"Respectability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you a home? Was it not I who gave you a name and procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... lowest class of professed beggars, who do not trade on assumed respectability, or make a pretense of having once been better off, present to an American a spectacle, or chapter of spectacles, of which he can previously have no conception. They are situated in the most densely crowded and dirtiest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... better life can you ever hope to lead, pray? Do we not get excitement, adventure, money, pleasure—everything that makes life worth living? Neither you nor I could ever settle down to the humdrum existence of so-called respectability. But are these people who pose as being so highly respectable really any more honest than we are? No, my dear friend. The sharks on the Bourse and the sharp men of business are just as dishonest. They are thieves like ourselves under ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... fear, incurably monotonous, gives promise of being a useful actor, displayed considerable spirit in Alonzo. To the praise of diligence and attention to his business Mr. C. is entitled, and those rarely fail in any department to insure respectability and success. Mr. Cone's personal appearance is very much in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... uncertainty of the law, or no time to spare for litigation. We have recently been furnished with a curious case which occurred in Utopia, where it appears by our informant, that the laws hold great similarity with our own. A certain house of considerable respectability had imported a large quantity of Welsh cheese, which were packed in wooden boxes, and offered them for sale (a great rarity in Eutopia) as ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... replied briskly from behind my only claim on respectability. "In the first place, I didn't expect ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... considered the sequence of her inspired moves. Drifting near another shanty-boat, she passed the time of day with a runaway couple who had come down the Ohio. They had dinner together on their boat. A solitaire and an unscarred wedding ring attested to the respectability of ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... my dear Father, to keep up your health and spirits. Come what may, the conveniences of life, independence, our personal respectability, and the exercise of the intellect and the affections, we are almost certain of retaining; and everything else is a mere superfluity, to be enjoyed, but not to be missed. But I ought to be ashamed of reading you a lecture on ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... precaution of years had been justified. There lay a man! He was habited in a very genteel frock-suit, patent-leather shoes, and although it must have caused him some inconvenience in his recumbent position, upon his head was a correct plug hat. The elegance and respectability of his garb somewhat reassured Miss Almira, who was unable to believe that one so apparelled could have secreted himself under her bed for an evil purpose, when a new fear seized her, for arguing from this ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the salary of Auditor was fixed at $500. What wonder that Mr. Hempstead "felt disposed to make a motion that no gentleman or man of respectability should be appointed to any office under the Government of ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... in the Hartz Mountains; he was the serf of an Hungarian nobleman, of great possessions, in Transylvania; but, although a serf, he was not by any means a poor or illiterate man. In fact, he was rich, and his intelligence and respectability were such, that he had been raised by his lord to the stewardship; but, whoever may happen to be born a serf, a serf must he remain, even though he become a wealthy man; such was the condition of my father. My father had been married for about five ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to pay to the Princess Dowager von Reuss, nee Meier, the respect and deference due to her as the widow of the late head of the family, and to which she is justly entitled by her virtue, her blameless conduct, her respectability, beauty, and amiability. The Princess Dowager von Reuss is further authorized to let her servants wear the livery and color of my house, to display the coat- of-arms of the princes von Reuss on her carriages, and to enjoy the full privileges of her rank. If my brother ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... from any lack of fauns. But when Braxton's first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about them. We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from respectability. We did tire later. But Braxton's faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his class—wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing. And I find myself convinced altogether by Braxton's rustics. I admit that I do not know much about rustics, except from novels. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... notice, duly given to all foreigners, to leave the city before active hostilities began. How anyone, who had the choice, could be fool enough to stay and be shelled or bayoneted, was (from his point of view) no proof of respectability. I assured him he was mistaken if he thought I had a predilection for ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... with unspeakable horror from the moment of my witnessing the act of idolatrous homage rendered to a thing of wood and stone. On leaving the convent, I met a person who informed me that my poor nun was a Protestant lady of high respectability, sprung from one of those iniquitous mixed marriages, her mother belonging to the established church, her father a Romanist, who, however, honestly adhered to the terms of the wicked covenant by which the sons were to be educated in his, the daughters in her persuasion. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... a still more difficult consideration for our average men, that while all their teachers, from Solomon down to Benjamin Franklin and the ungodly Binney, have inculcated the same ideal of manners, caution, and respectability, those characters in history who have most notoriously flown in the face of such precepts are spoken of in hyperbolical terms of praise, and honoured with public monuments in the streets of our commercial centres. This is very bewildering ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... come close to my chair, and his eyes flashed with indignation.[1366] I bowed to the storm, and diverted the force of it, by leading him to expatiate on the influence which religion derived from maintaining the church with great external respectability. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... broad Lunda sword on his arm, and a curious scizzor-like instrument at his neck for cropping ears. On saying to him that his was nasty work, he smiled, and so did many who were not sure of their ears a moment: many men of respectability show that at some former time they have been thus punished. Casembe sent us another large basket of fire-dried fish in addition to that sent us at Chungu, two baskets of flour, one of dried cassava, and a pot of pombe or beer. Mohamad, who was accustomed ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... SHEEF. The cool, callous, and calculating knave may get clear through to the end; but SHEEF always was stupidly good-natured, and good-nature hangs like a millstone round the neck of rascality. I cannot myself detest him as I ought to do. He was so near to completely successful respectability. But crookedness ruined him, in spite of his better wishes. Was it altogether his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... away, through streets of a mile and a half, I should think; and they carried my things, looking after one another, so that none could run away. And being forbidden at the platform gate, for want of respectability, they set up a cheer, and I waved my hat, and promised, amidst great applause, to come back ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... silent. He had come to love his den, and his whole life here; but Father Lasse continued to enlarge upon his hopes of his son's respectability and prosperity, and he felt ashamed. "Did you imagine I was living in one of the royal palaces?" he ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... possibility in her. I should not wonder if, some day, a novelist took it into his head to show Becky as she would have been if she had had those thousands a year for which, with their accompanying chances of respectability, she so pathetically sighed. Now Valerie is, and always must have been, a catin, and nothing else. Lisbeth, again, though I admit her possibility, is not, to me, made quite probable. Hulot, very possible and probable indeed, does not interest or amuse me, and the angelic Adeline ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... accommodation. The chiefs' houses were small, but compactly built. We remarked that the water was kept in large earthen jars—like those used in the Holy Land, I conclude. The sleeping-places were neatly arranged round the rooms, and there was a general air of comfort and respectability perceptible in most of them. Very different was a peasant's hut when we entered. It was not more than twenty feet square, divided into two compartments. In the outer were calves, lambs, and fowls. In ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe for years to learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money and liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all sanctified and vanoplied with respectability and a pleasing post office address to swindle him. If he gets the money you can squeal to the police. If you get it he hocks the gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr. Tucker and me sized you up,' says I, 'and came along to see that you got what you deserved. Hand ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... thank God that they were not like other men. There is a chapter on Misers,—and who would not gladly give a penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony,—and who was ever more than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on Church-goers,—and who ever went to church for respectability's sake, or to show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk? There is a chapter on Dancing,—and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise?... We sometimes wish that Brandt's satire had been a little more searching, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Knickerbocker sires, it was an aristocratic dwelling fronting on a fashionable street, and "Jeems," in green livery, opened the hall door. The street was a quiet, orderly street in those days—a certain air of conscious respectability hung about it. Sometimes a private cabriolet rolled augustly along; and of summer evenings the city beaux, with extraordinary shoe-buckles, might have been seen promenading the grass-fringed sidewalks. To-day it is a miasmatic, miserable, muddy thoroughfare. Your ears are startled by the "Extray ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... don't do it," is the advice of the local proverb—a proverb whose warning against marrying for money is the more suggestive for being launched in a land where marrying for love is beyond the pale of respectability. To barter one's name in this mercenary manner is looked upon as derogatory to one's self-respect, although, as we have seen, to part with it for any less direct remuneration is not attended with ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... and respectability do not need justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... release from the fulfilment of some business engagement subject to penalties affixed by our criminal code. He now draped himself in white linen, dark-coloured clothes, a tall hat, and such outward marks of respectability, if not station, going even so far as to invest in kid gloves and an "umbrellier," as he called that instrument. At first sight, but for his boots, Jim might almost have been mistaken for a real gentleman. About this period, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... accepted these invitations only when she saw an opportunity thereby to further the cause of woman suffrage. She realized fully that one important step in the work was to interest women of influence, socially and financially, and the high plane of respectability which this question had now attained was at least partly due to her winters in Washington, where, at the Riggs House and in society, she met and made friends with prominent men and women from all parts of the country and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... poor Caroline has had a sad, sad history," the languid Mrs. Walker Catron would say, "and we all sympathize with her deeply; Walker always regards her as a sister." What was this dark history never came out, but its very mystery always thrilled the visitor, and seemed to indicate plainly the respectability of the hostess. An American family without a genteel skeleton in its closet could scarcely add to that gossip which keeps society from forgetting its members. Nor was it altogether unnatural that presently Mrs. Roger Catron lent herself to this sentimental deception, and began ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... some time past determined to associate with me in the bank, two gentlemen of noble fortunes and the first respectability. I would not willingly carry on the concern alone, and the accession of two such gentlemen as I describe, cannot but be in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... very unseemly deeds committed by those who, in the ordinary course, would not be guilty of such behaviour, should be attributed to his influence, so that justice might be effected without persons of assured respectability being put to any inconvenience. Apart from the feeling which resulted from this just decision, the uncongenial person in question