"Propriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the propriety and utility of holding up the distant mark of attainable perfection, we shall enter more fully toward the close of this address. We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Propriety and decorum were extinguished among the helpless sick. Females of rank seemed to forget their natural bashfulness, and committed the care of their persons, indiscriminately, to men and women of the lowest order. No longer were women, relatives or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... said the miller, adopting as a matter of propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher costume. 'Now, begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the same roof making merry without ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... house has not yet met her husband's friends at the dinner-table, at the social soiree, or in the ball-room. He is quite willing to go to these, at the house of his Frank friend, but he has not been convinced of the propriety of the change, and his sovereign has not carried his reforms into harem life. It will require some years yet to fit the Oriental for witnessing the displays of female beauty at such places with the calm indifference ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the notables of our party. I will not mention the laughing ogling lady of Cadiz, whose manners, I very much regret to say, were a great deal too lively for my sense of propriety; nor those fair sufferers, her companions, who lay on the deck with sickly, smiling female resignation: nor the heroic children, who no sooner ate biscuit than they were ill, and no sooner were ill than they began eating biscuit again: but just allude ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... form of old Carson, turned a herd of bellowing steers out into the fields lying between the meadow and the ranch-house that afternoon just as Marcia, making a late concession to propriety, was shaking her skirts and lifting her parasol. It was scarcely to be wondered at that the steers seemed to Marcia a great herd of bloodthirsty beasts. Then there were her pink gown and sunshade. . ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... subject of his affairs; and though on these occasions the women are generally blamed, it has afterwards appeared that they never were allowed to make particular enquiries, nor suffered to reason upon what sometimes appeared to them imprudent. Many families have fully as much been indebted to the propriety of female management, for the degree of prosperity they have enjoyed, as to the knowledge and activity of the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the Revolution he had been found in the ranks of the Whig pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was ever made on the policy of the British government than that contained in his Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies. When the elder Pitt attacked the Stamp Act in the House of Commons in January 1766, he borrowed most of his argument from this pamphlet, which had appeared ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... native Esquimaux, whom our people had seen, evinced the same amicable disposition by which their whole race is distinguished. They received our people with open arms, and some of the young damsels seemed disposed to cultivate a closer intimacy with them than their ideas of propriety, or at least their olfactory nerves, would sanction. The effluvia that proceeds from their persons in the summer season is quite insufferable; it is as if you applied your nose to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... Rupt, at this time five-and-thirty, and as good as widowed, with a husband who turned egg-cups in every variety of wood, who set his mind on making wheels with six spokes out of iron-wood, and manufactured snuff-boxes for everyone of his acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. When this young man was in the house, she alternately dismissed and recalled her daughter, and tried to detect symptoms of jealousy in that youthful soul, so as to have occasion to repress ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... unhappy woman, whose frailties should have been buried in oblivion. Licentious as the times are, we trust it will obtain no imitators of the heroine in this country. It may act, however, as a warning to those who fancy themselves at liberty to dispense with the laws of propriety and decency, and who suppose the possession of perverted talents will atone for the well government of society and the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... truly thrilling scene, though some persons might have thought that the sudden tumbling down of a quantity of long red hair rather marred the effect of the villain's death. He was called before the curtain, and with great propriety appeared, leading Hagar, whose singing was considered more wonderful than all the rest of the performance ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... introduction Chippendale says that he has been encouraged to produce the book "by persons of distinction and taste, who have regretted that an art capable of so much perfection and refinement should be executed with so little propriety and elegance." He has some severe remarks upon critics, from which we may assume that he had already suffered at their hands. Perhaps, indeed, Chippendale may have been hinted at in the caustic remarks of Isaac ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... servants were the severest sticklers for propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... but with respect, 'it is permitted to all to make an application which the custom of the time has sanctioned. That is the extent of my action—at the highest. The propriety of granting such requests is another matter and rests with your lordship. I have nothing to ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... she undertakes, and that which she requires by her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. A more genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute heart of man. For this she deserves to be held in the highest commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings, and for this she ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... strange, muffled figure, felt exasperated, amazed and helpless. The ex-confidential clerk of the rich Hudig would hug to his breast settled conceptions of respectable conduct. He sought refuge within his ideas of propriety from the dismal mangroves, from the darkness of the forests and of the heathen souls of the savages that were his masters. She looked like an animated package of cheap cotton goods! It made him furious. She had disguised herself so because a man of her race ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... so much as coming out with people younger than myself," said Miss Holmes. "One always feels so old and dull. Listen to those children there; they make me feel as though I were an old maiden aunt, brought out with them to do propriety." ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope
... somewhat checkmated by this reply. What could he do with a man who would neither see him, nor argue with him by letter, and who had undoubtedly the power of appointing any clergyman he pleased? He had consulted with Mr. Arabin, who had suggested the propriety of calling in the aid of the Master of Lazarus. "If," said he, "you and Dr. Gwynne formally declare your intention of waiting upon the bishop, the bishop will not dare to refuse to see you; and if two such men as you are see ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... minister, with the conscious dignity of virtue, congratulates Gordian that he is delivered from the tyranny of the eunuchs, [47] and still more that he is sensible of his deliverance. The emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the errors of his past conduct; and laments, with singular propriety, the misfortune of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labor to conceal the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her. Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always with a certain grace and propriety. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... place in the edifice of which he was so conspicuous a part, without equal injury to himself and it. Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." This cannot be said with any propriety of Shakspeare, who certainly moved in a constellation of bright luminaries, and "drew after him a third part of the heavens." If we allow, for argument's sake (or for truth's, which is better), that he was in himself equal to all his competitors ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Dooley, apparently disinterestedly, to come to my house Friday and play billiards. He accepted, and I judge that there is going to be a deficit in the Dooley treasury as a result. In great qualities of the heart and brain, Dooley is gifted beyond all propriety. He is brilliant; he is an expert with his pen, and he easily stands at the head of all the satirists of this generation—but he is going to walk in darkness Friday afternoon. It will be a fraternal kindness to teach him that with ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... and slaughter by which empire and triumphs were to be won, as looking on human suffering with the sympathy of Howard, or as treating conquered enemies with the delicacy of the Black Prince, would be to violate all dramatic propriety. The old Romans had some great virtues, fortitude, temperance, veracity, spirit to resist oppression, respect for legitimate authority, fidelity in the observing of contracts, disinterestedness, ardent patriotism; but Christian charity ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of wine-drinking is not matter of question. The archbishop of Seville, Antonio de Solis, who lived to be 110 years old, drank wine; and even that wonderful pattern of propriety, Cornaro, did the same: but the question is about quantity. Sir William Temple was pleased to lay down a rule, and limit propriety to three glasses. "I drink one glass," says he, "for health, a second for refreshment, a third for a friend; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... though by no means destitute of decency and propriety, are not cleanly. The women bathe their hands once a day, but any other washing is unknown. They never wash their clothes, and wear the same by day and night. I am afraid to speculate on the condition of their wealth of coal-black hair. They may be said to be very dirty—as ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... duty in the West, where he would rank Gen. Pillow, who was exceedingly unpopular in Adjutant-Gen. Cooper's office. I presume this arose solely from mistrust of his military abilities; for he had certainly manifested much enthusiasm in the cause, and was constantly urging the propriety of aggressive movements with his command. All his purposed advances were countermanded. The policy of the government is to be economical of the men. We have but a limited, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... a swallow to build her nest in the red coping that roofed the arches of the windows. The precise and immaculate air of this facade, a little worn by perpetual rubbing, gave the house a tone of severe propriety and estimable decency which would have driven a romanticist out of the neighborhood, had he happened to take ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... leading principle of the government of the people consists in decorous behaviour. If the superiors do not behave with decorum, the inferiors are disorderly: if inferiors are wanting in proper behaviour, there must necessarily be offences. Therefore it is that when lord and vassal behave with propriety, the distinctions of rank are not confused when the people behave with propriety, the government of the Commonwealth proceeds of itself." Something of the same old Chinese teaching we find reechoed, a thousand years later, in the Legacy of Iyeyasu: ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... with us when we reach the island?" she asked, after a little hesitation about the propriety of the question; "or shall we be left ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the latter part of the last century. Solemnly baptized and consecrated to some holy saint, it had called to prayer the veiled sisters of a convent, and tolled heavily in the masses for the dead. At first some of the church felt misgivings as to the propriety of hanging a Popish bell in a Puritan steeple-house; but their objections were overruled by the minister, who wisely maintained that if Moses could use the borrowed jewels and ornaments of the Egyptians ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Hartwell afforded him a modicum of legitimate solace. Besides, Zephyr and Bennie were his stanch friends; the recovery of the safe and the putting it in evidence at the most effective moment was their work. The manner of bringing it into play, though distasteful to him, suited their ideas of propriety, and Firmstone felt that they had earned the right to an exhibition of their personalities with no interference on his part. He preserved a ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Warton's History of English Poetry, it is said of these representations that "by the ridiculous and exaggerated oddity of the Vizors, and by the singularity and splendour of the dresses, every thing was out of nature and propriety." In Strutt's 16th Plate, specimens will be found of the whimsical habit and attire in which the mummers were wont ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... the reputation of being rich, and the Doctor had been mortified by the bad behavior of his medicines—for if a patient be not cured, if he is at least vigorously handled, there seems to be something that can with propriety be heavily charged for. But if a doctor does nothing—neither cures, nor anything else—with what face can he bring ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... nicer to be out then," said Mol-lie, whose ideas of propriety were by no means rigid. "I like to see the shop windows lighted up. Where is my hat? Does anybody know?" rising from the carpet and abandoning Tod to his ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... regarded and remembered nothing else. He was free—and he had wings! His father left insurance, and a couple of savings-bank accounts, but through some fissure of vanity or carelessness in the granite of his propriety, he left no will. The sums, amounting in all to something over three thousand dollars, came to Stefan without conditions, guardians, or other hindrances. The rapture of that discovery, he thought, almost wiped out his ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... session, the propriety and expediency of an appropriation for fitting out an expedition to proceed in search of the missing ships, with their officers and crews, is respectfully submitted ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... indicating the fiduciary capacity. In other cases, circumstances exist which affect the banker with notice of that capacity. In either case, however, the obligation to honour the customer's cheque is the predominant factor, and the banker is not bound or entitled to question the propriety or object of the cheque, unless he has very clear evidence of impending fraud (Gray v. Johnston, L.R. 3 H. of L. 1). Even though the banker have derived some personal benefit from the transaction, it cannot be impeached unless the banker's conduct amount in law to his being party or privy to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the old Red Dutch is the most prominent. It is the currant of memory. From it was made the wine which our mothers and grandmothers felt that they could offer with perfect propriety to the minister. There are rural homes to-day in which the impression still lingers that it is a kind of temperance drink. From it is usually made the currant jelly without which no lady would think of keeping house in the country. One of ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the fate of her life. Many glances were undoubtedly directed at her, the daughter of the dead woman in whose memory so many citizens had gathered; many, perhaps, had come solely to see the beautiful Es. Therefore propriety and modesty forbade her to watch Heinz. She only ventured to cast ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to this Council that the Cabinet's latest scheme for squeezing the Bishops out of the Constitution was to be presented; and for that to be possible, since he was so great a stickler for constitutional propriety, the King's consent had been necessary. A few days before, therefore, the Prime Minister had once more formally submitted the question; and the King had given his leave. "Produce what you like, Mr. Premier; I will no longer ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... It was rather a pity that, instead of taking a placid and unbroken rest on the sofa, she sat stiffly on a worked chair and started into uneasy wakefulness between the lessons, dismissing one girl and sending for the next with infinite politeness and propriety. At last she said, "And will you have the kindness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... he said, presently, half to himself. He stood thinking for a time, during which I supposed that he was considering the propriety of his personally making the capture, in view of the plan that I had overheard Montignac suggest to the governor, namely, that the spy should merely lure La Tournoire into an ambush where the governor's soldiers should make the seizure. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... believed that the Dutchmen meant to take the initiative and strike a blow against our supremacy in South Africa, though some at home were still shilly-shallying with sentimental arguments as to the propriety of fighting our "brother Boer" at all. As we now know, it wanted but the smallest move on the part of the British to bring things to a head. Large commandoes were gathered together with a rapidity which would have been marvellous had the Boers not designedly brought ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the parlour, I beheld females learning to dance and to sing, and to play on instruments, for the purpose of making their lovers seven times more foolish than they were already: on going to the buttery, I found them taking lessons in delicacy and propriety of eating: on going to the cellar, I saw them making up potent love drinks, from nail-parings and the like: on going to the chambers, we beheld a fellow in a secret apartment, putting himself into all kinds of attitudes, to teach his beloved elegant ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... slaughter us like sheep should we undertake such a movement. Our strongest hold is in this town, and if you will get together fifty volunteers, I will drive the Indians out of the lower town and the greatest danger will be passed." He saw at once the propriety of my proposition, and in a short time we had a squad ready, and sallied out, cheering and yelling in a manner that would have done credit to the wildest Comanches. We knew the Indians were congregated in force down the street, and expected to find them in a ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... men, and often went into the woods to preach to them. So earnestly did he labor for their conversion that he has always been called the apostle to the Indians. The mention of this holy man suggested to Grandfather the propriety of giving a brief sketch of the history of the Indians, so far as they were connected with ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shall be one in the more sententious style, and one which proves that Cowper was capable of writing in a judicious manner on a difficult and delicate question—even a question so difficult and so delicate as that of the propriety of painting the face. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Conformity of the Book of Common Prayer to the Scriptures; 8. The Ministration of Baptism does not depend on the Ceremonial; 9. Condemns "Private Masses," and denies that the Mass can be a propitiatory Sacrifice for the Dead; 10. Asserts the Propriety of Communion in Both Kinds; 11. Utterly disallows Images, Relics and Pilgrimages; 12. Requires a General Subscription to the foregoing Articles. With this creed, the Irish Establishment started into existence, at the command and, of course, with all the aid of the civil power. The ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... certificate; but, from whimsical pleasantry, humorously requested, and actually obtained, at the same time, a certificate from his surgeons of the loss of his arm, which was sufficiently obvious: asserting—with much propriety, in his particular instance, at least—that one might just as well be doubted as the other. On going, afterwards, to receive the sum, which was the annual pay of a captain only, that being his rank when he sustained the loss, the clerk observed that he thought it had been more. "Oh, no!" ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... custom of that excellent lady when these visits occur, to appear every three minutes, either in her own person or in that of Mrs. Tisher, and lay an offering on the shrine of Propriety by affecting to look for some desiderated article. On the present occasion Miss Twinkleton, gracefully gliding in and out, says in passing: 'How do you do, Mr. Drood? Very glad indeed to have the pleasure. Pray ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... self. Never had he been so attentive quite as John Anderson, nor so profuse in his protestations, nor so ready with his apologies. And what was more she did not expect him to be. But he was more sincere when it came to a question of unfolding one's own convictions, more engaging where will-power, propriety, performance of duty, were concerned. He alone possessed the rule to which all, in her own mind, were obliged to conform. And so she was ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... constitution, that as some must of necessity rule and teach, so others must, of course, learn to submit and obey. Humility in both is an essential duty. The officers who are chosen to govern your Lodge are sufficiently conversant with the rules of propriety and the laws of the institution to avoid exceeding the powers with which they are entrusted, and you are of too generous dispositions to envy their preferment; I, therefore, trust that you will have but one ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... until close upon sunset in fact, examining them and striving to puzzle out their origin, and then made my way back to the wagon, where I found Piet and Jan rapidly working themselves into a fever of anxiety about my prolonged absence, and earnestly debating the propriety of instituting a search ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... * "Would it not be well to suggest the propriety of a meeting of Geologists and other scientific men of our country at some central point next fall,—say at New-York or Philadelphia? There are many questions in our Geology that will receive new light ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... volume has been gathering a large amount of moral and religious reading, from which selections have been made, admitting only those which may be read with propriety on the Sabbath. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... to you my grief and indignation at the result. It is needless for me to say that everything I could with propriety do I did heartily to save our University this great loss and dishonor, as well from a loving honor of you. You were too ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... session of Congress seemed specially desirable at the time, and had one been summoned by the President, many of the troubles which subsequently resulted might have been averted. The propriety of ordering an earlier assemblage of the Thirty-ninth Congress than that already provided by the Constitution had been discussed to a very considerable extent among the members of the Thirty-eighth, as its final adjournment (March 3, 1865) approached. The rebellion ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... attention from one of the many clerks sitting before him, but though one and another occasionally glanced in his direction, his presence seemed to awaken not even a passing curiosity in their minds, much less to suggest the propriety of their ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... superior advantages of the orthodox faith, nor exhibit to invited guests the rags of his alma mater's poverty. He may, perhaps, avoid the commonplace by so doing, but he will certainly transgress the rules of propriety. The commonplace at a dinner, repeated every year under so nearly similar conditions, cannot be avoided, but can be transformed by ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... model, then: fearless, incorruptible, independent, a believer in frankness and veracity; one that will call a spade a spade, make no concession to likes and dislikes, nor spare any man for pity or respect or propriety; an impartial judge, kind to all, but too kind to none; a literary cosmopolite with neither suzerain nor king, never heeding what this or that man may think, but setting ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... predilections, to put up with being laughed at—all for the sake of preventing a scandal—that is to be strong and courageous. And it is admirable, too; for it is admirable to act fearlessly in the interest of one's family, and of one's business, and of propriety. (Starts as he hears his door opened. JOHN has come along the street and gone into the house.) Is that some one coming out of my house? No, it is a man going in. And then to think of Harald Rejn beginning that nonsense about ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Station and in the operations at Mine Run. He ranked me as a major-general of volunteers by nearly a year in date of commission, but my assignment by the President to the command of the army in the valley met with Wright's approbation, and, so far as I have ever known, he never questioned the propriety of the President's action. The Sixth Corps division commanders, Getty, Russell, and Ricketts, were all educated soldiers, whose records, beginning with the Mexican War, had already been illustrated in the war of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... with their meaning on their very faces, taught opposite doctrines. I would accept nothing that seemed irrational from any quarter, unless required to do so by the plain unquestionable oracles of God. I could see no propriety in Christians encumbering their minds and clogging religion with notions bearing plain and palpable marks of inconsistency or absurdity. And if a doctrine presented itself in different religious writers in a variety of forms, I always ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... majority of the southern and western members. By some of them it was insisted that no sufficient testimony had yet been exhibited, that the taxes already imposed would not be equal to the exigencies of the public. But, admitting the propriety of additional burdens on the people, it was contended that other sources of revenue, less exceptionable and less odious than this, might be explored. The duty was branded with the hateful epithet of an excise, a species of taxation, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... stopping the annoyance. It was, that a number of old graduates, professors, and others, himself being one, should attend the lectures, listen to them with the respect they merited, and so, if possible, bring the students to a sense of propriety and of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... did not thus give way. There the propriety of secession was never aught but a question of sufficient grievance, to be settled by each State for itself, speaking through a majority of its voters. When the Secession ordinances actually passed, many individual voters in each State opposed on the ground that the occasion was insufficient; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the fifth and sixth the death of golden lads and girls and of chimney-sweepers respectively, all things manifestly very different from each other, and things which, if it were the function of verbal rhythms and metres to do this sort of thing at all, could not with any propriety have the closely related equivalents that they have here. No; to ask for this kind of effect is really to ask for nothing more valuable than the devotional crosses and altars into which a perverted wit led some of the seventeenth-century ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... vainly sought to explain the presence of the men here, and his own extraordinary position. Not for ten years, except in the case of the pursued criminal turning at bay, had an officer in the Company been subjected to such insulting and disrespectful treatment. Here, discipline and propriety, the two cardinal virtues among the Company's servants, had been grossly violated, and by men ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... went hence in the evening. Then I went with my wife, and left her at market, and went myself to the Coffee-house, and heard exceeding good argument against Mr. Harrington's assertion, that overbalance of propriety [i.e., property] was the foundation of government. Home, and wrote to Hinchinbroke, and sent that and my other letter that missed of going on Thursday last. So ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... was covered with an odorous tangle of blossoming creepers, and a nightingale overhead was shaking out love-notes with a profusion that made the Count feel his own conduct the last word of propriety. "I've always heard that in America, when a man wishes to marry a young girl, he offers himself simply face to face and without ceremony—without parents and uncles and aunts and cousins sitting round ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... leaving neither instructions nor money for the maintenance of the household. For a time the Poet was saved from the greater starvation by the care of the pretty young secretary, but without an Iron King there was no need for a foil. Sharp words were exchanged one morning over the propriety of grounds in coffee; the pretty young secretary declared that she would "have nothink more to do with him or his old potry"; and in the afternoon he packed his trunks with his own hands and with his own hands dragged them downstairs on to the pavement, leaving ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... made me the more complacent that never in her life had Miss Phoebe been guilty of the slightest deviation from the strictest propriety. (She shudders.) I was always conceiving her in your place. Oh, it was monstrous unfair to you. I stood looking at you, Miss Livvy, and seeing in my mind her and the pretty things she did, and you did not do; why, ma'am, that is how I fell in love with Miss ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... the blunder is perpetuated. If a compositor puts one for won—a very common blunder—the context will show that the ear has misled the eye; but if he change an epithet in a well-known passage, the first syllable of the right and the wrong words being the same, and the violation of the propriety not very startling, the best diligence may pass over the mistake. It must not be forgotten that many gross errors in typography occur after the sheet is gone to press, through the accidents that are constantly happening to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... cry, which hath ever since stunned the ears of all London, made so many children fall into fits, and women miscarry; "Come buy my fresh flaunders, curious flaunders, charming flaunders, alive, alive, ho;" which last words can with no propriety of speech be applied to fish manifestly dead, (as I observed before in herrings and salmon) but very justly to ten provinces, which contain many millions of living Christians. And the application is still closer, when we consider that all the people were to be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... bishops, and refers to some examples and authorities, as if he were preaching to some rebel against the church. It never even entered my imagination to say a word to him which should be lacking in the respect and propriety due to his office, but I wish only ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... affirm that Nelly lodged at the opposite side of Pall Mall, because Evelyn gossips of her leaning from her window, "talking to the king," who was lounging in St. James's Park, thereby wounding the propriety of many, who think vice only vice when it becomes notorious. Evelyn was always sadly perplexed by his faithful and high devotion to Charles, the king, and his abhorrence of the vices of Charles, the man; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... a fine curse upon whoever should move another stone from the ruins, or lay hands on La Tour D'Arthenay. Since then, no man touches this stone. It remains, as you see. It has waited till this day, for thee, its propriety." ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... place for the following curious and quaint exposition of the propriety of the selection of the rib as the material out of which our first mother Eve was formed; and the ingenious illustration which it is made to afford of the relation between wife and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... nothing of the lyrical triviality of the verse in The Feast at Solhoug about the trenchant prose of The Vikings, and the crepuscular dimness of Lady Inger is exchanged for a perfect lucidity and directness. Whatever we may think about the theatrical propriety of the conductor of the vikings, there is no question at all as to what it is they do and mean. Ibsen has gained, and for good, that master quality of translucent presentation without which all other stage gifts are shorn of their value. When we have, however, praised the limpidity of The ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... greatest excitement prevailed throughout Westminster in consequence of repeated outbreaks between the military and the lower, or perhaps we might with propriety say the lowest order of inhabitants of this populous district. The tumult having continued during the whole of the day it was anticipated, and justly, that when night came on, it would increase rather than diminish, although during the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... a case of wrecking; it's a case of trying to save something out of the wreck. Convention, Linder, is a torture-monger; it binds men and women to the stake of propriety and bids them smile while it snuffs out all the soul that's in them. We have pitted ourselves against convention in economic affairs; ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... it existed among the Romans, in the height of their power, respecting the form, extent, and surface of the globe? If we view a map drawn up according to their ideas, we are immediately struck with the form they assigned the world, and perceive with what propriety they called the extent of the world from east to west longitude or length, and the extent from north to south latitude, or breadth. In some maps, especially that drawn up from the celebrated Peutingerian ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... in Book II of The Dunciad, he complained that "to imitate Virgil is not to have Games, and those beastly and unnatural, because Virgil has noble and reasonable Games, but to preserve a Purity of Manners, Propriety of Conduct founded on Nature, a Beauty and Exactness of Stile, and continued Harmony of ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Miss Ada Azuba, and Miss Mahala Crane made their entrance. There had been a discussion about the necessity and propriety of inviting this family, the head of which kept a small shop for hats and boots and shoes. The Colonel's casting vote had carried it in the affirmative.—How terribly the poor old green de-laine did cut up in the blaze of so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Mr. Harrison kept his position, a close observer of all that transpired. I am very much in error, if, before leaving that sink of iniquity, he was not fully satisfied as to the propriety of legislating on the liquor question. Nay, I incline to the opinion, that, if the power of suppression had rested in his hands, there would not have been, in the whole state, at the expiration of an hour, a single dram-selling establishment. The goring of his ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... Ordinarily he would remonstrate with picturesque oaths at being aroused from his slumbers, and having taken the coffee from her hands, would dismiss her with a laugh. He observed the most rigid propriety in his relations with Blanquette. But this morning he directed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... declare that Professor Stuart, of Andover regarded slaveholding as lawful; for that "he had sent Archy back to his son Isaac, with an apology for his running away" to be held in perpetual slavery? With what propriety might not the professor exclaim: False, every syllable false. I sent him back, NOT TO BE HELD AS A SLAVE, but recognized as a dear brother, in all respects, under every relation, civil and ecclesiastical. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... question (on which considerable difference of opinion exists) as to the propriety of sustaining at all, at the enforced expense of the public, an educational institution to supply the needs which the College of the City of New York is intended to meet. The College exists by law; we are its guardians, and the only question ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... part to production. There are two possible empirical tests of this view. One is that a form of collective organization should be devised which should diminish the importance of the speculative market. Our principle would suggest the propriety of an attempt in that direction whenever opportunity offers. Another would be the imposition of a special tax on incomes derived from this source, and experience would rapidly show whether any such tax would actually ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... the very image of her mother. She too was just such an excellent housekeeper, a model of order, of neatness, of propriety. And she was pretty, like Doretta, even though she did not possess the fair hair and captivating ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... increased everywhere—these circumstances produced a strong impression on his not less calculating than enterprising mind. He had himself, in the course of the preceding autumn, suggested to the minister for foreign affairs, the celebrated Talleyrand, the propriety of making an effort against England in another quarter of the world:—of seizing Malta, proceeding to occupy Egypt, and therein gaining at once a territory capable of supplying to France the loss of her West Indian colonies, and the means of annoying Great ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... my dear Erskine! affected me very much. I could wish that you would form it into a tragedy, as the story is extremely pathetic, and could not fail greatly to interest the tender passions. If you have any doubts as to the propriety of their being three in number, I beg it of you to reflect that the immortal Shakespeare has introduced three daughters into his tragedy of King Lear, which has often drawn tears from the eyes of multitudes. The same author has likewise begun his tragedy of Macbeth with three witches; ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... you do not travel in your own carriage, you will find the horses and carriages equal to any others; the public houses comfortable, the country abounding with the good things of this world, whether flesh, fish, or fowl, and the road good, having occasionally what may with propriety be called gentle ascents and descents. My friends, Mr. Robert Wright, of the Senate, and Joseph H. Nicholson, of the House, who live directly on the road I have described, will confirm what I have written. Let me, then, once again enjoy your company, and that ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... if they are capable of managing so clumsily as to have such a thing happen, we cannot help it, and have nothing to do but to bear it quietly. We put our trunks in the proper place to have them brought here. We could not have done otherwise, with propriety, for that was the regular mode provided for conveying the baggage; and if there is a failure to get it here, we are not to fret about it, but to take it as we would a storm, or a break down, or any other casualty—that is, ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... Christian Science is con- sulted by her followers as to the propriety, advan- 443:3 tage, and consistency of systematic medical study, she tries to show them that under ordi- nary circumstances a resort to faith in corporeal means 443:6 tends to deter those, who make such a compromise, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... other propositions for a book, but have doubted the propriety of interfering with good newspaper engagements, except my way as an author could be demonstrated to be plain before me. But I know Richardson, and learned from him some months ago, something of an idea of the subscription ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... President report that it appears to them more eligible that the oath should be administered to the President in the outer gallery adjoining the Senate Chamber than in the Representatives' Chamber, and therefore submit to the respective Houses the propriety of authorizing their committees to take order as to the place where the oath shall be administered to the President, the resolutions of Saturday assigning the Representatives' ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by a father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restriction it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... primitive tea parties, the utmost propriety and dignity prevailed,—no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen, with no ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... different path, and every eye, perhaps with reproach, will be turned toward you. What is the rule to be observed in general conduct? Conform to every innocent custom as our social nature requires, but refuse compliance with whatever is inconsistent with propriety, decency, and the moral duties; and dare to be singular ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... comprehended the intent of the suggestion, and I approved it. While it was far from my desire to take any advantage of the Widow Schmittheimer or of anybody else, I recognized the propriety of conserving our own interests to the extent of suffering no rights of our own to be either lost or jeoparded. So while Mr. Denslow and Alice went upon their business mission I remained with Mrs. Denslow and her interesting children and elucidated my theory of ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... with great neatness, and though their manners are very much more deferential than those of servants in our country, it appears to be a difference arising quite as much from self-respect and a sense of propriety as from servility. Every body's manners are more deferential in England ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... (mores) is a synonym of habit and of usage, of convention and tradition, but also of fashion, propriety, practise, and the like. Those words which characterize the habitual are usually regarded as having essentially unequivocal meanings. The truth is that language, careless of the more fundamental distinctions, confuses ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the holy places, and all the grandees of the town, as well as several of lesser note, who have been highly gratified by making his acquaintance, he being a person of the greatest merit, and unequalled among the nation for propriety and amiability of manners; and having ourselves experienced the highest pleasure in his society we have written this to testify ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... once raises the question, What are good juvenile books? This is one of the vexed questions of the literary world, closely allied to the one which has so often been mooted in the press and the pulpit, as to the utility and propriety of novel reading. But while this question is one on which there are great differences of opinion, there are a few things which may be said on it without diffidence or the fear of successful contradiction. Of this kind is the remark that good juvenile books must have something ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... whatever it was, her revery was suddenly disturbed, and the good nature that beamed from her face dispelled, by the noisy clattering of more than one pair of little boots on the stairs. In a moment, the door opened with a jerk and a push, and in bounded three boys, with as little display of manners or propriety as so many savages might exhibit. The oldest directed his steps to the closet, singing, as he peered round among ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... had some small quantum of poetry in his nature; but he had a great deal of shrewd common sense too, and an immense idea of propriety. Accordingly, he at once took the hint as to departure; but with guileless simplicity cherished the resolution of renewing the intercourse, in an hour or two at latest, after the royal cavalcade had ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff |
