"Immodest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heed of affecting immodest apparel, or a wanton gait; this will be evil both abroad and at home; abroad, it will not only give ill example, but also tend to tempt to lust and lasciviousness; and at home it will give an offence to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... covered the low counter—a grave, kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of magic fish-bowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make you short and fat like a draught; ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... an idea obnoxious to a woman's feelings,' was her answer. 'You have announced it in a fashion revolting to a woman's soul. You insinuate that all the frank kindness I have shown you has been a complicated, a bold, and an immodest manoeuvre to ensnare a husband. You imply that at last you come here out of pity to offer me your hand, because I have courted you. Let me say this: Your sight is jaundiced; you have seen wrong. Your mind is warped; you have judged wrong. Your tongue betrays you; you now speak wrong. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... theatre to the stage of the mountebank, and whose humor, coarse but pungent, seemed a drunken echo of the laughter of Moliere. The clown exerted his low talent, throwing out at each moment some low jest, some immodest pun, to which his master, simulating a prudish indignation, responded by thumps on the head. But the adroit clown excelled in the art of receiving affronts. He knew to perfection how to bend his body like a bow under the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... make one weep sometimes to see it,—to see, as in this instance of Willan Blaycke, an upright, modest, and honest gentleman creating out of the very virtues of his own nature the being whom he will worship, and then clothing this ideal with a bit of common clay, of immodest and ill-behaved flesh, which he hath found ready-made to his hand, and full of ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... silk crepe, in addition to the loose outer garment, is all their covering. But it must be remembered that the great aim of this people seems to be simplicity, therefore we wont too minutely scrutinize their deficiencies of costume; there is much to be said in its favour, it is neither immodest nor suggestive. The feet are clothed in a short sock, with a division at the great toe for the passage of the sandal strap. These sandals or clogs are the most ungainly articles in their wardrobe. A simple lump of wood, the length and breadth of the foot, about two ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... administer poison, nor advise its use. I will never give a criminal draught to a woman. I will maintain the purity and integrity of my art. Wherever I go, I will abstain from all mischief or corruption, or any immodest action. If ever I hear any secret I will not divulge it. If I keep this oath, may the gods give me success in life and in my art. If I break this oath, may all ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... to Mrs. Alderman Head,' said Purcell sarcastically. 'Lucy knows very well what I think of an unchristian and immodest amusement. Other people must decide according to their conscience, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... paint the rounded limbs and marble huelessness of fair Dian, chastest of all Olympia's deities, wondering if, after all, what is called modesty does not come as much of habit as of nature—if the veiled face of the Oriental is not as immodest as the unclothedness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Scotch reel, the Spanish Cachucha, the Hungarian mazurka; is far worse than jota Arragonese, or the most lascivious of Spanish dances of Andalusia. You may remember that in the early days of Charles X. the police of Paris attempted and succeeded in putting down gross and immodest dances; but under the reign of Louis Philippe the spirit of libertinage and degingandage, to use a French term, again broke out among the class of debardeurs, and towards the close of 1845 became terrific to behold. You, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... men took to wearing shorter clothes than ever, having them made to fit tightly to the body, after the manner of dressing monkeys, which was very shameful and immodest; and the sleeves of their coats and doublets were slit open so as to show their fine white shirts. They wore their hair so long that it concealed their face and even their eyes, and on their heads they wore cloth caps nearly a foot or ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... midnight. After midnight these casino dance halls change their character. Often professional "pace makers" are introduced, men and women of the lowest class, who are paid to inspire the other dancers to lewd conduct. These wretched people are immodestly clothed, and they perform immodest or very tough dances. They are usually known as "Twisters," a descriptive title. When they make their appearance the self-respecting dancers go home, and a much looser element comes in. The pace becomes a rapid one. Manners are free, talk is coarse, laughter is incessant. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... octave of the investigator. When an author writes of himself, perforce he plays upon his own "I," which is not exactly that contained in the octave of the sentimentalist nor yet in that of the curious investigator. Undoubtedly at times it must be a most immodest "I," an "I" which discloses a name and a surname, an "I" which is positive and self-assertive, with the imperiousness of a Captain General's edict ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... defence contented itself with arguments that did at least aim to rebut the indictment. The decisions of all the established men in the world were notoriously in conflict. However great was the gross wisdom of the ages the net wisdom was remarkably small. Was it after all so very immodest to believe that the Liberals were right in what they said about Tariff Reform, and the Tories right in their ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the kept women, the milliners, the shop girls, saleswomen, actresses, singers, the girls of the opera, the ballet-dancers, upper servants, chambermaids, etc. Most of these creatures excite the passions of many people, but they would consider it immodest to inform a lawyer, a mayor, an ecclesiastic or a laughing world of the day and hour when they surrendered to a lover. Their system, justly blamed by an inquisitive world, has the advantage of laying upon them no obligations towards men in general, towards ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... affectedly particular people who place heaven in the foreground in order to conceal themselves behind it. But if she refuses to tell a falsehood,—as she will expose herself to the jests of the whole court, as she will have annoyed the king by a confession as ridiculous as it was immodest,—Mademoiselle la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere will think it but proper I should send her back again to her pigeons in the country, in order that, in Touraine yonder, or in Le Blaisois,—I know not where it may be,—she may at her ease ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... against his breast, as she lay there like a little fluttering bird, and felt the throbbing of his own heart swaying him. Her arms, her lips, and her whole body clung to his in a sweet surrender, and yet there was nothing immodest or unmaidenly about it, for his strength and ardor had lifted her and drawn her to him as on the sweep ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... been who did not reveal his character in his works? Instead of instances from ancient history, I shall content myself with examples from our own time. No one can fail to see that many painters have sought a vulgar celebrity by immodest pictures. It is not credible that those artists can be virtuous, whose minds and fingers composed such works. We have also seen pictures minutely finished and fairly well coloured, wherein, it is true, the master showed a certain talent and industry; but art was wanting. Albrecht, therefore, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... you never heard her breathe a really unbecoming word or saw her do an immodest thing?" said my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... of Roaring Camp"—that wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy—which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" and "immodest!" ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... never contemns herself, nor is ashamed of herself, but forgets herself—at least until she has done something worth memory. It is easy to peep and potter about one's own deficiencies in a quiet immodest discontent; but Modesty is so pleased with other people's doings, that she has no leisure to lament her own: and thus, knowing the fresh feeling of contentment, unstained with thought of self, she does not fear being pleased, when ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... partners were, of course, invariably girls, and they said that, when they "came out," they would have their dresses cut lower and made more fashionably. Of this, the sisters quite approved for their girls, whom they trusted never to do, never to wear, anything immodest. At Lady MacMillan's, Mary had worn simple evening dress, before she resolved to become a nun; and in London even Aunt Sara and Elinor, with their thin necks, had considered it necessary to display more than their collarbones each ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... towards which its rays pointed. They could, moreover, explain the effects produced by the fixed stars whose rays were conjoined with the comet's. If a comet resembles a flute, then musicians are aimed at; when comets are in the less dignified parts of the constellations, they presage evil to immodest persons; if the head of a comet forms an equilateral triangle or a square with fixed stars, then it is time for mathematicians and men of science to tremble. When they are in the sign of the Ram, they ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... her that gave aim to all thy oaths, And entertain'd 'em deeply in her heart. How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root! O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush! Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me 105 Such an immodest raiment, if shame live In a disguise of love: It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes than ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... a mortal sin is to class it with adultery or theft or murder. It is interesting to imagine St. Thomas and the moderate moralists saying: "You may murder at weddings; you may commit adultery to celebrate your release from prison; you may steal if you do not do it with immodest gestures," and so on. The calm tone of St. Thomas about the whole thing is alone evidence of a social ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... aestheticising literary historians, does not enter into the question at all: the fact remains that the university is not in a position to control the young academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen what happens, willy-nilly—and this is the cutting answer to the immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves as the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it results in the following monstrous figment:—that the fruit of Herod's incestuous connexion with Herodias had been a daughter, who was also named Herodias; and that she,—the King's own daughter,—was the immodest one[48] who came in and danced before him, 'his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee,' as they sat at the birthday banquet. Probability, natural feeling, the obvious requirements of the narrative, History itself—, for ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... had the good taste not to