had become exceedingly unpopular on account of certain definite actions of his own, as that of causing the greater part of Si-chow to be burned down ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... epitome of that of certain other isolated cities, was for a few short weeks an intermittently besieged garrison, a mark for wandering predatory bands composed of budmashes outlaws, escaped convicts, deserters, and huge mobs drawn from that enormous body of men who live on the margin of respectability, peaceful cultivator today, bloodthirsty dacoit to-morrow, wielders of the spade and mattock or of the lathi and tulwar[63] according to season, circumstance, and the power of the Government; recruits ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... hinted, Whitman has met with by far his amplest acceptance and appreciation in Europe. There is good reason for this, though it is not what has been generally claimed, namely, that the cultivated classes of Europe are surfeited with respectability, half dead with ennui and routine, and find an agreeable change in the daring unconventionality of the new poet. For the fact is, it is not the old and jaded minds of London, or Paris, or Dublin, or Copenhagen, that have ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... respectability of the conjuratores varied according to the importance of the case in dispute. Gregory of Tours relates, that King Gontran being suspicious as to the legitimacy of the child who afterwards became Clotaire II., his mother, Fredegonde, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... wasn't a spark of daylight ever visible on that side. "MAGSMAN'S AMUSEMENTS," fifteen foot long by two foot high, ran over the front door and parlour winders. The passage was a Arbour of green baize and gardenstuff. A barrel-organ performed there unceasing. And as to respectability,—if threepence ain't respectable, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... examination were appointed and courts of trial convened. The most improbable stories were credited. To express a doubt of witchcraft was to indicate one's own alliance with the evil spirit. Persons of the highest respectability, clergymen, magistrates, and even the governor's wife were implicated. At last, after fifty-five persons had been tortured and twenty hung, the people ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... have 300 votes in the House of Commons, and with that he calculates that they may struggle on with one-half of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the King, and a large proportion of the wealth and respectability of the country. It would be difficult, but he thought they might get on; but that the fact was, there was no going on after the transfer of power to another class, which the Reform Bill had effected. I ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... a little at this request; my correspondents, I assured the lady, were generally men of respectability, though one of them was of ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... this piece of business without any personal hurt or inconvenience, and having now retired into the tranquil respectability of private life, resolved to solace himself with half an hour or so of female society. With this amiable purpose in his mind, he bent his steps towards the house where Dolly and Miss Haredale were still confined, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... of hearts," the man had smiled to himself—"a game in which the risk is nothing and the stakes—— With millions one may accomplish much in the wilderness, or retire into smug respectability—who knows? Or, losing, if worse comes to worst, a lady who can command millions, held prisoner, should be worth dickering for. Ah, yes, dear lady! By all means, you shall be helped to Christianize the North! To educate the Indians—how ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... moment he could not see his way to accepting Mrs. Brown-Smith's spirited idea. She reluctantly acquiesced in his view of the case, but, like the other dames, promised to guarantee, if applied to, the absolute respectability of the enterprise. The usual vows of secrecy were made, and (what borders on ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... persons and river are alone changed in this extraordinary story. The actors are still living, and are persons of undoubted veracity and respectability. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... drive, as he often did, and Miss More was established in her favourite corner of the garden, just out of sight of the house. Mrs. Dubbs first exposed the situation, then expressed a strong opinion as to her own respectability, and finally asked Miss ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... by her husband, who plunged all the more deeply into scientific research, his only other thought being a care for our education. He had lived on in the same old house which grew somewhat dingier and shabbier each year, whilst the neighbourhood fell from its pristine respectability to become the resort of foreigners of somewhat doubtful character, of Bohemian ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... forte of Dowson, the new nurse, was a sublimated respectability far superior to smartness. She had been mystically produced by Benby and her bonnets and jackets alone would have revealed her selection from almost occult treasures. She wore bonnets and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... through certain tears and rifts in it. We know that a certain number of years ago there was a trading ship in the Yellow Sea, the Elizabeth Robinson, concerning the fate of which there is more mystery than is quite in accordance with either safety or respectability. She was bound from Hong-Kong to Chemulpo, and she never reached Chemulpo. But we also know that on her, when she left Hong-Kong there were two men, presumably brothers, whose names were Noah Quick and Salter Quick, set ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... there was never a man upon earth whom these conditions, considered as aerial hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more consistently fit,—we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its earliest tendencies and impulses,—in that season of immature preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation, and while yet a marvellous uncertainty hangs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... chose was one Catherine de Romanet, whose family was of great respectability but of small fortune. She is not described as ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... strenuous and passionate novelist of her period, Charles Reade, was entirely distanced by her in the immediate race for Fame. In Literature, as in all things, manners and costume are most important; the hall-mark of contemporary success is perfect Respectability. It is not respectable to be too candid on any subject, religious, moral, or political. It is very respectable to say, or imply, that this country is the best of all possible countries, that War is a noble institution, that the Protestant Religion ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sufficient Army to cooperate with them nor provisions to feed the few Soldiers that are left. I think I may venture to predict that this State will comply with the Requisitions from her, to give the utmost Respectability to our Army on so promising an Occasion. I was in the Council Chamber when I receivd your Letter & took the Liberty of reading some parts of it to the Members present. I will communicate other parts of it to some leading Members of the House ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... been for the desertion of John Wolf, who, after declaring that he would work a reformation in the printing trade similar to that which Luther had worked in religion, quietly allowed himself to be bought over, and died in eminent respectability as Printer to the City of London, leaving Ward and others to carry on the war. This they did with such effect, that, forced to find a remedy, the patentees of the Company at length agreed to relax ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... to political speeches. Preachers forgot their calling; instead of preaching love, they advocated hatred. The German saloon, being lowly and harmless, must go. In their stead came the mirrored bar with its greater influence for the spread of intemperance but clothed with more respectability outwardly. Public officials were embarrassed, cajoled and threatened. The malcontent, the meddler, the demagogue, had injected their baneful innovations into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... apology which can be alleged for the splendida peccata, as St. Austin calls the virtues of the heathen, of the present innocent criminals, is their excessive passion for literature, and otherwise the respectability of their names. According to Grose's "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," we have had celebrated collectors, both in the learned and vulgar idioms. But one of them, who had some reasons ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... any severe proceedings instituted against her people, she would at once come forward, confess herself a Christian, and throw water, instead of incense, upon the sacrificial flame. Not to speak of the venerable man's tenderness for her, such an exposure would seriously compromise his respectability, and, as he was infirm and apoplectic, it was a question whether Esculapius himself could save him from the shock which would be ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and two Russian apostles were even then engaged in tossing up who should have the privilege of seeing her home. The lot fell to Mr. Richards, the excellent Vice-President, an elderly gentleman whose carefully parted hair and flowing beard made him the very picture of respectability. To look at him, one would have said that the dear lady could not be in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and well-preserved old gentleman who, having sown a large and miscellaneous crop of wild oats in the course of a long career, had been rewarded with great wealth, and all the privileges of the highest respectability.' ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... all at once surrounded by a motley crew of curiously dressed but well-armed ruffians, whose very appearance disgusted and alarmed him. With oaths and threats the lumbering chariot, which represented in itself no little of respectability, was stopped. The appearance of such a vehicle upon the sandy road of the pine woods coming directly toward the advancing column struck the "bummers" with surprise. They made a thousand inquiries of the frightened driver, and were about to remove ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... careful. The Lucys live in Hampstead, I believe, and Hampstead enjoys the reputation of being the most respectable suburb of London. You've no idea of the sort of people you'll have to meet there. You'll terrify them, and they, my poor Kitten, will exterminate you. You don't know what respectability ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... to-morrow is not a good fact, for the promotion is more likely to fall on a bad slave than on a good or intelligent free man. Thus, the only honourable class are those who have nothing to hope from the great—I won't say anything to fear, for all have cause for that. Hence the high respectability and gentility of the merchants, who are the most independent of the Government. The English would be a little surprised at Arab judgments of them; they admire our veracity and honesty, and like us on the whole, but they blame the men for their conduct ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of workmen's houses and factories, but there were some ambitious-looking terraces. The priest stopped at a brick dwelling of fair size. It had an aspect of flaunting respectability; lintel and casements were shining with varnish; cheap starched curtains decked every window. When the priest had rung a bell which jingled inside, the door was opened by a young woman. She was not a servant, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... misery, in utter shame, mocked and insulted by all the great, the rich, the learned of His nation; one who had grown up as a man of low birth, believed by all to be a carpenter's son; without scholarship, money, respectability; even without a home wherein to lay His head—and here was the end of His life! True, He had preached noble words, He had done noble deeds: but what had they helped Him? They had not made the rich, the learned, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... benefits. Many of the girls are married from the institution, the mode of proceeding being one which is not quite consonant with our English notions on the subject. A teacher or some other young man applies to the committee for an introduction to a suitable girl, and if they are satisfied with his respectability and his means of maintaining a wife, they ascertain which of the girls desires to be married, and after the young couple have met twice or three times, if they like each other a marriage is negotiated (just as in the case of the royal families of Europe)! The ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... he said, "in order to be good housewives, must know how every thing ought to be done, and be able to do it. If they are poor, this will save them from much misery, and secure them comfort and respectability." ...
— The Pedler of Dust Sticks • Eliza Lee Follen
... things which he had a right to expect,—not that respectability which is all the world to such an establishment ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... customers' accounts for their profits. In all other respects their mode of transacting business is much the same as that of other joint-stock banks. Accounts may be opened by merchants and traders, and by private individuals of known respectability, and no par- ticular sum is required to be lodged upon open- ing the account. Formerly cheques were not allowed to be drawn for a less sum than 10, but now there is no restriction as to the amount. The profits of the bank are ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... very agreeable companion for a rising young lawyer of good family and undoubted respectability. I have no doubt, if you undertook to cultivate him, you would find him well worth ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... humanity demanded that he regard this man with veneration. Yet, offhand, without investigation, this man could jump to a vile conclusion regarding him. Not only that, but could accuse him, not of guilt, but of failing to conceal guilt!... Respectability! He knew he was watching a manifestation of the family tradition. It was wrong to commit an unworthy act, but it was a sin unspeakable to be caught by the public ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... madame had hung about her walls short texts in fancy lettering, with a great deal of scroll-work in gold and carmine to make them look pretty. When she came into possession of Leam's mind, she was shocked at her ignorance of all the sayings that were so familiar to herself and other persons of respectability. Leam knew nothing but a few barbarous prayers to saints, used more after the fashion of charms than anything else, the ave and the paternoster said incorrectly and not understood when said. Wherefore madame ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... after him, but his diminutive figure many yards away, his little bare legs misty with swiftness as he ran, was the last she ever saw of him, and her pupils had a bad time of it the rest of the day. He never even entered the street again in which she lived. Thus, after one night's brief interval of respectability, he was again a rover of the city, a flitting insect that lighted here and there, and spread wings of departure the moment a fresh ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... to be agreeable to others."—Ramsay's Cyrus. "Much, therefore, of the merit, and the agreeableness of epistolary writing, will depend on its introducing us into some acquaintance with the writer."—Blair's Rhet., p. 370; Mack's Dissertation in his Gram., p. 175. "Richard's restoration to respectability, depends on his paying his debts."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 176. "Their supplying ellipses where none ever existed; their parsing words of sentences already full and perfect, as though depending on words ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... mass of English clergy, much more rooted and profound; and a regular fund to purchase livings for those groaning and garrulous gentlemen whom they denominate (by a standing sarcasm against the regular Church) Gospel preachers and vital clergymen. I am too firm a believer in the general propriety and respectability of the English clergy, to believe they have much to fear either from old nonsense or from new; but if the Church must be supposed to be in danger, I prefer that nonsense which is grown half venerable from time, the force of which I have already tried and baffled, which at least has ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... lately—this same Mrs. Gubbins who works sixteen hours a day to bring up a large family in the greatest goodness and comfort her mother's heart can supply, and, so it seems to me, lives her prayers—which is a far finer thing than merely uttering them in public and respectability. But the clergyman whose heart is in his work, who lives for the poor and needy, and finds no greater joy than in bringing joy into the lives of others, has to make those he wishes to forget first of all ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Letter XX aright, when she did offer, after some months of prudent dalliance, to live with him at Florence, he replied that he had but L500 a year, which was not enough for two. An establishment on the confines of respectability was the last thing he desired. Neither ever loved truly; but Trelawny, for a time, felt violent physical passion for the woman whose head and shoulders remind us of what dealers call a Giorgione. Such is the story, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... would rule sovereign over the rest, and bear no rival near the throne. All would be kings, but not in turn. That powerful and sarcastic writer, Paul Louis Courier, depicts the same regiphobia as raging among the Parisian Charlatanerie of his day; and with an anxious care for his own reputation and respectability, thus purges himself from contact or connexion with it:—"Ce qui me distingue de mes contemporains et fait de moi un homme rare dans le siecle ou nous vivons, c'est que je ne veux pas etre roi, et que ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... then seventy-five years of age, was in a position in which anyone but a partisan political opponent must have been moved to pity him. He had been so long and so loudly extolled for his extreme respectability and his austere virtues that he had never dreamed that public opinion on such a point as this could turn against him. He could not endure the idea of being dismissed with contempt less than two years after his re-election to the presidency by the unanimous ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... repeated the boy with boyish confidence. 'Respectability, an excellent connexion for me, common ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... her shapely back on the apotheosis of respectability for a life of excitement and the protection of another man. Nobody was ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... forced himself into public notice as the exponent of a species of independent Conservatism. He directed a series of furious attacks against some of the occupants of the front ministerial bench, and especially that "old gang" who were distinguished rather for the respectability of their private characters, and the unblemished purity of their Toryism, than for striking talent. Mr Sclater-Booth (afterwards 1st Lord Basing), president of the Local Government Board, was the especial object of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... way lying over the Allegheny mountains. He told them of the cutthroats they would be likely to encounter—rough men, who, for adventure's sake, had gone into the war, and had never been satisfied to settle down to lives of peace and respectability after the close of the Revolution. As he paused at last, there was quiet for a minute or two. Then ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the prosaic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest Arcadian time, how changed! ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... ambitious projects. They had no intention of remaining with the good-hearted Yankee, but merely paid him a flying visit, and that with an interested motive. What they wanted of him was this. Although feeling themselves gentlemen every inch, they were not always able to convince the world of their respectability. So they resolved to have a passport, and pitched upon Zeke to manufacture it, he being well known and much respected in Imeeo. Zeke was gratified by the compliment, and set to work with a rooster's quill, and a piece of dirty paper. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... we impeach Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes at the bar of justice and humanity, as traitors before whose guilt the infamy of Benedict Arnold becomes respectability and decency." ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Rousseau, and finally informed me that two glasses of green Chartreuse were a perfect antidote to one of yellow, or two of yellow to one of green. It was immediately after this that Theodore Watts- Dunton took charge of him and reduced him to absolute respectability.' ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... thus you were twenty-four or forty-eight hours without seeing him. Surely this double existence must have weighed heavily upon him; but he was forbidden from breaking off with you, under penalty of being caught the very next day with his hand in the till. It is the respectability of his official life here which made the other possible,—that which has absorbed such enormous sums. The harsher and the closer he were here, the more magnificent he could show himself elsewhere. His household in the Rue St. Gilles was for him a certificate of impunity. Seeing him so ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... thocht o' doin, I say; but, on reflection, I changed my mind, an' determined no to gie mysel ony such trouble, but just to let things tak their course, an' trust to my ain conduct, an' the weel-kent respectability o' my faither, for the guid opinion o' the warld. Anent the rumour o' oor bankruptcy, however, I thocht there could be nae harm in puttin in an advertisement or twa, contradictory o't; an' this was accordingly done, in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the little melodrama of dishonor enacted in the office of a legal luminary at Smelter City that sweltering hot July day. When you come to observe it, Bat's recital contained nothing that might not have been posted in eminent respectability on a church warden's door. Like fresh fruit passed through a mouldy cellar, the facts came from the medium of the narrator with the unclean contagion of cellar mould. The next narrator would not pass on the facts. He would pass on the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... he had been expelled, permitted him to take his seat on the third day of January following, as a member for the County of York, after being re-elected: That in this hope, so important to the deliberate transaction of public business, so essential to the respectability of the Legislature and peace of the country, a few days' experience convinced this House there was so little reason to rely, that on the seventh day of the same month of January, it was by a large majority again deemed necessary to expel the said William Lyon Mackenzie, for a repetition ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... wealth; I am respectability," the Fortune explained; "I am elegant houses, a yacht, and a clean shirt every day. I am leisure, I am travel, wine, a shiny hat, and an unshiny coat. ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... incredible in this? When we consider that traffic in strong drink means a trade in the souls of men, women and children, and in innocence, virtue and hope; when we remember that the bartender daily takes from his customers the price of food, clothes, health, respectability and all that he has of real value in the world, and gives him in return nothing but liquid ruin; when we know that the rumseller's business is a sort of wholesale murder continually, inasmuch as by it millions of lost souls are sent into eternity annually; in view of all these facts, why ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... she faced him, buttoning it with nimble fingers the while. "This is the garment of respectability," she declared. "It isn't much of a fit, is it? But I shall grow to it in time. Do you know, I believe I'm going to like being ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... standing" not only of her church, but also of the best society in the small inland city where she resided, and few greater misfortunes in her estimation could occur than to lose this status. She never hesitated to humor any of her son's whims and wishes which did not threaten their respectability, but the quick-witted boy was not long in discovering that she would not tolerate any of those vices and associations which ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... d'Este. It is singular that the young man, witnessing the wretchedness of his father's life, should not have shunned a like career of gilded misery and famous indigence. But Torquato was born to reproduce Bernardo's qualities in their feebleness and respectability, to outshine him in genius, and to outstrip him in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... apprenticed himself to a useful trade, and is now an intelligent mechanic. Out of his time, an industrious, sober youth of two and twenty, supporting by his industry, his mother and sister in comfort and respectability. He heard of my sickness, and on Wednesday morning called to see me, proffering his services as a nurse and watchman, prompted by gratitude for the past. I declined his kindness for the present, as I told him casually of the dog whose midnight barking was killing ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... which he has portrayed the life of the brilliant yet corrupt society in which his lot was cast. It lives before us in all its splendour and in all its squalor. The court, with its atmosphere of grovelling flattery, its gross vices veiled and tricked out in the garb of respectability; the wealthy official class, with their villas, their favourites, their circle of dependants, men of culture, wit, and urbanity, through all which runs, strangely intermingled, a vein of extreme coarseness, vulgarity, and meanness; the lounger and the reciter, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... and action Browning brought us long ago. Tennyson did not, save at intervals when the poet over-rode the man. This differentiates the men. But it also tells us why Browning was not read fifty years ago, when social conventions were tyrannous and respectability a despot, and why he has been read for the last fifteen years and is ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... horse-dealers, be surprised if he is sometimes the victim of these learned ways. But these are the exceptional cases, which prove the existence of a better state of things. The great masses of society among us are not thus deserted; there are few families of respectability, from the shopkeeper in the next street to the nobleman whose mansion dignifies the next square, which do not contain among their dependents attached and useful servants; and where these are absent altogether, there are good reasons for it. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... she went, like a miserable emanation of her own personality. She always shrank back lest others noticed it, and she always would. She particularly shunned strangers. The sight of a strange woman clothed about with utter respectability and strictest virtue intimidated her beyond her power of self-control, for she always wondered if she had been told about her, and realized that, if she had, her old disgrace had assumed in this new mind a ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... literary point of view Peace was unfortunate even in the hour of his notoriety. In the very year of his trial and execution, the Annual Register, seized with a fit of respectability from which it has never recovered, announced that "the appetite for the strange and marvellous" having considerably abated since the year 1757 when the Register was first published, its "Chronicle," hitherto a rich mine of extraordinary ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands, and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability;—if indeed there be an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for the most fanciful to imagine Silent Simon married. Even in his youth he had not been attracted by the other sex, and his own qualities certainly did not attract them. Not that there was a word to be said seriously against him. Hard and shrewd though he was, his respectability was extreme and his observance of the conventions scrupulous to a fault. He was an elder of the Kirk, a non-smoker, an abstemious drinker (to be an out and out teetotaler would have been a little too remarkable in those regions for a man of Mr. Rattar's conventional tastes), and indeed ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... watched the comedy and the unconscious actors playing their parts, and felt that the air was filled with heavy sensuous perfume, and the lights were garish, and that there was wanting entirely that keen cool atmosphere which Mallock calls 'the ozone of respectability'. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... old, Brangwen sent her to the dames' school in Cossethay. There she went, flipping and dancing in her inconsequential fashion, doing very much as she liked, disconcerting old Miss Coates by her indifference to respectability and by her lack of reverence. Anna only laughed at Miss Coates, liked her, and patronized her in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... flowers," say the Chinese, "like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those who have large feet are either, speaking generally, ladies of easy virtue or slave ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... look at the degraded condition of the country before the war,—the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad; security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and Constitution are placed on a solid ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... or white slave, or servant, at this period was regarded as an evidence of dignity and respectability; and hence magistrates and clergymen winked at the violation of the law by the mercenary traders, and supplied themselves without scruple. Indian slaves were common, and are named in old wills, deeds, and inventories, with horses, cows, and household furniture. As early as ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the flighty Frenchman waited not for the completion of the ceremony he had proposed, but, taking on trust the respectability of the strangers, he hastily led the way to his cottage. Burr noticed that he was attired in a tight-fitting suit of brown cloth, clean and well pressed but threadbare and redeemed from shabbiness only by the stitch in time. The feminine apparition ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... it," said St. Clare. "You ladies go to church to learn how to get along in the world, I suppose, and your piety sheds respectability on us. If I did go at all, I would go where Mammy goes; there's something to keep a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I think, perhaps, in the present state of the law in America, I shall not be asked to give the name of my correspondent (hear), but he is a gentleman of the highest respectability. If any honourable member wishes, I should have no hesitation in handing the whole correspondence, with the original letters, into the hands of you, sir, or the First Minister of the Crown, in strict confidence, ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... their solid, sure clients in small towns were in those days often cordially intimate. The traveller came with the lustre of a historic reputation around him; there was no need to fawn for orders; and the client's immense and immaculate respectability made him the equal of no matter what ambassador. It was a case of mutual esteem, and of that confidence-generating phenomenon, "an old account." The tone in which a commercial traveller of middle ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... selected from the common seamen, and whose duty mostly stations him in the stern of the ship, where the captain walks. His business is to carry the glass on the look-out for sails; hoist or lower the colors; and keep an eye on the helmsman. Picked out from the crew for their superior respectability and intelligence, as well as for their excellent seamanship, it is not unusual to find the quartermasters of an armed ship on peculiarly easy terms with the commissioned officers and captain. This ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... they do not know how to spend it. The same income that enables a clergyman, a lawyer, a medical practitioner, a government functionary, or any other member of the middle classes earning his livelihood by professional labor, to support himself and his family in comfort and respectability, will seldom keep a literary man out of debt and difficulty—seldom provide him with a comfortable well-ordered home, creditable to himself and his profession. It is ten to one that he lives untidily; ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... two studies: you are my study for the success, the credit, and the respectability of a quiet, tranquil character; Mary is my study for the contempt, the remorse, the misconstruction which follow the development of feelings in themselves noble, warm, generous, devoted, and profound, but which, being too freely revealed, too frankly bestowed, are not estimated at their ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... stopped, discharged the fairest fare it had ever carried, and rattled off, leaving Sofia just a trifle daunted and dubious, the animation of her anticipations something dashed by the uncompromising respectability, the self-conscious ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... or Amenaide, by his side, you may see Thrum walking to evening church with his lady, and hymns are sung there of his own composition. He belongs to the "Athenaeum Club," he goes to the Levee once a year, he does everything that a respectable man should; and if, by the means of this respectability, he manages to make his little trade far more profitable than it otherwise would be, are we to quarrel ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had not tasted animal food since the 14th inst.; there was no game, neither were there any doves or birds of any kind, except occasional vultures, which, after sitting upon a dead tree and regarding us for some time, went off with a low opinion of our respectability. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... of a sofa bedstead! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility—an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and designing fraud—we question whether you could insult him more, than by insinuating that you entertain the least ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... show a bar of great respectability, and I may add that its members were, with few exceptions, gentlemen of general information and courteous manners. The litigation which chiefly occupied them and gave the largest remuneration related to mines and mining claims. The ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... if it never takes place," she added with a little dignity; "no, I can live without you. It is aunt I think of. She is so proud, and thinks so much of her family respectability, that she will be cut down with mortification if this story should get abroad before—it is done. My cousin Clym, too, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Rose. "Two beautiful and accomplished ladies go to church and give respectability to two of the wild tribe of the West, by marrying them, and they forget ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... city in the world for the tourist who desires liberty as wide as the wind, and who wishes to live cheaply and live well. In New York, if you want lodgings at a moderate price, you must throttle your pride and forsake respectability; but they do things different in Lunnon, you know. From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile—a section, as they say out West—of lodging-houses. Once ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... habits, temperaments and hereditary moral and physical conditions without the production of many evil consequences. It matters little what the social condition may be; the hurt of drink is the same. The sphere of respectability may and does guard many. Culture and pride of position hold others free from undue sensual indulgence. But with the larger number the enticements of appetite are as strong and enslaving in one grade of society as in another, and the disturbance of normal conditions as great. And so you see that ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... "With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is always the case when a man and a woman live under the same roof, either married or unmarried! ... I am afraid that is it in plain words. But I will do my best to make it tolerable ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... station, where he grimly set down his bruised and discomfited passengers. As Key mingled with them, he could not help perceiving that neither the late "orator's" explanation of his exemption from their fate, nor the driver's surly corroboration of his respectability, had pacified them. For a time this amused him, particularly as he could not help remembering that he first appeared to them beside the mysterious horseman who some one thought had been identified as one of the masks. But he was not a little piqued to find that the fair ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... branch of the Civil Service located in Somerset House, which has little else to redeem it from the lowest depths of official vulgarity than the ambiguous respectability of its material position. This is the office of the Commissioners of Internal Navigation. The duties to be performed have reference to the preservation of canal banks, the tolls to be levied at locks, and disputes with the Admiralty as to points connected ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... essentially a commonplace pretty being, and she cannot understand the great heart and brain that are sacrificed to her; so the genius is forced to break his heart about furniture and carpets and respectability, while the prim pretty young woman who causes the ghastly death of a soul goes on fancying herself a model of good sense and virtue and all the rest. "Of course I should like you to make discoveries," she says; but she only shudders at the microscopic work. When ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Lady Aylmer had twice attacked him on the Saturday, and had expressed her opinion that affairs were in a very frightful position. Belinda went about the house in melancholy guise, with her eyes rarely lifted off the ground, as though she were prophetically weeping the utter ruin of her brother's respectability. And even Sir Anthony had raised his eyes and shaken his head, when, on opening the post-bag at the breakfast-table an operation which was always performed by Lady Aylmer in person her ladyship had exclaimed, ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... with all the improvements about the place which the Squire had commenced, and was active in making acquaintance with every one who lived upon his land. He was not without good instincts, and understood thoroughly that respectability had many more attractions than a character for evil living. He was, too, easily amenable to influence from those around him; and under Gregory's auspices, was constant at his parish church. He told himself at once ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... beauty of everything connected with the materiel employed; the massive solidity and apparent indestructibility of the various structures erected and afloat; the method everywhere observable; the perfect organisation and the steady respectability of the light-keepers—observe and note all these things, we say, and it will be impossible to return from the investigation without a feeling that the management of this department of our coast service is in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... her with great satisfaction. The brown wincey and the coarse apron seemed to her the neophyte's robe, betokening Baubie's conversion from arab nomadism to respectability and from a vagabond trade to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... Henry Plantagenet soon joined her, and they were married. The marriage took place only six weeks after her divorce from her former husband. This was considered a very scandalous transaction throughout, and Eleanora was now considered as having forfeited all claims to respectability of character. Still she was a great duchess in her own right, and was now wife of the heir-apparent of the English throne, and so her character made little difference in the estimation in which she was held by ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... he has been promoted!' said the Darning-needle. 'I remain here; I am too fine. But that is my pride, which is a sign of respectability!' And she sat there very proudly, thinking ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang |
