"Propriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [Footnote 3: Elixir of propriety, of vitriol, stomach essence, tincture of castor, bezoartic tincture, tincture of euphorbia. For the wonderful properties of the bezoar-stone (really a concretion found in the intestines of the wild goat, or, sometimes, a coprolite) and its derivatives, see Eggleston, Transit ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... saints repose are opaque and solid; cherubs in countless multitudes, a swarm of merry children, crawl about upon these feather-beds of vapour, creep between the legs of the apostles, and play at bopeep behind their shoulders. There is no propriety in their appearance there. They take no interest in the beatific vision. They play no part in the celestial symphony; nor are they capable of more than merely infantine enjoyment. Correggio has sprinkled ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... herself. But for the fact that the name of Vanderpoel represented wealth so enormous as to amount to a sort of rank in itself, Bettina would not have been received. The proprietress of the institution had gravely disquieting doubts of the propriety of America. Her pupils were not accustomed to freedom of opinions and customs. An American child might either consciously or unconsciously introduce them. As this must be guarded against, Betty's first few months at the school were not agreeable ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had given him little opportunity. His own voice pleased the lay-preacher, and he had orated on every subject from politics to street-paving, giving his companion little chance for anything but monosyllabic comments. But finally Will's chance came. Abe had abruptly questioned the propriety of permitting marriage in their village, where the burden of keeping the offspring of the union was likely to fall upon the public shoulders. Will plunged into the midst of the man's oratory, and would ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... for nature; with her art is only beautiful as an echo or shadow of it. She is praising the hansom cab by theme and theory, but her soul is still a child by the sea, picking up shells. She can never be utterly of the town, as a man can; indeed, do we not speak (with sacred propriety) of 'a man about town'? Who ever spoke of a woman about town? However much, physically, 'about town' a woman may be, she still models herself on nature; she tries to carry nature with her; she bids grasses to grow on her head, and furry beasts to bite her about ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and general congratulations took the place of the prayers. Philip's popularity was now assured. All opposition vanished and the American became a lion indeed. Bensef no longer hesitated as to the propriety of inviting the stranger to his house. As parnas he must be the first to do him honor and after the services were at an end the invitation was ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... place below the salt. Mr. Athel, though, as we have seen, anxious to indulge himself in humane regard whenever social regulations permitted, was the last man to suffer in his household serious innovations upon traditional propriety. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... a sense of propriety dictated Addie's answer and gave sharpness to her voice: "I should say she was perfectly welcome ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... question of dignity. The magistrates raised difficulties in point of form, and asked for time to discuss the matter fundamentally; and deputies went to carry their request to the king. He admitted the propriety of delay, but with this comment: "I know that there are in my Parliament good sort of men, wise men; but I also know that there are turbulent and rash fools; I have my eye upon them; and I am informed of the language they dare to hold about ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... South it 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
... venerable peasant; "when we were ignorant men, and possessed no property of our own except these staffs in our hands, we were destitute of all manly motives for propriety of conduct; but you have taught us to read out of the Holy Book, how to serve God and honor the king. And shall we not respect laws which thus bestow on us, and ensure to us, the fruits of our labors and the favor ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... I'm not going to regulate my conduct according to the villagers' standard of propriety," she ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... interests and connexions subsisting among the powers of the continent; and he infinitely surpassed all the ministers in learning and capacity. He was indeed the only man of genius employed under this government. He spoke with ease and propriety, his conceptions were just and lively; his inferences bold; his counsels vigorous and warm. Yet he depreciated his talents, by acting in a subordinate character to those whom he despised; and seemed to look upon the pernicious measures of a bad ministry with silent contempt, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... James I. when it was restricted to eight per cent. It was reduced to six per cent. soon after the Restoration, and by the 12th of Queen Anne, to five per cent. All these different statutory regulations seem to have been made with great propriety. They seem to have followed, and not to have gone before, the market rate of interest, or the rate at which people of good credit usually borrowed. Since the time of Queen Anne, five per cent. seems to have been rather above than below the market rate. Before the late war, the government borrowed ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... long in the parlour before the door opened, and in came Miss Lizzie with two dolls tucked clumsily under her arm. She was followed by her brother John, a year or so younger than herself, not simply to play propriety at our interview, but to show his own two whips in emulation of his sister's dolls. I did my best to make myself agreeable to my visitors, showing much admiration for the dolls and dolls' dresses, and, with a very serious demeanour, asking many questions about their age and character. I do ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... immediately to the Tonnant, with any comfort to himself, it was quite impossible; my cabin was without furniture; I had not even a servant on board. He said he would willingly mess anywhere; I told him that the ward-room was already crowded; and besides, I could not with propriety take him, he being a foreigner, without leave of the Admiralty. He seemed greatly hurt at this, and recalled to my recollection certificates which he had formerly shewn me from persons in official situations; ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... overwhelming reflection, and remove the sense of uneasiness arising from a disorder in her stomach. In a word, she became an habitual dram-drinker; and this practice exposed her to such communication as debauched her reason, and perverted her sense of decorum and propriety. She and her husband gave a loose to vulgar excess, in which they were enabled to indulge by the charity and interest of some friends, who ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... said this, the wise doctor hoped in his heart that she would not be offended with his plain speaking, and that some good angel would suggest to Marion Wilbur the propriety of ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... Amante's cares, was returning to our chilled bodies. After supper, the old woman grew drowsy; but she seemed uncomfortable at the idea of going to sleep and leaving us still in the house. Indeed, she gave us pretty broad hints as to the propriety of our going once more out into the bleak and stormy night; but we begged to be allowed to stay under shelter of some kind; and, at last, a bright idea came over her, and she bade us mount by a ladder to a kind of loft, which went half over the lofty ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had been forced by Mr. Darrow to love before her husband died. Mr. Darrow manufactured, with five strokes of his pen, an engine and a tunnel to crush the life out of the poor fellow, whom an immoral romancer would have allowed to live on and marry the lady, and with perfect propriety too, since the hero and the heroine were both of them the very models of virtue, in spite of the love which they did not seek, and which Mr. Darrow deliberately and almost brutally thrust into their otherwise happy lives. Of course the railway accident was needed to give the climax to the story, ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... and been lost in the sea. By another accident, equally fortunate, two labouring men at work in the neighbourhood, were led by curiosity secretly to follow the Lieutenant and his myrmidons up to the Stone. Having witnessed, from a secure hiding-place, all that occurred, the two workmen, with great propriety, immediately hurried off to inform the lord of the manor of the wanton act of destruction which they had ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... propriety be remarked, that in all countries where literature is protected, and it never can flourish where it is not, the works of an author are his legal property; and to treat letters in any other light than this, is to ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... change and whiten at her words—"not yet. It is all so sudden, so unexpected; and you forget I am not accustomed to this sort of thing. Now, the curates"—with an irrepressible smile—"never went on like this: they always behaved modestly and with such propriety." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... Mrs. Almayer had listened curiously, their bodies bent and their ears turned towards the passage. At every louder shout they nodded at each other with a ridiculous affectation of scandalised propriety, and they remained in the same attitude for some time after the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... her to have anything more to do with him? My love, with all my respect for your judgment, I must differ from you. Audrey is not the girl to propose anything so indelicate—so altogether wanting in propriety—as to thrust herself upon a man who very properly declines to marry her. No, no; we will have Graham down. He is a first-rate fellow, and when he makes up his mind to a thing, he sticks at nothing. That's the way to win ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... now grew a little overcast, and a shower seemed at hand. Prudence, who had on a new bonnet, suggested the propriety of putting to shore for half an hour; Courage was for braving the rain; but, as most of the Virtues are ladies, Prudence carried it. Just as they were about to land, another boat cut in before them very uncivilly, and gave theirs such a shake ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... created; but these, and still more the theories of pure critics, are of no importance, either in the field of abstract critical theory or of historical inquiry. Fontenelle, offended at the odour of Theocritus' hines, Rapin, with his Jesuitical prudicity and ethico-literary theories of propriety, are not the kind of thinkers to advance critical and historical science. Yet it was to their school that the far greater English critics of the early eighteenth century belonged. Their work consists for the most part of various combinations of a ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... 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 a cask of ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... came on board were not cabin visitors; I am not even aware that they paid their respects to our excellent captain; but I feel compelled to add that, while on board, they behaved with the utmost propriety. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... o'clock that night rather reluctantly. The doctor had said Mr. Croft could sit up with the boy unless he grew much worse, and there was no propriety in her staying longer unless ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to one of his books the title "Joyful Wisdom"—an absurd misnomer. That which he mistook for joy was the delirium of an unbalanced mind. The philosophy of Christ might with propriety be called Joyful Wisdom; it leads one into the path of happiness that ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... arms of the modest maiden were flushed with indignant crimson. "Was it for this purpose," she said, "that I was induced to yield my own sense of propriety to the solicitations of Pericles? It is ever thus, when we disobey the gods, to please mortals. How could I believe that any motive so harmless as idle curiosity induced that seductive and dangerous woman to urge me ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... injustice are none of the faculties, neither of the body nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his senses and passions. They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's, that he can get; and for so long as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is actually ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... mournful consequences can be so directly traced. Why, if the object, especially, of her affection deserve and requite it, why should she bury it as a weakness in her soul? The cases are very rare, in which there is no one to whom a secret of this description may with propriety, and ought, to be frankly confided. The peril ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... sweetness of private virtues. Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to depreciate what it can not equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care, neatness, and propriety which announce the respect of self as well as of others. While the dregs of the nation elevate the flatterers and corrupters of the people to station—while cut-throats swear, drink, and clothe themselves in rags, in order to fraternize with the populace, Buzot possesses the morality of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... The pilot replied, that it was in vain to think of her, and that it was impossible for her to resist so furious a tempest; but in case that, by some wonderful accident, or rather by some miracle, she had been preserved, she must of necessity be at fifty leagues distance from the ship. It is the propriety of Christian confidence to remain unshaken and secure, when human reason leaves us destitute of hope. The Saint acknowledged the pilot to have spoken judiciously, and yet doubted not but the chalop would return. He constantly maintained that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... which, as it was the quietest spot in the neighbourhood, we deemed a fitting place for the arrangement of our forces. Dartmore, Staunton, (a tall, thin, well formed, silly youth,) and myself, marched first, and the remaining three followed. We gave each other the most judicious admonitions as to propriety of conduct, and then, with a shout that alarmed the whole street, we renewed our way. We passed on safely enough till we got to Charing-Cross, having only been thrice upbraided by the watchmen, and once threatened by two carmen of prodigious size, to whose wives or sweethearts we had, to our ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mrs. Crane, 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 many ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as there are in what is genteel. The characteristics of a gentleman are high feeling—a determination never to take a cowardly advantage of another—a liberal education—absence of narrow views—generosity and courage, propriety of behaviour. Now a person may be genteel according to one or another of the three standards described above, and not possess one of the characteristics of a gentleman. Is the emperor a gentleman, with spatters of blood on his clothes, scourged from the backs of noble Hungarian ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the day was fast declining. He simply moved his train of women to another hut, where, after seating himself upon his throne, with his women around him, he invited me to approach the nearest limits of propriety, and to sit as before. Again he asked me if I had seen him—evidently desirous of indulging in his regal pride; so I made the most of the opportunity thus afforded me of opening a conversation by telling him of those grand reports I had formerly heard about him, which ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... had come in with the evening paper, and the implied suggestion of the propriety of going to dress before he roused himself. He decided not to dress, as he was going to spend the evening alone, and, instead, he seated himself at the piano with his copy of the Meistersingers and, mechanically at first, with the ragged ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of its platitudes and the stereotyped commonness of its metaphors. The writer who is afraid of originality feels himself in deep water when he launches into a commonplace. For him who is timid because weak, there is no advice, except suggesting the propriety of silence. For him who is timid because fastidious, there is this advice: get rid of the superstition about chastity, and recognise the truth that a style may be simple, even if it move amid abstractions, or employ ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the ugly affairs of death, so that he 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
... the more dreadful, because the raging element below had long since forced a passage beneath it; and, the breach being continually widened by the equinoctial storms, it was at length so far undermined that it seemed to hang like an archway in the air; and the narrow causeway might now with some propriety be termed a sea-bridge. ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas, or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the propriety of enfranchising the women of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... big class-room once a fortnight, and the daily making of their little beds. For the rest, monotonous walks up and down the garden-paths in small parties, or about the dreary roads two and two in long lines, was their only exercise, and even in this they were restricted to such a severe propriety of demeanour that it almost seemed as if the object were to teach them to move without betraying the fact that they had legs. The consequence of all this restraint was a low state of vitality among the girls, and the outbreak of morbid phases that sometimes went right through the school. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... rebuked, father," replied Stephen, humbly; "and entreat your pardon for having ventured to differ with you. I am now fully sensible of the propriety of your conduct." ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... just placed the crown on your head!" I did not hear this, and I cannot vouch for the truth of its having been said. I could only have ascertained that fart through Bonaparte, and of course I could not, with propriety, remind him of a thing which must have been very offensive to him. However, whether true or not, the observation was circulated about, verbally and in writing, and Bonaparte knew it. Hence the small degree of favour shown to Kellerman, who was not made ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... slang, into Carlylisms, into vague generalities about infinitudes and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary—written in that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is, disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness—forms perhaps the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous, tinged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... feelings which have ever actuated the inhabitants of the Highlands and the Hebrides. The plant of loyalty is there in full vigour, and the Brunswick graft now flourishes like a native shoot. To that spirited race of people I may with propriety apply the elegant lines of a modern poet, on the 'facile temper of the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... The poem is full of consolation for the mourner, of assurances of joy hereafter, of warnings against the pomps and vanities of the world, and closes with the victory of the saints over death and the grave. It might with more propriety be called "a sacred cantata." The work has seven numbers,—two baritone solos and chorus, soprano solo and chorus, and four separate choruses. It was first performed at Bremen on Good Friday, 1868, and in 1873 was first heard in England. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... of the European, the tribes were probably nearly in a state of equilibrium, and were in the main sedentary, and those tribes which can be said with propriety to have been nomadic became so only after the advent of the European, and largely as the direct result of the acquisition of the horse ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Mr. Parker, nor can it be acquired by effort. Vigour we may cultivate, and clearness we must; it is essential. On a level with these I should place propriety. Propriety teaches us to regulate our speech by the occasion; to be incisive at times and at times urbane; to adapt the 'how' to the 'when,' as I might put it. I do not think—I really do not think—that Christmas Eve is ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and heart-rending though they might be to a young lady of exquisite sensibility, did not convince Laura of the propriety of Blanche's conduct in many small incidents of Little Frank, for instance, life might be very provoking, and might have deprived Blanche of her mamma's affection, but this was no reason why Blanche should box the child's ears because he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... abrupt, and fierce reformer would have had no weight with the most courteous and polite people of whom history speaks; whose manners twenty-five hundred years ago were substantially the same as they are at the present day,—a people governed by the laws of propriety alone. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... following account of Billy Bolton may, with propriety, be inserted here:- It was a lovely September day, and the scene was Arncliffe, a retired village in Littondale, one of the most secluded of the Yorkshire dales. While sitting at the open window of the humble hostelrie, we heard what we, at first, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... clings to the same idea which pervaded "The Play-thing." Its second title reads: "A private TUTOR for little MASTERS and MISSES." The contents show that this purpose was carried out. It tutored them by giving directions for reading with eloquence and propriety; by presenting "the antient and present State of Great Britain with a compendious History of England;" by instructing them in "the Solar System, geography, Arts and Sciences" and the inevitable "Rules for Behaviour, Religion and Morality;" and it ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... avoided wounding my feelings by remonstrance, and allowed me to pursue the system I had adopted, rather than deprive herself of my society, which would have been the consequence had I not been left at liberty to follow the dictates of my own sense of propriety in a course from which I was resolved that even Her Majesty's displeasure should ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Philometor and Cleopatra whispered together, shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads; and Publius, pressing his hand on the Corinthian's wrist, said in his ear: "You will not give them any help if you value our friendship; we will leave as soon as we can do so with propriety." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been given all power in heaven and on earth." The fresco of the Camposanto at Pisa, ascribed to Orcagna, shows the transfigured Virgin sitting by the side of Christ, not below Him. The numerous legends in which Mary, often regardless of justice and propriety, delivers her faithful worshippers from all manner of dangers, were written during the same period. One of the most famous of these is the legend of Theophilus, the forerunner of Faust. In a German version (by Brun of Schoenebeck) dating from ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... means of persuading Carlino to start immediately. Noemi was frightened. For her own peace of mind, as well as for Don Clemente's, her brother-in-law would not wish Jeanne Dessalle to return to Subiaco. It was Noemi's mission to convince her of the propriety of such a renunciation. Selva was restored to health, and had himself offered to come and meet his sister-in-law, would even come to Belgium, were it necessary. She now tried to oppose the idea of immediate departure; but only succeeded ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... for my part," said Scribbo, "see the propriety of elevating these contemptible captives to share equal privileges with the native sons of Chaldea. Surely the king, in this, has betrayed a lamentable lack ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... make my peace with Eleonore. Therefore, will you at once ask Modeste to send me back that paper, and tell her, from me, that I make no pretensions to her hand. Say I count upon her delicacy, upon her propriety as a young girl, to behave to me as if we had never known each other. I beg her not to speak to me; I implore her to treat me harshly,—though I hardly dare ask her to feign a jealous anger, which would help ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... inquiringly; for Claire had always informed me elaborately that van Tuiver had been her one departure from propriety, and always ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... which they bury with all solemnity in the said royal chapel. It has its own chaplain-in-chief and other subordinates, who, besides serving there, fill the chaplaincies of the galleons and armies, when there are any. It has its sacristans and other assistants for the service, propriety, and pomp of the worship; and a fine band of singers, with suitable salaries. The adornment, furnishings, ornaments, sacred vessels, altars, and reredoses correspond to the reality of the name. Among all those things, the first place is given to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... out of innumerable instances, that every day seemed to multiply, of petty mortifications which Mr. Tyrrel was destined to endure on the part of Mr. Falkland. In all of them Mr. Falkland conducted himself with such unaffected propriety, as perpetually to add to the stock of his reputation. The more Mr. Tyrrel struggled with his misfortune, the more conspicuous and inveterate it became. A thousand times he cursed his stars, which took, as he apprehended, a malicious pleasure in making Mr. Falkland, at every turn, the instrument ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... below, the hall extends entirely through the house, and following a frequent custom of the time was finished in a different order of architecture, the pulvinated Ionic being chosen, no doubt, for its lighter grace and greater propriety adjoining bedchambers. In furtherance of this thought, only the cornice with its jig-sawed modillions was employed at the ceiling and the flat dado was paneled off by the application of moldings to give it a lighter scale. The complete entablature was used only over the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... man. If I could tell the items, I would, I declare; For I always oblige you whenever I can. I know that of dresses she has a variety, Though vanity's not her predominant passion, She was costumed, no doubt, with the greatest propriety, In the very extreme of the reigning fashion. Well! she stopped to listen, a minute or more, To the fellow's mischievous harangue, before She resolved what to do; then she stepped to the door Of an Astor Place car, and beckoned to him, And he followed at once, ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... pretending to find the meaning of the word, would say, "Very well, Sir; now please to go on."' Forster's Essays, ii. 307. Dr. Gower is mentioned by Dr. King (Anec., p. 174) as one of the three persons he had known 'who spoke English with that elegance and propriety, that if all they said had been immediately committed to writing, any judge of the language would have pronounced it an excellent and very beautiful style.' The other two were Bishop ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... yet it is not wholly such, but partly national and partly federal; some of the federal features of the confederation having been retained in the constitution, as will appear on a further examination of this instrument. Hence the union is still called, with propriety, the federal union, and the government the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... the business," said the thimble-rigger. Though ready to hit people when he is angry, "a more civil and pleasant-spoken person than yourself," says Ursula, "can't be found." His own opinion was "that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in propriety of behaviour. . . . That his appearance was not particularly against him, his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox that has lost his tail." It ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... interests are now one," continued the new member suavely, "propriety seems to demand that I should tell you the Mitchell-Zurich affair has no secrets from me. If young Stanley is in prison, it is ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... interests, were wholly with the Independents; all that the Army had done had his approbation; and, whatever he might have had to say now (with the strong new lights he had obtained since 1641) as to the propriety of a Presbyterian Establishment on its own merits, he was probably prepared to accept such an Establishment, if with a sufficient guarantee of Toleration. Now, although he cannot have retained, more than other people, any strong confidence in Charles personally, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... acquainted with the fact that the firm of Russell, Majors, & Waddell were operating a daily coach from the Missouri River to Salt Lake City, and he urged Mr. Russell to consider seriously the propriety of starting a pony express over the same route, and from Salt Lake ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... but these in a line different from that in which any other belonging to this class had yet moved. Mr. George White, a clergyman of the established church, and Mr. John Chubb, suggested to Mr. William Tucket, the mayor of Bridgewater, where they resided, and to others of that town, the propriety of petitioning parliament for the abolition of the Slave Trade. This petition was agreed upon, and, when drawn ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the party the next day by me, she being determined to stay at home and take care of her child, in which resolution I concurred. Still I had no idea that the dear little thing would not do very well again, though I was now convinced of the propriety of my father's rebuke, and had not the least doubt in my own mind that the illness was occasioned by the mother's long absence from her child. I went to the dinner, and my father was the first to applaud ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the professions than to business. Many of their family names have been familiar in history to succeeding generations since the early settlement of New England. They were intellectual leaders then and they are intellectual leaders now. If I could with propriety I'd like to give here a list of half a dozen of these men and women who came, in time, to revive for me my belief that after all there still is left in this country the backbone of a worthy old stock. But they don't need any such ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... an inquiry into the truth of Dr Smith's argument, as we cannot with propriety proceed to the main question, till this preliminary ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... subject under the same title. On the question of good taste I do not wish to say much, except that I should have thought that any colleague of mine, even an entirely new Professor in a provincial university, would have recognised the propriety of at least communicating to me his intention ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... with his friend at the foot of the Great Pyramid and they will take up the question they had been talking about under "the great elm," and forget all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's telling another that his argument was absurd; one maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible logical term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad absurdum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational bully. Mighty little ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of the poet's, joined with conscientious misgivings on his part as to the propriety of his course in writing for the stage, led him now, at the early age of thirty-eight, to renounce tragedy altogether. His son Louis, from whose life of Racine we have chiefly drawn our material for the present sketch, conceives this change ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... to task once or twice about the propriety of playing at backgammon with Sir Pitt, saying that it was a godless amusement, and that she would be much better engaged in reading "Thrump's Legacy," or "The Blind Washerwoman of Moorfields," or any work of a more serious ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inhabitants of the Nile Valley used implements of chipped stone, when their pottery was made without the use of the potter's wheel, and when they buried their dead in curiously cramped attitudes without attempt at mummification. These aboriginal inhabitants of Egypt cannot perhaps with strict propriety be spoken of as living within the historical period, since we cannot date their relics with any accuracy. But they give us glimpses of the early stages of civilization upon which the Egyptians of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... had a good reason, whether we can discover it or not. The direct command, addressed to him personally, that he should write down his visions and send them to the seven churches of Asia would seem to imply the propriety, if not the necessity, of his connecting his own name with the record of them. He addressed the churches immediately and authoritatively in the name of the risen and glorified Saviour. What more natural and proper than that he should inform them directly who he was that ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic.), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a violation of dramatic propriety ...
— The Republic • Plato
... of Lord Mountclere for more than a week, when she received another letter, which put an end to her season of relaxation, and once more braced her to the contest. This epistle was very courteously written, and in point of correctness, propriety, and gravity, might have come from the quill of a bishop. Herein the old nobleman gave a further description of the accident, but the main business of the communication was to ask her if, since he was not as yet very active, she would come to Enckworth Court and delight himself and a small ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Coast," when the Girl and her Kingdom first came into active communication with each other, the question of discipline loomed rather large! Putting aside altogether the question of the efficiency, or the propriety, of corporal punishment in the public schools, it seems pretty clear that babies of four or five years should be spanked by their parents if by anyone; and that a teacher who cannot induce good behavior in children of that age, without spanking, has mistaken her vocation. However, it is against ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... undying property of their scene. To a man like Scott, the different appearances of nature seemed each to contain its own legend ready made, which it was his to call forth: in such or such a place, only such or such events ought with propriety to happen; and in this spirit he made the "Lady of the Lake" for Ben Venue, the "Heart of Midlothian" for Edinburgh, and the "Pirate," so indifferently written but so romantically conceived, for the desolate islands and roaring tideways of the North. The common run of mankind have, from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the Brick church, in Augusta County. To-day we discuss the question of the propriety of making a move to more generally propagate the Gospel. Most of the brethren and sisters present seemed to be heartily in favor of the move. One brother, John Harshberger, said: "If the Gospel is not ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... than thirty different kinds, but the English are now so well acquainted with this curious animal that it needs no description. There are two things about it, however, that I may with propriety here point out—viz., the use of the pouch, and the various ways in which the kangaroo is serviceable to the settler. The average size of the ordinary female kangaroo is about six feet, counting from the nose to the tip of the tail; and, marvellous ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... steadily recruited and intensified. It does not seem possible for any man to become just what Emerson is from the stump, though perhaps great men have been the fruit of one generation; but there is a quality in him, an aroma of fine manners, a propriety, a chivalry in the blood, that dates back, and has been refined and transmitted many times. Power is born with a man, and is always first hand, but culture, genius, noble instincts, gentle manners, or the easy capacity for these things, may be, and to a greater or a lesser ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... an old negro retainer—whose wife had nursed him through a dangerous illness—a house and lot on the river bank. He had been told that they had opened a small laundry or wash-house. It occurred to him that a stroll there and a call upon "Uncle Hannibal and Aunt Chloe" combined the propriety and respectability due to the young person he was with, and the requisite secrecy and absence of publicity due to himself. He at once ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Colonel Peacocke and the officer commanding at Port Colborne were obtained. I have reason to believe that they will bear materially in explaining the plans proposed and under consideration before Captain Akers' arrival, and the propriety of the modification which, if Colonel Peacocke's approval were obtained, ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... said Jane, "if you are not a coward, which I strongly suspect you are;" and when was a spirited boy of thirteen so urged on that had the prudence to know where to stop with propriety to himself. Marten, choking with rage, did advance to the door pointed out, and put his head inside, and there, on beholding a group of young ladies of all ages, from eight to fourteen, and no little brother, and finding all eyes turned upon himself as an impertinent intruder, he ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... of the testator's intentions than the attempt to run up a new building before the 29th of June, next, which even if it could be finished by that time would not deserve the name of a University." They did not consider that the terms "erect" and "establish" used in the will "could with any propriety be interpreted as meaning the erection of a material building." They declared that it was undoubtedly the testator's intention to establish an institution for collegiate education; they expressed their determination to ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... society and conversation; his manner had sometimes expressed more than cold esteem. Lady Delacour had assured her that it expressed love; but Lady Delacour was an imprudent woman in her own conduct, and not scrupulous as to that of others. Belinda was not guided by her opinions of propriety; and now that her ladyship was confined to her bed, and not in a condition to give her either advice or protection, she felt that it was peculiarly incumbent on her to guard, not only her conduct from reproach, but her heart from the hopeless misery of an ill-placed attachment. She examined ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... himself disagreeable by declining to participate freely in the pleasures of the palace, and, for the sake of domestic harmony, Ivan had him poniarded while he was at his prayers. Another so far overstepped the bounds of courtesy and propriety as to remonstrate with one of the new favorites upon his improper conduct, and Ivan, in order that there might be no bickerings and hard feelings in his family, slew the discourteous prince with his ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... haste, Gino, now thou hast a mask and jacket of velvet. I know not that I should suffer one to enter my father's house when I am in it alone, and take such disguises to go abroad, at this hour. Thou wilt tell me thy errand, that I may judge of the propriety ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... served to show some square fields within their hedge-rows cut in the most prim and undeviating lines around. The wayfarer rode on, through that part of the scene, with his eyes bent down in deep thought; but when he came to the wood; and, following the path—which, now kept with high neatness and propriety, wound in and out amongst the trees, and then sweeping gently round the shoulder of the hill, exposed a beautiful deer park—he had before his eyes a fine Elizabethan house, rising grey upon a little eminence at the distance of some four or five hundred yards,—it seemed that ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... So that even they who believe not on the word, may be won without the word, through their wives' conduct, when they see your chaste conversation coupled with fear. That is, when a man sees that his wife proceeds and conducts herself with such propriety, then he is drawn toward obedience, and holds the state of a Christian to be one that is truly blessed. And although it is not directed to women to preach, yet should they so conduct themselves in their demeanor and conversation that they may thereby attract their husbands toward obedience:—as ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... too far in any point, you will pardon me, for I did the very best that could be done under the circumstances, I think. As I said, Miss Mandeville heard a few words that passed between us at the time referred to, and when, a short time afterward, her father urged upon her the propriety of accepting me as a suitor for her hand, she must needs tell him of ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... you say, are with propriety addressed to me; because though not the actual author, it is to me you are really indebted for the insidious attempt on ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various |