mention names, and I had been brazenly forward, deliberately calling attention to myself when there was no need. Oh, it was sickening! I hated myself, I hated with all my heart the girls who had prompted me to such immodest conduct. I wished the ground would yawn and snap me up. I was ashamed to look up at my friends on the platform. What was Miss Dillingham thinking of me? Oh, what a fool I had been! I had ruined my own triumph. I had disgraced ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... who, under the guise of fairies, were only agents for undertakers, were ruled out. The Night Dogs of the Wicked Hunter Annum, the monster Afang, Cadwallader's Goats, and various, cruel goblins and ogres, living in the ponds, and that pulled cattle down to eat them up, and the immodest mermaids, whose bad behavior was so well known, were crossed ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... offense for which he was fined, imprisoned, pilloried, and had his ears cropped. Coleridge said that Shakspere was coarse, but never gross. He had the healthy coarseness of nature herself. But Beaumont and Fletcher's pages are corrupt. Even their chaste women are immodest in language and thought. They use not merely that frankness of speech which was a fashion of the times, but a profusion of obscene imagery which could not proceed from a pure mind. Chastity with them is rather a bodily accident than a virtue ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... honest name, And let the world be witness of the same? Be more advised, walk as a puritan, And I shall think you chaste, do what you can. Slip still, only deny it when 'tis done, And, before folk,[438] immodest speeches shun. The bed is for lascivious toyings meet, There use all tricks,[439] and tread shame under feet. When you are up and dressed, be sage and grave, And in the bed hide all the faults you ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the best possible use of the various quarries to which they had access is unlikely. Even if they credited themselves with having done so, it would be immodest of them to say it. Better material than any that their researches brought to light may still be lying near the surface, somewhere close at hand, waiting to be unearthed. Certainly this paper will not have been written in vain if it serves the purpose of provoking to the good work ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... to-day. I ran across it in a recent trip East. A big, barnlike structure had been erected which was called "the tabernacle." Its floor was of sawdust sprinkled on the ground. Here for about a month a professional evangelist had harangued the curious crowds in immoderate, and oftentimes immodest language. Wit and sarcasm and slang and emotion had been freely used in his efforts to make sinners "hit the sawdust trail," to use his own spectacular language, as well as to extort money from the pockets of the attendants. He left the town $5,000 richer ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... against villainy"[667] taught people the bad practice of standing on one's defence against vice by imitating it; but to get rid of those who shamelessly and unblushingly importune us by their own effrontery, and not to gratify the immodest in their disgraceful desires through false modesty, is the right and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Tell, Act IV, Scene 3.] to drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in its old corner.—One ought to learn anew about cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross errors—as, for instance, have been fostered by ancient and modern philosophers with regard to tragedy—may no longer wander about virtuously and boldly. Almost everything that we call "higher culture" ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of clergy.[****] They made small progress in that important work which they professed to have so much at heart, the settling of a new model of representation, and a bill was introduced into the house against painting, patches, and other immodest dress of women; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Either by poison or some other plot, Send you to death where, by his providence, God hath preserved you by that wond'rous miracle? Nay, after death, hath he not scandalis'd Your place with an immodest courtesan? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Nowadays, girls do not always wait for an advance to be made to them, nor are they as reticent as they used to be in discussing intimate matters with the opposite sex. It is unfortunate that in many cases girls, by immodest conduct, have become the leaders in sexual misbehaviour and have in many cases corrupted the boys. At one school there were 17 children involved—10 of them were girls of an average age of 13.2 years and 7 boys of an average age of 15 years. Another disturbing ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... years ago that the old custom of racing for the bride's garter on wedding days was given up. In the early years of last century an improvement in public morals showed itself in a frequently expressed opinion that the custom was immodest, and gradually the practice was dropped the bride merely handing a ribbon to the winner of ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... touched nothing of that which is mine They must be very hard to please, if they are not contented Things that engage us elsewhere and separate us from ourselves This decay of nature which renders him useless, burdensome This plodding occupation of bookes is as painfull as any other Those immodest and debauched tricks and postures Though I be engaged to one forme, I do not tie the world unto it Title of barbarism to everything that is not familiar To give a currency to his little pittance of learning To make their private advantage ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... small sums to the members of the doctor's household. This document had long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... received and still enjoys divine favour. If you were to entrust your case to me, you would be entering upon a righteous, wholesome career. I am always looking out for some one. To tell the truth, and not wishing to appear immodest, I was ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... boundaries. Manufacturers were promising for the coming season that suitable shoes would be built for street wear and mountain climbing, for the sands of the sea and the sands of the desert, and the sheer face of canyons. The extremely long, dirt-sweeping skirts were coming up; the extremely short, immodest skirts were coming down. A sane and sensible wave seemed to be sweeping the whole country. Under the impetus of Donald Whiting's struggles to lead his classes and those of other pupils to lead theirs a higher grade of scholarship was beginning to ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... upon to be unlucky to talk of Dreams at Table, and it is immodest to bring forth before so many Men; but this Dream, or this Conception of thy Mind, be it what it will, let us ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the immodest positions taken by those who dance, and you feel a deep sense of shame for them. Should you try to partake of their pleasure, your moral nature would be degraded, and you would in time lose that sense of shame and be as eager for the pleasure as ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... them by men. The visits of male acquaintances were continually received in their bed-rooms, and that, also, before they had risen in the morning. This, perhaps, was too much, though certainly far less indecent than the other most revolting of all immodest practices which I have just mentioned. Others, again, admitted no visitors further than their dressing-room, and thought themselves very scrupulous; but there were others, as there must be at all times, who, with feelings of true modesty and perfect delicacy, hesitated ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... indiscriminate hardihood, is at least a point of some unworthiness in a plant. That it should have no choice of home, no love of native land, is ungentle; much more if such discrimination as it has, be immodest, and incline it, seemingly, to open and much-traversed places, where it may be continually seen of strangers. The tormentilla gleams in showers along the mountain turf; her delicate crosslets are separate, though constellate, as the rubied ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... detailed, shameless speech affected the aged soldier at the window. It seemed to him immodest bravado. And he suffered in his heart, as a man old and full of memories can suffer for the damaged honor of a son ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... to survey the apartment in which she was confined. It was a large room, very elegantly furnished, containing a piano, and a profusion of paintings. On examining one of these, Fanny turned away with a burning cheek—for it was one of those immodest productions of the French school, which show how art and talent can be perverted to the basest uses. She looked at no more of the pictures, but went to a window and looked out. The view from thence was not extensive, but merely included a ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... a decollete gown was considered immodest. In order to be correct the collar must cover the throat, as nearly to the chin and ears as possible. Sukey's dresses were built upon this plan, much to her regret; for her throat and bosom were as white and plump—but never ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... ones and I, particularly, are pretty much upon a par. The difference between us is only, what they think, I act. But the immodest ones out-do the worst of us by a bar's length, both in thinking ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... as his deeds attest; * Which make noble origin manifest: Backbite not, lest other men bit thy back; * Who saith aught, the same shall to him be addrest: Shun immodest words and indecent speech * When thou speakest in earnest or e'en in jest.[FN229] We bear with the dog which behaves itself * But the lion is chained lest he prove a pest: And the desert carcases swim the main * While union-pearls on the sandbank rest[FN230]: No sparrow would ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... stagnates. Further, the women must repair to the house of one of their gossips who has given birth to twins, and must drench her with water, which they carry in little pitchers. Having done so they go on their way, shrieking out their loose songs and dancing immodest dances. No man may see these leaf-clad women going their rounds. If they meet a man, they maul him and thrust him aside. When they have cleansed the wells, they must go and pour water on the graves of their ancestors in the sacred grove. It often happens, too, that at the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... by all the meanes that I might, to subdue, encloyster, and keepe in, my vnbridled gadding appetite, wandring minde, and immodest desire, intending nowe that it should neuer ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... with the other foliage; or else they should be seen at some distance. Other varieties of the common white poplar or abele are occasionally useful, although most of them sprout badly and may become a nuisance. But the planting of these immodest trees is so likely to be overdone that one scarcely dare recommend them, although, when skillfully used, they may be made to produce most excellent effects. If any reader has a particular fondness for trees of this class (or ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... I could not forget that," replied the maiden. As she spoke, she hastily withdrew her eyes from an immodest picture, on which they had accidentally rested; and, blushing deeply, she added, "But there is something so life-like in that slumbering marble, that for a moment I almost feared Eudora ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... inattention to literature and learning. "The monks," he says, "in the present day seem to be occupied in emptying cups, not in correcting codices, Calicibus epotandis, non codicibus emendandis, which they mingle with the lascivious music of Timotheus, and emulate his immodest manners, so that the sportive song cantus ludentis, and not the plaintive hymn, proceeds from the cells of the monks. Flocks and fleeces, grain and granaries, gardens and olives, potions and goblets, are in this day lessons and studies ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... tainted, defiled, gross, indelicate, polluted, tarnished, dirty, immodest, lewd, stained, unchaste, filthy, impure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... From your poor Katherine's chamber, where she droops In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks As she would pour her secret in my bosom—- Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention Of some immodest act. At her request I left ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... country flooded with obscene pictures and immodest representations which corrupt our youths? If the agents of Satan employ means so vile for a bad end; if they are cunning enough to pour through the senses into the hearts of the unwary the insidious poison of sin, by placing before them lascivious portraits, in God's name, why should not we sanctify ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... shoulders and back—until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling, and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked his face burned. "If I do pick one of these," said he to himself, "I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why, out home women have ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... thoroughly a man of his time, thought he could put the coarsest and most vicious matter before his reader, and reasonably expect him to profit by the moral, without being hurt by contact with the vice. "All possible care," he says, "has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the dressing up of this story. * * * To this purpose some of the vicious part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out, and several other parts very much shortened. What is left, 'tis hoped will not offend the chastest reader, or the modestest hearer." To ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... had not looked at them so continuously and so hungrily as Mrs. Peck. Nevertheless the probability was that they knew what was thought of them—what naturally would be—and simply didn't care. That made Miss Mavis out rather cynical and even a little immodest; and yet, somehow, if she had such qualities I did not dislike her for them. I don't know what strange, secret excuses I found for her. I presently indeed encountered a need for them on the spot, for just as I was on the point of going below again, after several ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... who denounced respectability and clamored for possession of the girls,—no moment of their lives was free from ugly threats; no retreat, save the wild jungle or the mountains, offered any liberation from the immodest glare of cruel, licentious eyes. (See Part ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... not to be lightly daunted by a maiden's first "No," a sudden shrill, wild burst of laughter, accompanied with a gusty fit of unmelodious music from the street below, made both maiden and youth start, and turn their eyes; there, weaving their immodest dance, tawdry in their tinsel attire, their naked arms glancing above their heads, as they waved on high their ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great deal of noise that roused a servant to admit us to the yard. The head of the household came to the door in his shirt and rubbed his eyes as if only half awake. His legs trembled with the cold while he waited for our explanations, and it was not till we were admitted that he thought of his immodest exposure. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dignity, and, curiously enough to our ideas, Nash adds as a special praise that women were excluded from among their number: "Our players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting baudie comedians, that have whores and common curtezans to play womens parts, and forbeare no immodest speech or unchast action that may procure laughter; but our sceane is more stately furnisht than ever it was in the time of Roscius, our representations honorable and full of gallant resolution, not consisting ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... "enlightened," "pure," became a term of horror and scorn, a reproach of heresy. Saint Epiphanius, in the third century, claimed that they used first to tickle each other, the men and the women; that then they gave each other very immodest kisses, and that they judged the degree of their faith by the voluptuousness of these kisses; that the husband said to his wife, in presenting a young initiate to her: "Have an agape with my brother," and that they ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... great river. This second stream rises in a flat plain, having its first birth in a lakelet in approximate longitude 82 deg. 47' E. and latitude 30 deg. 33' N. I gave the Northern source my own name, a proceeding which I trust will not be regarded as immodest in view of the fact that I was the first European to visit both sources and of all the circumstances ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... them quarters during the fair. "Shut your eyes, Sara," said the Rabbi. For indeed these fantastic, and altogether too scantily clad women, among whom were a few really beautiful girls, behaved in a most immodest manner, baring their bold, white breasts, chaffing those who went by with shameless words, and swinging their long walking sticks; and using the latter as hobby-horses, they rode down toward the gate of St. Katherine, singing in shrill tones ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... wickedness since the daughter of Herodias danced before Herod and his lewd courtiers, and obtained the head of John the Baptist on a charger for her reward. Black shame upon John Graham! Cruel he is, but I thought he would not pollute any girl's ears with such immodest tales." And Lady Cochrane was beginning to ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... they salute; it is to show their humility, and that they are unworthy of appearing in his presence. This was practised before Sir Joseph Banks, when he received the visits of two female Otaheitans. Their innocent simplicity, no doubt, did not appear immodest in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Hia Calendar. Have the State carriages like those of the Yin princes. Wear the Chow cap. For your music let that of Shun be used for the posturers. Put away the songs of Ch'ing, and remove far from you men of artful speech: the Ch'ing songs are immodest, and ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... established in a house near by, a middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British share of the great battle in his immodest "salle a manger!" ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... And the pallid seamstress sitteth For a long and tedious twelve hours Stitching, while her life is ebbing In a rapid current from her. Now awhile we see the playhouse, And the giddy hall of music, And the scenes exposed therein, Oft immodest and immoral. Next the nest of thieves and robbers, With their heaps of spoil and plunder, And their hidden laws and customs. Then we seek the house of prayer, Which is only weekly opened, Or which day to day inviteth Weary souls into ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive, immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now: any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation. Now I must not be misunderstood. Seamanship ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... may claim, I will boast that such has been the result of my own writing. Can any one by search through the works of the six great English novelists I have named, find a scene, a passage, or a word that would teach a girl to be immodest, or a man to be dishonest? When men in their pages have been described as dishonest and women as immodest, have they not ever been punished? It is not for the novelist to say, baldly and simply: "Because ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... to tell? The costume in which she stood forth was no more startling or immodest than the simple gown which the American high-school girl wears on her Commencement Day, and it was decidedly more ample than the sum of all the garments worn at polite social gatherings in communities somewhat to the west. Nevertheless, ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... because she liked to smoke. It took no more than a glance to reveal the fact that she was further along in her pregnancy than Marna—Marna who started back from the door when a stranger appeared at it lest she should seem immodest. But the suffragette, having acquired an applauding and excellent husband, saw no reason why she should apologize to the world for the processes of nature. Quite as unconscious of her condition as of her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... were in the picture, and Comstockery established in its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and—not ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... vexed. She's losing patience. She thinks it's a mistake—and an immodest one. She wants to send her away for a visit. To think of it!—as soon as one girl lets go another takes hold,—and a third person ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... certain dreadful innocence about them too, as though each would protest, "In spite of our tasks, our often immodest tasks, our ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... evening dress consist of black trousers and a bright-red coat which stops off short at the waist. But if you think that looks odd, what will you say to the officers of the Highland regiments? Their full dress is almost as immodest in a different way as that of some women, and one of the most exquisite paradoxes of British custom is that a Highland undress uniform consists of the addition of long-trousers—more clothes than they wear in ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... walks, feasts, and mourning of the women, and took away everything that was either unbecoming or immodest; when they walked abroad, no more than three articles of dress were allowed them; an obol's worth of meat and drink; and no basket above a cubit high; and at night they were not to go about unless in a chariot with a torch before them. Mourners tearing themselves to raise ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his lady had been; and the king jested, and said it was only the court fashion; to which Sir Walter returned for answer, that, however it might be the court fashion, it was scarce courtly to present an immodest to a modest woman. With that the king chafed, and said he supposed Lady Constantia's friendship for Dame Frances Russell was stronger than her loyalty, for she regarded Cromwell's daughter, both as RICH and RUSSELL, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that my character puzzles you. You invited me to drink a cocktail to try me. Don't protest, for really I do not wonder at it, or blame you in the least. How could you think otherwise? My position was a strange one, bound to awaken suspicion; my conduct immodest. Yet you must accept my explanation, for I shall tell the truth. I was never guilty of such an act before—never! Perhaps because I was never tempted. There is a home I could return to, and a mother, but they are more than a thousand miles from here. But I cannot ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... wagging, and you put your feet on pavement as if you'd got chilblains—aye, stiff neck above and weak knees below. It's immodest! ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... "It—it is immodest for a girl to sit here in the deep shadow beside a gentleman for hours together. Shame, Twonette! Your father is not here to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... perceiving the cause, was so pleased, that she cried out—"No, my dear Peter, not that, nor all the force on earth, shall ever part me from you. But I conceive you are afraid you shall discover something in me you may not like. I fear not that; but an immodest appearance before you I cannot suffer myself to be guilty of, but under your own command."—"My lovely Youwarkee," says I, "delay then my desires no longer; and since you require a warrant from me, I do command you to do it" Immediately her graundee flew open (discovering her naked ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... be difficult for a man like you to speak of your own achievements. But for once you are going to be immodest," she laughed. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... o' the blood. He dared not forth Lest men should see—and how not see? he thought— That Helen held him lightlier than she ought. But Helen came there, gentle as of old, Self-held, sufficient to herself, not bold, Not modest nor immodest, taking none For judge or jury of what she may have done; But doing all she was to do, sedate, Intent upon it and deliberate. As she had been at first, so was she now When she had put behind her her old vow And had no pride ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... began by wounding the vanity of a priest who is regarded by the people as a saint, and as a sage among his fellows. God grant that such a misstep may not have already determined your future! Because the Dominicans and Augustinians look with disdain on the guingon habit, the rope girdle, and the immodest foot-wear, because a learned doctor in Santo Tomas [75] may have once recalled that Pope Innocent III described the statutes of that order as more fit for hogs than men, don't believe but that all of them work hand in hand to affirm what a preacher once said, 'The most insignificant lay brother ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... other girls, provided with their tambourines and a new dance, besides a new stock of romances and songs, but all of a moral character; for Preciosa would never permit those in her company to sing immodest songs, nor would she ever sing them herself. The old gitana came with her, for she now watched her as closely as Argus, and never left her side, lest some one should carry her off. She called her granddaughter, and the girl believed herself to be ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be immodest to make such a claim in speaking even of my brother dramatists—I cannot claim that the thorough achievement of such a task is a common one in this country. It is indeed a rare one in any country. But I can claim—I do claim for my fellow-workers ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... said Father Francis, gravely, though a twinkle in his eye showed that he was not so profoundly shocked as his penitent appeared to be. "But go to graver matters. Immodesty, said you? I shall be very sorry, if this is so. You did not use to be immodest." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... enter into our lives, than that of any other man. Absolute candor, absolute pride, absolute charity, absolute social and sexual equality, absolute nature. It is not conditioned by what we deem modest or immodest, high or low, male or female. It is not conditioned by our notions of good and evil, by our notions of the refined and the select, by what we call good taste and bad taste. It is the voice of absolute man, sweeping away the artificial, throwing himself ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... sort, even though a shabby sort? Not that Miss Brooke to-night was shabbily attired: she was much otherwise; from some mysterious source of wardrobe she had conjured wraps, furs, and a dancing frock as fresh and becoming as it was, oddly enough, not immodest. And with whatever cares preying upon her secret mind, she entered with the light step and bright countenance of any girl of her age embarked ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... with him, an immodest little fellow; made so by his father, who it seemed spent most of his time boasting ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... succoring, hiding, and finally rescuing Eliab Hill was a source of never-ending wonder, applause, and mirth in the kitchen. But Miss Hetty could not find words to express her anger and chagrin. Without being at all forward or immodest, she had desired to succeed her dead sister in the good graces of Hesden Le Moyne, as well as in the position of mistress of the Hill. It was a very natural and proper feeling. They were cousins, had always been neighbors, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... compelled to respect the forms of the court, or to preserve ordinary decency. He interrupted the opening speech of the government prosecutor by noisy ejaculations, oaths, filthy expletives, and immodest and insulting gestures, and when rebuked by the judges showered down upon them all the abusive and abominable epithets ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... is caused by false modesty in the presence of others. It can never be immodest to attend to the calls of Nature, and such hypersensitiveness is dangerous, for rupture, piles, fissure, prolapse, fistula, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... disregard of the penalties. Those that have been transported to this country live in a manner which does not in any thing show that they have made a vow to God of even trifling privations. Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected, with reason, that they had renounced only that which they could not, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... back into her cheeks when she realized what she had said. It was the first time she had ever used a term of endearment toward David. She wondered if he noticed it and if he would think her very—bold,—queer,—immodest, to use it. She looked shyly up at him, enquiring with her eyes, as she came out to him on the front stoop, and he looked down with such a smile she felt as if it were a caress. And yet neither was quite conscious of this little real by-play they were enacting for the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... passion; but as soon as she had yielded to it she despised herself. Even in the excitement of pleasure she could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image of mademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience rejected its defilement, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... transmigrations fit The monstrous changes of a modern wit! Now, such a gentle stream of eloquence As seldom rises to the verge of sense; Now, by mad rage, transform'd into a flame, Which yet fit engines, well applied, can tame; Now, on immodest trash, the swine obscene, Invites the town to sup at Drury Lane; A dreadful lion, now he roars at power, Which sends him to his brothers at the Tower; He's now a serpent, and his double tongue Salutes, nay licks, the feet of those he stung; What knot can bind him, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the auspicious moment when Dink Stover led the apparently scantily-clothed Finnegan and the procession of immodest banners around to the Esplanade of the Upper, the Doctor suddenly appeared through the shrubbery that screens Foundation House from the rest of the campus, with a party of ladies, relatives, as it unfortunately happened, of one of the trustees ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... themselves by celebrating bacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves or flowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversations together, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis," and from ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to look at the multifarious objects ranged in gradation from the base to the summit of the pyramid. There were tapestries and brocades of immodest design, pictures and sculptures held too likely to incite to vice; there were boards and tables for all sorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them, dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were worldly music-books, and musical instruments in all the pretty ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of these ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the end of the honeymoon that I think it can hardly be immodest if I emerge from private life and write you a letter, more particularly as I want to know something. I went yesterday on an expedition to see the remains of a forest which exists between tidemarks at a place called Amroth, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the stories themselves, they treat of adventures, in great part amorous and often immodest. In this particular they are scarcely less objectionable than those of Boccaccio. They differ from the latter in the circumstance that the author's avowed purpose is to insert none but actual occurrences. They are distinguished from them more especially by the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... sept, and clan systems were devised solely to prevent international decadence and fraternal strife; their secret societies were not sinister; their festivals and dances not immodest; their priesthood not ignoble. They were sedentary and metropolitan people—dwellers in towns—not nomads; they had cattle and fowls, orchards and grain-fields, gardens for vegetables, corrals for breeding stock. They had many towns—some ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... much. You surely remember that awful scarlet dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity and vividness that is—well—immodest." ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the native women was that they were all going to some ball or had put on their low-necked, transparent evening dresses by mistake. But, before any reader gets the impression from this that they are immodest, let me hasten to add that we found that they were exceptionally sweet and charming and are the souls of propriety. Why, even the man engaged to a girl cannot so much as walk with her on the streets in the broad daylight, and to take ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer
... north of Africa. They roll up the clothes into a round flat heap, and then with their heels keep up a continual round of treading, using for soap a peculiar sort of clay. Some of the girls are very impudent and immodest when a stranger passes by; but as a rule they are not so. The wells at Mourzuk are not all good; some are fresh, others salt. In many places will be found a well of very sweet, delicious water; and running nearly to the surface, at twenty paces distant from it, are found others really quite salt. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... climate demands. Didn't it strike you that one of them women without anything on would have a hard time if she tried to be daring—or did it? No woman can be daring without the proper clothes for it,' I says firmly, 'and as for you, I tell you plain, get into the most daring and immodest thing that was ever invented for ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the law, too, which your husband can invoke. And think of your five sisters. Will anybody marry them after such a business with you? Their prospects will be simply ruined by your heartless selfishness. No girl in my young days would have acted so outrageously. It is not decent. It is positively immodest. I repeat that your father is the proper person to judge for you. You know nothing of the world, and even if you did, you are not old enough to think for yourself. You do not imagine yourself to be a sort of ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand |
