"Indecorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... his first blow there burst out in the hall the wild, indecorous strains of "Kuk-kuk kuk-Katie," pealing out louder and ever louder ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... 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 |
