so high that the whole body might be seen as far as the loins. I observed the same with the female servants, who were engaged in making tea ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Christian miracles is the fruit of a wicked heart and of a soul enslaved to sin. Thus do estimable and well-meaning men, deceived and deceiving one another, utter base slander in open church, where it is indecorous to reply to them,—and think that they are ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... her in his arms directly. It might be that Mr Tappertit's heart was really softened by her distress, or it might be that he felt it in some degree indecorous that his intended bride should be struggling in the grasp of another man. He commanded him, on second thoughts, to put her down again, and looked moodily on as she flew to Miss Haredale's side, and clinging to her dress, hid her flushed ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... absurd, although it is not surprising that an article coming into their hands, the use of which they have no idea of, should be appropriated to that use which they consider it best adapted to. On the occasion of a dinner given to us by the sultan of Bruni, the whole party were seized with a fit of very indecorous and immoderate laughter, by finding the centre dish, which was a curry, served up in a capacious vessel, which in Europe is only to be found under a bed. The curry, nevertheless, was excellent; and what matter did it make? "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... Romanticism had made such good use at its best. But what it exaggerated most of all was the Romantic neglect of classical decorum, in the wider as well as the narrower sense of that word. Classicism had said, "Keep everything indecorous out." Naturalism seemed sometimes to say, "Let nothing that is not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... a bride. Nonnius (bk. xii.) tells us that virtuous women wore a girdled gown called Saophron ("chaste"), to indicate their purity and to prevent indecorous liberties. The gown was not yellow at all, but it was girded ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to be stationed on the stage, and play upon the audience, in case of any indication of misplaced applause or popular discontent (which accounts for the large space between the curtain and the lamps); and the public will participate our satisfaction in learning that the indecorous custom of standing up with the hat on is to be abolished, as the Bow-street officers are provided with daggers, and have orders to stab all such persons to the heart, and send their bodies to Surgeons' ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... among the women alone. I was then called in, with my uncle, to go through the ceremony, and strict injunctions were made me not to laugh, nor even to smile, while it lasted; for ill luck would attend the marriage if anything so indecorous took ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the man increased the contempt which was produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The indecorous gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone sufficient to disgust a people whose manners were beginning to be strongly tinctured with austerity. But these were trifles. Crimes of the most frightful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... finely studied from the domestic interior. How far the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are to be ascribed to him is doubtful; it is certain that these licentious tales reproduce, with a new skill in narrative prose, the spirit of indecorous mirth in their Italian models. The Petit Jehan de Saintre is certainly the work of Antoine de la Salle; the irony of a realist, endowed with subtlety and grace, conducts the reader through chivalric exaltations to vulgar disillusion. The writer was not insensible to the charm of the ideals of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... was in a sad perplexity at her father's offer. She pleaded her youth unsuitable to marriage, the recent death of Tybalt, which had left her spirits too weak to meet a husband with any face of joy, and how indecorous it would show for the family of the Capulets to be celebrating a nuptial feast, when his funeral solemnities were hardly over: she pleaded every reason against the match, but the true one, namely, that she was married already. But Lord Capulet was deaf to all her excuses, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... found wings in a moment, and flew through all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how Lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in Europe, came to bestow indecorous looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of St. James's and Windsor, while Hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies' feet ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... did,—and yet I should! If no man is ever bold enough to protest again the voluntary and fast-increasing self- degradation of women, then men will be most to blame if the next generation of wives and mothers are shameless, unsexed, indecorous, and wholly unworthy of their life's mission. How angry she looked! Possibly she will never speak to me again. Well, what does it matter! The wider apart our paths ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... among us, in comparison with France or Germany, a defective reverence for the State as such; and a positive irreverence towards the laws of the Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a Christian nation, ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... his first blow there burst out in the hall the wild, indecorous strains of "Kuk-kuk kuk-Katie," pealing out louder and ever louder as the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... occasion in their prologues to lecture the audience upon their conduct in the theatre, exhorting them to more seemly manners, and especially informing them that nothing of an indecorous nature would be presented upon the scene. The prologue to "The Woman Hater," above mentioned, pronounces "to the utter discomfort of all twopenny gallery men," that there is no impropriety contained in the play, and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... receiving the delights which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story, the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?" They may have been so, though we do not believe they were. But the question is, are Shakspeare's Plays, beyond all that ever were written, distinguished for those very excellences, and free from almost all those very defects? That they are, few if any will now dare to deny. While ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... that a feast was in preparation. I supposed so only, for it would have been indecorous to enquire into the meaning of what I saw. No person, among the Indians themselves, would use this freedom. Good breeding requires that the spectator should patiently wait ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... wife and my prayer-book to the Episcopal Church on Christmas-day. Dickens converted me to its observance ten years or more ago. But none are so sound as those who are tinged with heresy. And am I not a "blue Presbyterian?" It would not do to lend my countenance too readily to indecorous invasions of the sanctuary with festivals borrowed from the Roman Catholics. Besides, what would the elders say? I asked Miss ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... over! More indecorous whispering and thronging; and the procession came down the aisle, to be greeted outside by a hail of confetti and rice; the schoolboys, profiting by the dinner interval, and headed by Adrian, had jostled themselves into the foreground, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the outlaw, with a laugh of scorn; "even Injuns don't kill their own children." And taking advantage of her terror, he beckoned to the Piankeshaw, who, as well as all the other Indians, seemed greatly astounded and scandalised at the indecorous interference of a female in the affairs of warriors, to remove the prisoner; which he did by immediately beginning to drag him down the hill. The action was not unobserved by the girl, whose struggles to escape from her father's arms, to pursue, as it seemed, after the soldier, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... genetrix (which I had seen before at Paris); the Venus victrix; the Venus Anadyomene; Hercules and Nessus, a superb groupe; a young Bacchus; and an exquisitely chiselled group representing Pan teaching Olympus to play the syrinx, tho' the attitude of the former is rather indecorous from not being in a very quiescent state; a fine statue of Leda with the swan; a Mercury, both worthy of great attention. I remarked also in particular a statue of Marsyas attached to a tree and flayed. It is of a pale reddish marble, and tho' I perfectly agree with Forsyth, that ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... From puppyhood upwards they had been taught to walk on their hind-legs, and maintain their footing with surprising ease in that unnatural position. They had likewise been drilled into the best possible behaviour towards each other; no snarling, barking, or indecorous conduct took place when they were assembled in company. But what was most surprising of all, they were able to perform in various theatrical pieces of the character of pantomimes, representing various transactions in heroic and familiar life, with wonderful fidelity. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... his crying and calling. I presume he was noisy in his eagerness after his vanished vision, and the multitude considered it indecorous. Or perhaps the rebuke arose from that common resentment of a crowd against any one who makes himself what they consider unreasonably conspicuous, claiming a share in the attention of the potentate to which they cannot themselves pretend. ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... the noiseless tenor of our way, finding in life if not great and gaudy pleasures, at least content and relief from many of the vexations that gnaw away the lives of the multitude. Though it was acknowledged a long time ago to be—indecorous—an abominable thing for a man to commend his ways; though his mode of living may not commend itself to others; though it may seem blank and colourless, thin and watery, devoid of expectation, and the hope of fame, name, and that kind of success which comes of the acquirement of riches, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... his chair, his hands clasped under his head, watching her. It gave him the strangest sensation to see his mother kneeling before him thus. At first it shocked him almost to the point of heated protest, as against a thing unpermissible and indecorous. Then the devils of wounded pride, of anarchy, and of revolt asserting themselves, he began to relish, to be appeased by, the unseemly sight. Little Lady Constance Quayle, and all that of which she was the symbol, had disappointed and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... this decision were many. In the first place, it was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such neglect the rules which had been approved by our Royal Patron. In the next place, the medals themselves became almost worthless from this original taint: and they ceased to excite "competition amongst ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... no curtains to the window, and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied, and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and of singular worth and eminence in all the learned professions." This eulogy has perhaps the ring of a time when rank and quality were made more of than they are now made, but it is quoted as an illustration of the change of feeling which would make it now impossible or indecorous to praise a bishop because he got on well with great people: allowance must be made for the difference between the ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... Mr. Parker felt himself called upon to write and print his "Reminiscences." He has done himself no credit whatever; but that is comparatively a small matter. The book is in every way an injurious and indecorous one. And if he really respects the fame of the distinguished man whom he has attempted to describe, he must agree with us in the hope that his own work may be forgotten as soon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to the funeral, talking by himself, and now and then laughing. Gentleman Bill thought his conduct indecorous, and reproved ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... nine young men out of ten so situated would have done; he walked up to the mantelpiece, established himself upon the rug, and subducting his coat-tails one under each arm, turned towards the fire that portion of the human frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present to a friend or an enemy. A serious, not to say anxious, expression was visible upon his good-humored countenance, and his mouth was fast buttoning itself up for an incipient whistle, when little Flo, a tiny spaniel of the Blenheim ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... they danced—up to the northward, all men making way for them as, with hand-bag and umbrella flying in her left hand, she was dragged forward on an indecorous run by Phoebe, who held her tightly by ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... difficult to make them forget their surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he—poor mite—fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that everybody is ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... up the horrid thing, for fear the nice young man would feel obliged to do it for me; but, in my indecorous haste, I caught hold of the wrong end, and emptied the entire contents on the stone flagging. Aunt Celia didn't notice; she had turned with the verger, lest she should miss a single word of his inspired ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... homecoming, and so wisely superintended his complete reinstatement in the good graces of Beulah village. A few maiden ladies felt that he had been a trifle immodest in embracing, and especially in kissing, his father in front of the congregation; venturing the conviction that kissing, an indecorous custom in any event, was ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Griffenbottom snarled at him, and expressed an opinion that Sir Thomas would of course do the same as any other gentleman. Mr. Trigger, with much dignity in his mien as he spoke, declared that the discussion of any such matter at the present moment was indecorous. Mr. Pile was for sending Sir Thomas back to town, and very strongly advocated that measure. Mr. Spicer, as to whom there was a story abroad in the borough in respect of a large order for mustard, supposed to have reached him from New ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Shame! shame! noble Lords! Is it with this irreverent glee, these scurvy flouts, and indecorous mockery, that you would have this stranger believe that we celebrate the ceremonies of our Father Rhine? Shame, I say; and silence! It is time that we should prove to him that we are not merely a boisterous and unruly party ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... danced—up to the northward, all men making way for them as, with hand-bag and umbrella flying in her left hand, she was dragged forward on an indecorous run by Phoebe, who held ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of the day or night, and you will see many things that are new to you. Strange characters meet you at every step; even the shops have a Bohemian aspect, for trade is nowhere so much the victim of chance as here. You see no breach of the public peace, no indecorous act offends you; but the people you meet have a certain air of independence, of scorn, of conventionality, a certain carelessness which mark them as very different from the throng you have just left on Broadway. They puzzle you, and set you to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... is believed that this story contains no indecorous stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences. In this the writer believes that he ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... candle, and saw my cheek was hurt: "How comes this wound?" said he. Though I did not consider myself as guilty of any great offence, yet I could not think of owning the truth. Besides, to make such an avowal to a husband, I considered as somewhat indecorous; I therefore said, "That as I was going, under his permission, to purchase some silk stuff, a porter, carrying a load of wood, came so near to me, in a narrow street, that one of the sticks grazed my cheek; but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... here in a most pleasant country, full of walks, and idle to our heart's desire. Taylor has dropped the "London." It was indeed a dead weight. It had got in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand, like Christian, with light and merry shoulders. It had got silly, indecorous, pert, and everything that is bad. Both our kind remembrances to Mrs. K. and yourself, and strangers'-greeting to Lucy,—is it Lucy, or Ruth?—that gathers ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... declaration so often emphatically enunciated from the pulpit, that unbelief in the Christian miracles is the fruit of a wicked heart and of a soul enslaved to sin. Thus do estimable and well-meaning men, deceived and deceiving one another, utter base slander in open church, where it is indecorous to reply to them,—and think that they are bravely ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... assembled females, which occasioned great commotion and much excitement. We observed that several young gentlemen—including the young gentleman with the pale countenance—were greatly scandalised at this indecorous proceeding, and talked very big among themselves in corners; and we observed too, that several young ladies when remonstrated with by the aforesaid young gentlemen, called each other to witness how they had struggled, and protested vehemently that it was very ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... fanaticism or of hypocrisy, this rude and slovenly conduct had come, he said, to a great height, and brought great scandal upon our worship. The essayists of Queen Anne's reign made a steady and laudable effort to shame people out of these indecorous ways. The 'Spectator' constantly recurs to the subject. At one time it is the Starer who comes in for his reprobation. The Starer posts himself upon a hassock, and from this point of eminence impertinently scrutinises the congregation, and ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... necessary to dispute the apparently serious propositions or assertions of Mr. Whistler. How far the witty tongue may be thrust into the smiling cheek when the lecturer pauses to take breath between these remarkably brief paragraphs it would be certainly indecorous and possibly superfluous to inquire. But his theorem is unquestionably calculated to provoke the loudest and the heartiest mirth that ever acclaimed the advent of Momus or Erycina. For it is this—that [38]"Art ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... attestation of my rectitude and truth. Whatever be the language in which that sentence be spoken, I know that my fate will meet with sympathy, and that my memory will be honoured. In speaking thus, accuse me not, my lords, of an indecorous presumption. To the efforts I have made in a just and noble cause, I ascribe no vain importance—nor do I claim for those efforts any high reward. But it so happens, and it will ever happen so, that they ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... surroundings then, and more desirable to give them a happy lead. Often at the funniest point you will see some small listener in an agony of endeavour to cloak the mirth which he—poor mite—fears to be indecorous. Let him see that it is "the thing" to laugh, and that everybody ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... little steamer noses her way into some picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small boats are seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward her with almost indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me, and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch commences ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... day about mid-year in 1855, the conventional literary world was startled into indecorous behavior by the unannounced appearance of a thin quarto sheaf of poems, in form and in tone unlike anything of precedent issue. It was called Leaves of Grass, and there were but twelve poems in the volume. No author's name appeared upon the title page, the separate poems bore no captions, ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... time or in some part of the world belonged to the opposite sex, and with the most excellent results. We regard it as alone right and proper for a man to take the initiative in courtship, yet among the Papuans of New Guinea a man would think it indecorous and ridiculous to court a girl; it was the girl's privilege to take the initiative in this matter, and she exercised it with delicacy and skill and the best moral results, until the shocked missionaries upset the native system and unintentionally introduced looser ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... with no indecorous haste, she went down into the drawing-room to receive Rowcliffe. She was the eldest and it was ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... a new kind of training came into fashion. Another government arose which, like the former, considered religion as its surest basis, and the religious discipline of the people as its first duty. Sanguinary laws were enacted against libertinism; profane pictures were burned; drapery was put on indecorous statues; the theatres were shut up; fast-days were numerous; and the Parliament resolved that no person should be admitted into any public employment, unless the House should be first satisfied of his vital godliness. We know what was the end of this training. We know that it ended in impiety ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the domestic interior. How far the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are to be ascribed to him is doubtful; it is certain that these licentious tales reproduce, with a new skill in narrative prose, the spirit of indecorous mirth in their Italian models. The Petit Jehan de Saintre is certainly the work of Antoine de la Salle; the irony of a realist, endowed with subtlety and grace, conducts the reader through chivalric exaltations to vulgar disillusion. The writer was ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... I was not dragged far, but was literally kicked free from and by, the frightened and uncontrolled animal. The continual kickings I received—some on my legs and body, but mostly upon that portion of the frame which it is considered equally indecorous to present either to a friend or an enemy—at length bent one or two of the nail-heads which held me, and, tearing the upper leather off my boot, which fortunately was old, ripped it off, leaving me at length free. As I lay on my excoriated back, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... jays, kingfishers, goldfinches—which are, taken absolutely, extremely brilliant in colouring. Yet they do not jar, are not obtrusive. So it was with her. Her dress was, perhaps, taken absolutely, indecorous. Upon her it looked at once seemly and beautiful. Upon Bessie Prawle it would have been glaring; but one had to dissect it before one could discover any fault with it upon its wearer. She was very pale, even to the lips, which were full and parted, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the trumpet's call to horse; and his dishevelled grey locks and half-arranged dress, though they showed zeal and haste, such as he would have used when Charles I. called him to attend a council of war, seemed rather indecorous in a pacific drawing-room. He paused at the door of the cabinet, but when the King called on him to advance, came hastily forward, with every feeling of his earlier and later life afloat, and contending ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... of Brazil, according to Tocantins (quoted by Mantegazza), are completely naked, but they are careful to avoid any postures which might be considered indecorous, and they do this so skilfully that it is impossible to tell when they have their menstrual periods. (Mantegazza, Fisiologia della Donna, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... homely object, in the midst of the savage prairies, was as ludicrous as unexpected; and we might have hailed it with roars of laughter, had prudence permitted such an indecorous exhibition. As it was, my companion chuckled so loudly, that I was compelled to caution him. Whether my caution came too late, and that the laughter was heard, we could not tell; but at that moment the tall pedestrian looked back, and we saw that he had discovered us. Making a rapid sign to his ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... said openly that he would like to walk out of his pulpit when the obnoxious and hated flutes, violins, bass-viols, and bassoons were played upon in the singing gallery. One clergyman contemptuously announced "We will now sing and fiddle the forty-fifth Psalm." Another complained of the indecorous dress of the fiddle-player. This had reference to the almost universal custom, in country churches in the summer time, of the bass-viol player removing his coat and playing "in his shirt sleeves." Others hated the noisy tuning of the bass-viol while the psalm was being read. Mr. Brown, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... sheer gladness of heart; and never was such a buzz of happy young people, not even at a Sunday-school treat. To me it seemed absolutely Arcadian, and I thought of Daphnis and Chloe and the early world. Nothing indecorous or gross; all ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... perfect it was necessary to be like himself. Here is the source of all his erroneous reasoning upon nature— the foundation of his ideas upon his gods. He has therefore concluded, perhaps not with the most polished wisdom, that it would be indecorous in himself, injurious to the Divinity, not to invest him with a quality which is found estimable in man—which he prizes highly—to which he attaches the idea of perfection—which he considers as a manifest proof of superiority. He sees his fellow-creature ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... comes upon a capital point of contact and resemblance—each was at times prodigiously inferior to himself. Shakespeare often writes so ill that you hesitate to believe he could ever write supremely well; or, if this way of putting it seem indecorous and abominable, he very often writes so well that you are loth to believe he could ever have written thus extremely ill. There are passages in his work in which he reaches such heights of literary art as since ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... offensive and inhuman may be the superstition which brands such exaltations of natural passion as shameful and indecorous, there is at least as much common sense in disparaging love as in setting it up as a panacea. Even the mercy and loving-kindness of Shelley do not hold good as a universal law of conduct: Shelley himself makes extremely short work of Jupiter, just as Siegfried ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... events where what natural wickedness might be in them, was suppressed by the sternness of her rule. Were he to leave her fold—for a fold in very truth, and not a sty, it appeared to her—and wander away to Jock Thamson's or Jeemie Deuk's, he would be drawn into loud and indecorous talk, probably ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... partners had been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival, gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities. It was evident that Kory-Kory considered this an all-sufficient reason for so indecorous a custom; but I must say that it did not satisfy me as ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... lieutenant in his confinement from a wound received in her service was perfectly proper, both in the design itself, and in all the circumstances of its execution. The latter represent it as an instance of highly indecorous eagerness on the part of a married lady to express to another man a sympathy and kind regard which she had ceased to ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... for some people represented the whole man since the allegedly blasphemous satire in A Tale of a Tub, published and misunderstood early in his career, critically affected, even by his own admission, his employment in the Church. It is this evil character of the author, the priest with an indecorous and politically suspect humor, that offended some contemporary readers. To them, the engraved frontispiece of Jonathan Smedley's scurrilous Gulliveriana (1728) is the proper image of the author of the Travels. It portrays ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... even if only to express the ideas of others. Suppose the governor comes and asks, "Why is it the judge stammers?" And they'd say, let's assume, "It's a paralytic stroke." "Then bleed him," he'd say. And it would be highly indecorous, in ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on that perennial and somewhat facile source of laughter—the putting together of incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them are regarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself rather less than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of a generally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely to follow, and her satire ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to her or to himself that his hopes ran with hers; love is not business with a man as it is with a woman; he feels it indecorous and indelicate to count upon it openly, where she thinks it simply a chance of life, to be considered like another. All that Kenton would say was, "I see no reason for telling her just yet. She will have to know in due time. But let ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... less inflexible, and instructed their delegates to say to the president that they would make no other recommendation. On the third visit they were received by Mr. Randolph, secretary of state, to whom they made the communication, but who considered it indecorous, knowing the president's ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... or Germany, a defective reverence for the State as such; and a positive irreverence towards the laws of the Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a Christian nation, not merely because ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... palace was entirely unfurnished with anything having the slightest pretension to the dignity of chimney tops; and the savory vapors which were wont to rise from the hospitable hearth, at which the queen or princess prepared the feast with the whitest of hands, escaped with indecorous facility through a simple hole in the flat roof. The dignity of smoke, however, is now better understood, and it is dismissed through Gothic pinnacles, and (as at Burleigh House) through Tuscan columns, with a most praiseworthy regard ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... financial interest is the business for which they are paid. Making due allowance for party prejudices, you may guess at the truth in most of our American journals, but it would be a waste of time to search for it in the newspapers published on this side of the water. While they studiously refrain from indecorous language, they are corrupt and unreliable beyond any thing known in California, and have not even the merit of being energetic and entertaining liars. This is the case in Russia and Finland as well ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... her and turned round. Never had she been much more amazed in her life. Her maid, her well-bred Jane Cupp, who had not drawn an indecorous breath since assuming her duties, was running after her calling out to her, waving her hands, her face distorted, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that puts the mind "upon the Stretch" as in Lady Macbeth's apostrophe to night; and by his praise of the simplicity of Desdemona's "Mine eyes do itch." Both passages were usually ridiculed by Purney's contemporaries as indecorous. ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... would have become his wife had not King George III. soon afterwards sought the hand of the Princess's younger sister in marriage, when it was considered necessary to break off the match, partly for political reasons, and partly because 'it was deemed indecorous that the elder sister should be the subject of the younger.' This was a great disappointment to both the Duke and the Princess, who evinced the strength of their affection by remaining single during their lives. George ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... close of the services the people hurried out with indecorous confusion, eager to communicate their pent-up amazement, and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil. Some gathered in little circles, huddled closely together, with their mouths all whispering in the centre; some went homeward alone, wrapped in silent ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but a rout. Everyone was running back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... any trouble to inquire into the nature of those proofs which Lucy Munro had assured him were in her possession; but satisfied as much by his own hope as by her assurance, that all would be as he wished it, he had been elevated to a pitch of almost indecorous joy which strongly contrasted with his present depression. He had little now to say in the way of consolation, and that little was coupled with so much that was unjust to the maiden, as to call forth, at length, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... diet had yet well opened its proceedings—"tramp, tramp, across the land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with devastation dire to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... in their own industry. I am sure that when an Englishman in the same trade and of the same standing gets married, the last thing that would be mentioned at his wedding would be hats. It would be considered in the highest degree indecorous. But the German is still guileless enough to be satisfied with his station in life when it is sufficiently honourable and prosperous, and for this wedding two little nieces had prepared this card of samples and composed a rhyme for ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... 1810, congress approved the course of the executive, declared the official communications of Mr. Jackson highly indecorous and insolent, and passed a new act of non-intercourse. This provided that if either France or England repealed her hostile decree, and the other did not within three months do likewise, then intercourse should be resumed with the one, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... seen in its effects. When the orator sat down, all, or nearly all in the house, both members, peers, and strangers, joined in a tumult of applause, and clapped their hands as though they were in a theatre. This was exceedingly irregular and indecorous, but it shows that Sheridan had enlisted the feelings of his audience on his side. So manifest were the effects which it produced, that Sir William Dolben, a friend of Hastings, foreseeing a conviction if the house divided in the midst of such excitement, moved that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a most formidable sheet, without gilt or black edging, and consequently very vulgar and indecorous, particularly to one of your precision; but this being Sunday, I can procure no better, and will atone for its length by not filling it. Bland I have not seen since my last letter; but on Tuesday he dines ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... white bubble of Valerie's parasol slanting against the sun. Yet there was a dullness in his excitement. It was over, at all events. He was sure that the last die was cast. And his own trivial and somewhat indecorous part, of shifter of scenes and puller of strings, was, he felt sure, a thing put by forever. He could help her no longer. And in a sort of apathy, he sat out there in the sunny green, hardly thinking, hardly wondering, conscious only of a hope that had become a mere ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... order that the day follows the night. Among the other usages of their life, they differ in this from almost all other nations; that they do not permit their children to approach them openly until they are grown up so as to be able to bear the service of war; and they regard it as indecorous for a son of boyish age to stand in public in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... when he comes home after an absence and finds his study has been tidied, which in the feminine mind means putting things in order, and to the bookman general anarchy (it was the real reason Eve was put out of Eden), when he comes home, I say, and finds that happy but indecorous rascal Boccaccio, holding his very sides for laughter, between Lecky's History of European Morals and Law's Serious Call, both admirable books, then the bookman is much exhilarated. Because of the mischief ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... the report made to it by the fiscal, and considering the disrespectful and indecorous character of the attorney-general's communication, and that it was entirely directed against the reputation and equitable procedure of the supreme tribunal and its ministers, issued a royal decree that the archbishop should punish his attorney-general, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... of these. It was the disease of the age. It is a remarkable fact that Luther and Melancthon, the great religious reformers of that day, should have strongly recommended for the education of children, dramas, which at present would be considered highly indecorous, if not bordering on a deeper sin. From one which they particularly recommended, I will give a few extracts; more I should not think it right to do. The play ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... lunch-table, the antagonism natural between a hot-blooded impetuous boy and a grandmother such as Mrs. de Tracy became rather painfully apparent. He had already been hauled over the coals for his arrival on Sunday and his indecorous appearance in church after ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... morning or noontide baiting-place, and after mustering in the common room of the inn, the first thing to be done was to appoint a chairman, who mostly retained his post of honour during the journey. At the breakfast or dinner there was none of that indecorous hurry in eating and drinking which marks our degenerate days. Had the travellers affected such thin potations as tea and soup, there was ample time for them to cool. But they preferred the sirloin and the tankard; and that no feature of a generous reception might be wanting, the landlord would ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... out before the two boys, who listened very demurely, as to ordinary newspaper incident; only when the report particularized the garments damaged, and the unwonted distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his bed, indecorous fit of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton Thompson, and Richard bit his lip and burst into loud laughter, Ripton joining him, lost ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... course!" answered Mother Ada. "It would be most highly indecorous for us to see Him ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... cannot treat them with too great severity. Your language, your looks, your attitude, should repel them from or command a respectful fear in your presence. Do not fear to wound their feelings, or to be impolite, or indecorous in their regard. An obstinate reserve, a severe demeanor, is all that you owe them. Treating them with that courtesy due to gentlemen would prove noxious to you, as they would not fail to make of ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... supplement, declares that no man doubted of the existence of this rebellion, and of the guilt of the Begums, any more than of the rebellion of 1745: a comparison which, I must say, is, by way of evidence, a little indecorous in a chief-justice of India. Your Lordships are sufficiently acquainted with the history of that rebellion to know, that, when Lord Lovat was tried at this bar, the proceedings against him were not founded on second-hand ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... me again and again, to express a satisfaction in meeting me once more in this social way, that she would have thought it indecorous to express by words. I thanked her exactly in the same language ; and, without a syllable being uttered, she said, "I rejoice you are no longer a courtier!" and I answered, "I love you dearly for preferring me in my old ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human,—an uninspired production,—the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous levity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a large class of very respectable persons. It is the only method in which we can possibly make this work a proper object of criticism. We have the strongest possible doubts of the attributes usually ascribed ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the first who undertook to preach the Protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was surprised, on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet, or mail-glove, hanging above the altar. Upon inquiring the meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed by the clerk, that the glove was that of a famous swordsman who hung it there as an emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle, to any who should dare ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Socrates, on subjects the same as you did here—that virtue and justice, legal institutions and laws, should be most highly valued by men? And do you not think that this conduct of Socrates would be very indecorous? You must think so. But you will keep clear of these places, and go to Thessaly, to Crito's friends, for there are the greatest disorder and licentiousness; and perhaps they will gladly hear you relating how drolly you escaped from prison, clad in some dress or covered with a skin, or ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... behaved with as much propriety as if they had possessed the whitest of cuticles, being quiet, serious, and attentive; nor did I detect anything indecorous on the part of the spectators, beyond an occasional smile or whisper by the younger negroes, whose soft-skinned, dusky faces and white eyeballs glanced upward at the six couples with admiring curiosity, and at us, visitors, with that appealing glance peculiar to the negro—always, to my thinking, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in all the learned professions." This eulogy has perhaps the ring of a time when rank and quality were made more of than they are now made, but it is quoted as an illustration of the change of feeling which would make it now impossible or indecorous to praise a bishop because he got on well with great people: allowance must be made for the difference between the seventeenth ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... united with Abdel Kader against the French, and four districts had elected the Emir for their chief. Called on Hateetah. Whilst there, an old lady of eighty years of age came in and got up to dance before me in the indecorous Barbary style, and then begged money. Seeing she had outlived her wits and took a great fancy for one of my buttons, I cut it off and gave it her to the annoyance of Hateetah, the Consul scolding me ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... that it would be unseemly for her to go out alone in Marlingate after dark. Though she would have walked out on the Brodnyx road at midnight without putting the slightest strain on either her courage or her decorum, the well-lighted streets of a town became to her vaguely dangerous and indecorous after dusk had fallen. "It wouldn't be seemly," she repeated to herself in the loneliness and dullness of the lounge, and went desperately ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... age, whose mind behind the dreamy eyes seemed eternally occupied with larger matters than the administration and disposal of human property. He remembered Adelle, or professed to, and gave her a kindly old man's smile when he shook hands with her, in spite of all the reclame of her indecorous return to her native land. He said nothing of that, however, but refreshed his memory by consulting a little book where he entered all sorts of curious items not strictly legal that occurred to him in ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... it indecorous to offend needlessly the religious ideas of the times, and, indeed, they admitted that there might be created gods like those of Plato; but they disapproved of the adoration of images and the use of temples, making amends for their offences in these particulars ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... trying to make me out. Gershom, who'd just got back with the children and was unhitching Calamity Kate, retreated with his eyebrows up, toward the stable. And on the youthful face of Pauline Augusta I saw nothing but pained incredulity touched with reproof, for Poppsy is not a believer in the indecorous. She has herself staidly intimated that she'd prefer the rest of the family to address her as "Pauline Augusta" instead of "Poppsy" which still so unwittingly creeps into our talk. So hereafter we must be more careful. For Pauline Augusta can already ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... thought," is the comment of Larousse, "that, with the fever of the wine abated, these happenings and the recollection of the indecorous words accompanying them would, by the next ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... adversaries, they deliver many more words than blows. Their defensive weapons—and this is characteristic—are greatly superior to their arms of offence; and death is an unusual, unforeseen and almost indecorous event which throws the ranks into disorder and most often puts a stop to the combat or provokes a headlong flight that seems quite natural. As for the wounds, these are enumerated and described, sung and deplored ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... us—picked men. I'm goin' this afternoon to see an old friend—Joe Benavides—and have him make all arrangements and be all ready to start whenever we get back, without any delay. I won't take the sheriff, because we might have negotiations to transact that would be highly indecorous in a sheriff. But he's to share my share, because he put up a lot more money for the mine to-day. I sent it on to Yuma, where an old friend of mine and the sheriff's is to buy a six-horse load of supplies and carry 'em down to ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... dramatist, born in London, where he was afterwards City Chronicler, married Mary Morbeck, and died; was fond of collaboration, and received assistance in his best work from Drayton, Webster, Dekker, Rowley, and Jonson; his comedies are smart and buoyant, sometimes indecorous; his masques more than usually elaborate and careful; in the comedy of "The Spanish Gypsy," and the tragedies of "The Changeling," and "Women beware Women," is found the best ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we must first notice its animus. The manner in which Dickens's two old women are brought in is not only indecorous, but it shows a state of feeling from which nothing but harsh interpretation of every questionable expression of Mr. Motley's was to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... small princelings were ready enough to make a Jingalese princess feel at home in their midst. But the whole thing, in view of its local color, was rather precipitate and indecorous; and when the Queen heard of it, and of its special application, from the old match-making Margravine with whom she had shared confidences, she was aghast. "Charlotte," she cried, "whatever did ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... and, through a trick contrived in the clerks' office, he was hindered from taking them before the arrival of the marshal and his consequent arrest. Yet there can be no doubt that, in the special circumstances of the case, this arrest was especially indecorous, and, in the method of effecting it, altogether illegal. If he had no right in the House of Commons, he was a common trespasser, and ought to have been at once removed by the servants of the House, who alone could have power to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... rising, said: The sudden and unjustifiable repeal of the License Law of 1846, changed the face of the community, which had everywhere brightened with new hope under the brief but salutary operation of that law. That repeal, which it was indecorous if not presumptuous in the representatives of the people to make, seeing the law had been enacted directly by the people in their primary assemblies; that repeal brought back all the evils of intemperance aggravated by the successful efforts which had been openly and covertly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... those that are; to which may be added, that in the instances which we saw there was no real occasion for crying at all. It must, therefore, be considered in the light of a ceremony of condolence, which it would be either indecorous or unlucky ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... this one is, I think, the little Jewess I purchased from Hassan Bey in Sidon, but how can one be sure? Still, this is certainly Judith, and this is Myrina. I have half a mind to look again for that mole, but I suppose it would be indecorous. Lord, how one's women do add up! There must be several scores of them in all. It is the sort of spectacle that turns a man to serious thinking. Well, but it is a great comfort to reflect that I dealt fairly with every one of them. Several of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... prepared to convict, and they did so on a few trifling attestations, which gave them a plausible excuse for their verdict. The illustrious Bacon aided the king in his object. He had on other occasions shewn abject servility to James—using towards him such expressions of indecorous flattery as these: 'Your majesty imitateth Christ, by vouchsafing me to touch the hem of your garment.' He was attorney-general, and had in that capacity to conduct the prosecution. Seeing distinctly the king's inclination, he sent a letter to him, praying, 'First, that your ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... social history to discover that the irregularity in question is only a partial revival of the practice of our grandfathers and grandmothers, much as a crinoline may be regarded as a modified reproduction of the hoop. Junius thus denounces the Duke of Grafton's indecorous devotion to Nancy Parsons: "It is not the private indulgence, but the public insult, of which I complain. The name of Miss Parsons would hardly have been known, if the First Lord of the Treasury had not led her in triumph through the Opera House, even in the presence of the Queen." Lord March ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... one day, that when he was dead he would not fail to let me know, if ever ghosts were permitted to revisit the earth, by appearing to me, binding himself by this contract that the vision should be unaccompanied by the smallest smell of sulphur or flash of blue flame, and that instead of the indecorous undress of a slovenly winding-sheet, he would wear his usual garments, and the familiar brown great-coat with which, to use his own expression, he "buttoned his bones together" in his life. I remembered that laughing promise when, years after it was given, the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 'dropping like the gentle rain from heaven,' &c., &c., was, I fear, 'talking buncombe,' and all that part of her speech should be stricken from the record, especially as it was addressed to the plaintiff instead of the court, a highly indecorous proceeding. Instead of indulging in all this sentimentality, her true course would have been to have filed a bill in equity against Shylock, and have obtained an injunction on an ex parte affidavit, which only requires a little strong swearing; or to have patched up a suit against ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
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